Today is the Big Day!! The doghouse is almost finished, and soon Mackenzie will be moving into her new home. But before we can start the move in, we will need to finish roofing the house. For this we will use Certinteed Timberline shingles.
First, we still needed to finish off the top of the siding material, which required more cutting with the pneumatic grinding tool.
The next step was to cut and attach the OSB boards to the top of the doghouse. These boards were screwed down using the same type screws used for the rest of the house.
With the roof now on the house, you can get a good idea what the finished house will look like. Because of the type of construction, this house will be considerably lighter than the old doghouse.
Next, we started a line of shingles along the bottom edge of the roof. The first line of shingles in inverted to allow maximum coverage on the bottom edge of the roof. We let the excess hang off for now, but we will later trim it with a cutting tool.
The shingles were nailed down using standard roofing nails. Because of their length, they won't penetrate the inside of the house, unlike the longer nails we used for the siding.
As you can see, the old doghouse is in poor shape. The floor of the house has completely separated from the upper structure. This was due to rotting and deteriorations at the base of the house where it was in direct contact with the ground.
To ensure that this does not happen to our new house we placed the 2x4 treated "feet" of the house on 4" concrete masonry blocks. Overall, this doesn't add too much height to the structure, however you may want to trim the feet off a bit in order to lower the structure.
We also took some time to paint the exterior wood surfaces with some oil-based paint. This will help insure the moisture doesn't get into the OSB or trim around the door.
Mackenzie is happy to see her new house, but she's happier to see some treats.
After a little investigation, Mackenzie decides to look around inside her new home. (You'll have to take our word on this one). So there, you have it, the new doghouse is in place and both dog and builder are happy. Not too bad for a few weekends worth of work.
Though our house is overbuilt and probably more complex than necessary, at least it didn't turn out like the one on the Lowe's website. Yikes, is that a flower arrangement on the side of the house!?!?
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