Garage construction 2

Weather vane was inherited from my wife’s sister, Judith after she sadly passed on at far too young an age.

These cedar shingles look really nice after a year or two, I think. They show no signs of leaking even in the strongest rains and winds. They should last at least 25 years after which, you apparently can lay some more over the top of the existing ones.

One question which does not seem to have an agreed answer is whether they should be treated, how often, and what with.

Raw linseed oil is one suggestion every few years. Linseed oil forms a skin and perhaps after ten years or so the roof will look like its been painted with rather dirty varnish which would not be desirable!

Piles of cedar shingles. These are Canadian but are Eastern rather than the more normal Western red cedar. There is apparently little difference other than they haven’t travelled so far (greener, then!) (This species is to be distinguished from cedar of Lebanon and cigar box cedar neither of which are anything to do with roofing shingles.)

The garage is finished apart from the ramp which didn’t get done for ages. Now I look carefully at this picture, I don’t think I had glazed the doors yet. I made the mistake of telling the first glazier I went to that I wanted to glaze some doors and he wouldn’t sell me glass less than 6mm thick even though the doors are clearly too high to fall through.

I varnished the rebates first (oil-based exterior varnish) then sealed them in with clear silastic on the outer face and secured them with wooden beads on the inside.

I wanted to retain the natural look of the wood and not use paint, stain or varnish. I have treated the exposed wood with clear preservative from time to time but have mixed in a small quantity of raw linseed oil for treating the doors. This was a mistake as there has been some blackening and unpleasant discolouring. I shall have to scrape or sand them and probably paint them.

The linseed oil just doesn’t seem to work well on the larch used for these doors. It was the same on some gates we had made of the same material. There is a probability that they had been sealed with something which prents the oil sinking in - the gates and the doors were made by the same person.

The oil and preservative mixture has, however, worked on hardwood and softwood five-bar style gates we have elsewhere in the garden and has produced a mellow finish.

I suppose I could have boxed in the ends of the rafters with facia boards and a soffit but I just blocked the spaces between the rafters in the inside with individual offcuts of 18mm ply. I screwed the gutter clips to the ends or the rafters.