What Goes Around Comes Around

I connected today!!!!! Woooohooo! The siding is officially connected all the way around the house. I know, it's not finished but I have to celebrate what little things I can. I ran out of siding today also, so tomorrow I am going to get Allen to go with me to buy another (and hopefully final) load. He gets a slight discount at the building supply since he is a licensed homebuilder.
Can you tell that I was off just slightly on my siding elevation? Saturday, Mouse helped me bring the lines around to connect to the back wall to see just how far off I was, before I ran the siding on around. It was only about 3/8" maybe. Not too bad. So, we adjusted one side up an eighth and one side down and kinda squinted a little and worked it out. Looks darn good to me.
I have one inside corner on my house and Allen gave me the idea of how to do the siding here. You could just butt the siding end to end but you would have to cope each piece to fit into the other, since each board is at an angle. I just ran a 1x1 piece of trim board up the corner and butted into it. I think it looks cleaner and it certainly goes faster.
A lot of people have asked me how I have managed to run this siding by myself. Well, it hasn't been easy, that's for sure, but I have learned a few tricks and have only had to ask for help on a few long pieces that had cutouts in them, which made the board very vulnerable to breaking. The most obvious trick is to put a couple of nails at the correct height in order to rest the next board on before nailing. Anything up to about 6 feet long I can hold and nail at the same time but anything over that and it really helps to have these little helpers. Of course, I have to caulk those nail holes up but it's not that big a deal and it's just one of the things you have to deal with if you are doing it all by yourself.
The hardest thing was to start the first board on a run because there was nothing there to put a nail in. But I had a brainstorm and saw that I could screw a small block under the wall and then just measure down and put a nail at the proper elevation. The siding laps down somewhere around a half an inch below the wall sheathing (to be able to maintain a level line on siding), so I couldn't just hold it flush with the plywood. Now, if I hadn't been able to get up under the wall like that I would have just had to come up with some other idea. There is always a way.
Allen is scheduled to go back to England about mid-Decmeber so I really need to get this end of the house finished before he leaves. I try not to ask him to help much but I trust his set up on this scaffolding and plus, it's all his and I can't move it that high up by myself. But that will just give me extra incentive to get finished!