After the cladding was completed I applied a white silicone sealer around the soffits and a clear one at every other edge around the cladding so that the wood can still move but the flexible silicone provides some protection from the elements & insects. I can't remember if I got this out of a US frame building book but it seems to be the American way when I've researched it on the web - maybe someone can comment to it's usefulness.
This shot you'll see a filler piece fixed under the ridge beam and a small filler of cladding. I'm not sure I'd mentioned it but the black gloss is a 10 year exterior paint. When I painted the fascias on the newly built garage I used standard black gloss and 18 months on it needs touching up. The door and the windows are also in a 10 year paint - which unless you spring to Farrow & Ball at £silly then you're colour choices are very limited.
The stable windows don't look too bad from the outside. I ripped up some of the split boards for the trim and then used a bit of 50x150 for the cill then silicon sealed again - the window was already weather tight but why not put an extra layer on? I made some small fillers at the top and bottom of the open slats so that the glass from the inside could rest up against it and chaulked a line around the internal frame and fixed it in with some beading. I was quite nervous with the brad gun fixing 30mm pins into a 10mm bead so close the glass as the pins sometimes have a mind of their own and if they hit a knot they'll shoot off course. Everytime I fired the gun I held my breath but it was all fine. From the outside I then had a choice to either stick some putty around the slats or stick some frame sealant in. My reasoning was if I stuck putty in the the slats would turn into slits with no more than a few inches of visibility so I put in sealant, which looks great.......from the outside! It's bled a little on the inside so does look a little tatty but fine for it's purpose.
With the sash I needed to put in a couple of trim pieces to box in the weights as this window came with a really bad shutter over the front which was attached to the front box section. The new sash box is made up from the actual timber frame and then as you see with front trim pieces, which is why it looks a little squeezed in. The window does work fully and smoothly, top and bottom openers which is a real bonus. I think the lack of paint over the years has meant that the ropes aren't covered in paint which allows them to work properly.
I mitred the trim at the top and then added a secondary trim over the top to match the depth of the cladding.
This is the best I could think of with the cill - it's all sealed to within an inch of it's life and strong enough to sit on!
The door frame was trimmed just to the bottom of the cladding. The paint needs thinking about as the colour is a little more NHS or dentist rather than what we want, plus my wife should have painted the letterbox and number plate black I think. We still need to find a suitable door handle and we'll be putting a light up once the electrics are in.
For the door threshold I'm planning to chop out an inch of brick and then lay a concrete step which I'll do once we get on to laying the huge Yorkstone slabs I'm planning to wrestle to the ground!! You can see where my paint gun exploded - more later - and also the annoying little gap at the right side bottom. If I've not already mentioned it, the floor slab is 75mm from the proposed ground level (1 brick deep) so not quite the height of a house threshold but good enough to stop water getting in from the ground.
