Compromises

I'd hoped to begin putting up the siding this weekend, but as usual everything took longer than expected.  I finished most of the trim, including the corners, doorframes and windows.  Sills for the six windows were cut, at an angle, from a 2x6.  In the photo everything looks neatly painted white, but that's just primer; I have to apply a finish coat, perhaps some morning early before the helpers are up and about.  I also built the balcony door, though it won't be installed until near the end.

Annoyingly, most of the trim is not precise.  Many of the joints show small gaps, and none of the sills fit perfectly into their frames.  If I were a real carpenter I would have shimmed the casements to be square in all dimensions (not just the facing plane), but since I didn't, the small deviations from 90-degree angles proved impossible to accommodate.  I tried slopping lots of extra primer into the gaps but that didn't really work.  

So that's the theme of the project right now:  compromises.  I did rip off one piece of installed corner trim, wasting an hour's labor, to correct an error too egregious to leave in place.  But mostly I'm trying to let go of the pursuit of perfection, and just get the darn thing done.