Flashing (The Kind You Do With Your Clothes On)

Earlier this week I offered to help Troy with the flashing on Sunday. He was a little confused since it wasn't really a two-person job and he hadn't asked me to help. When I explained that I was just offering some assistance to make the job go faster, he got right on board.

So today while he was finishing up the cement board on one of the fiddly corners by the garage door

(northeast corner finished)

I was set up on the sheet metal break. After appropriate training, I proceeded on my own. And here, if I show you how it goes, then you can just fly through your training should you ever be called to run your own sheet metal break.

We start with a roll of veeeeerrrry thin aluminum.

(The hammer is just keeping it from rolling off the work surface, essentially just a fancy paperweight.)

Step 1: Mark the length. We're using a square purely to keep things neat. It doesn't really make it function better, but we live in a world that likes straight lines at 90 degree angles. So we try to comply.

(The screw is the marking pen. The aluminum is so soft you can easily mark it with the point.)

Step 2: Cut the strip to length. Use an old pair of scissors.

Step 3: Lay the strip onto the sheet metal break.

Step 4: Position the clamp bar at the fold line:

It's a little hard to see the bar in that pic, so here's a better view:

It's the thin pointed edge that you want to have right on the fold line.

Step 5: Clamp the bar and aluminum sheet exactly in place. (Not only does the world like straight and 90^, it also likes even and level. Again, we try to comply.)

Step 6: Placing a hand on each black handle, rotate the break up to fold the aluminum.
There's a mark on the right (circled in red) that tells you where to stop. Bring the break back down, then up to the mark, then down, then up again, and down. Yes three times.

Remove the clamps and bar, and you now have a piece of flashing instead of just a strip of aluminum:

And repeat...and repeat...and repeat...until you have a nice stack like this

and have gone through the last two rolls of aluminum and Troy tells you that that is probably just enough.

Here's a little shot of it installed:
If you can make out what all the pieces are, you can see that the flashing starts on the wall and then covers the joint with the cement board (which is over the foam as you may recall). The siding will, of course, cover the top of the flashing and the water will stay out of places it does not belong.

After Troy finished with the cement board, he got busy with the flashing I made:
This is the south wall when it was partially finished. By the time we ate supper, Troy had finished the south and west walls. By the time I got around to loading these pictures and writing this, he had almost all of it done. Yeah for Troy!

All that needs to be done yet is one final screw on the bottom of every joint between the separate pieces of flashing. Troy doesn't have the right screws on hand (gasketed siding screws, I believe he said) but we'll get to that another day.

And that was our day of flashing. No trench coat needed.