We were in a mad rush at the beginning of the week to get as much sheathing done as possible, and wrap the garage before the snow/rain mix came. Steven and I worked on it Monday night, and Jen and Troy came over to help us Tuesday afternoon and night. We definitely wouldn’t have gotten it wrapped without them*.

On Monday we got more of the sheathing up on the north side. We finished the man door sheathing, and cut 1′ wide OSB strips to go above the 8′ sheets. We had to paint the exposed edges with primer. Yay, paint on everything!

Here’s the finished sheathing around the man door. You can see the open 1′ strip to the left of it, which we installed that day but failed to take a picture. 

On Tuesday we added the 1′ wide strips on the south side of the garage, and did prep to wrap – we removed all reference nails, pounded down sheathing nails that were sticking out, and made sure the sheathing was secured to the wall (which involved looking at the studs from the inside to see if the nails went in or not – it’s not easy to tell exactly where you are nailing, even though there are guidelines).

When I saw nails sticking out like this, I would indicate on the other side that more nails needed to be added, and to which direction from the previous ones

Then we wrapped the north, east, and south sides. That was definitely a three person job. I held the roll, Steven used the cap hammer** to secure it, and he and Troy both checked that it was level, smooth (no ripples!), and in the right spot. We finished in the dark. But we finished before the rain on Wednesday and snow on Thursday!

Oops, ripple. We did that side in the dark. Ha. 

We have not finished the sheathing on the east/gable end of the garage yet. We need to sheath the gable and the 1′ open strip below it, and we’re still brainstorming how to do that (how to lift the heavy sheets!), and we ran out of time this week. We put wrap up on that side anyway, to protect what was already up.

Wednesday am…

… Thursday afternoon

*THANK YOU A MILLION TIMES, JEN AND TROY!!!! Jen told us we can help them clean out their basement for all of their help. She was joking but I think that is completely fair!!!
**Have you seen a cap hammer? They’re nutso. It puts a staple and a cap in each time you use it (if it works correctly…). The cap spreads the staple’s holding power over a larger area, and protects the staple from tearing the house wrap. THIS IS NOT SPONSORED, UNFORTUNATELY. MENARDS PLEASE SPONSOR ME.

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