Normally I like shingle courses spaced a little tighter, but having them larger is not only saving us a ton of $$, but it also sort of mirrors the unusually large exposure of our lap siding on the rest of the house. Lastly, the 11″ spacing was the only way I could work out to keep each electrical box within a single course. I didn’t want to have to put in the big pieces of wood that often surround lights and switches on newer houses. In the same spirit as removing all the conduit and sinking everything into the wall, I’m trying to make it all look less cluttered.

Looking like a real house now...

Installing these is tedious, but they really are beautiful.  I got everything done up to the ridgeline, so all I need to do is install some flashing on top to complete the job.

When I was about 1/3 of the way through the roof, I noticed that the back of the tag had some instructions that just had to be wrong, since they didn’t agree with what I was doing.  They said that each shingle should get no more than 5″ of exposure, but I was setting them with 7 1/2″.  Given that they are about 15-16″ long, that meant the difference between 2 layers and 3 layers.  Since I was careful about my seams and nail spacing, I convinced myself that it just wasn’t necessary to go so overkill on a playhouse.   And besides, who wants to spend more on cedar shingles than they absolutely have to?  The partial roof had already gone through several rains without incident, so I wasn’t too concerned.

Well after getting much more of the roof done today and checking on it after a rain, I now realize I screwed up.  While there are no active leaks, the problem is actually water soaking through the shingles, causing a bunch of them to look like the picture below.  I think this will eventually lead to real leaks, so my plan now is to start pulling up nails and resetting shingles at the correct 5″ spacing.  Not fun all all, but better to do it now than rip it apart or replace it later!

Soaked cedar

A: nothing!

Birds' eye view