Over the weekend, Ben made a lot of progress on the back side of the house, hanging almost everything.

Though the siding on the front of the house doesn’t look awesome, the back has been a hot mess.  Kind of like a mullet: okay in the front, awful in the back.  For the past year, this has been our view:

Ugly, right?  Old blue siding with a too high light, exposed OSB, shiny insulation, even tar paper.  Clearly we’re not finished, but, having real siding is nothing short of amazing at this point.

For durability, we chose to use LP SmartSide 7 7/8 inch lap siding.  With many windows, doors, lights, and vents to cut around, it wasn’t the quickest process.

To finish off the windows, I pre-painted our Miratec trim.  I painted four windows of trim after install and let me tell you, cutting in around each window was a royal pain in the butt.

So, the back of the house will all be lap siding, but we wanted to add some of the corrugated rust around back.  One thing that bugs me is when the front of a house looks great, but the sides and back are super cheap.  Still a mullet, people.  To finish off the awkward, angled pool house side, we’ll use corrugated steel that will rust over time.

We know this is an unusual choice, but it seems very… Montana.  Several homes in newer developments around town have it and we love how unique it is.  Oddly, from afar, it kind of looks like stained wood.  Which was another option we discussed, but it requires so much maintenance that we didn’t want to deal with.  Once the steel is up, it’ll rust and that’s it.  On a roof, it has a 50 year rating, so we shouldn’t have to worry about it for a long time.

Good news, the siding we chose comes in several pre-finished colors.  Bad news, none of which were close to what we had in mind.  The color of the boards is just primer that we’ll cover in a dark gray.  All that to say, we’ve still got loads of work ahead of us before we’re finished.  Baby steps.