Details

I drove by the Hyannis Visitor Center and stopped to take a photo.  It's an interesting design and has some features worth noticing.  It was hard to get a good view because of the power poles and wiring which are just barely cropped out.
I used the Paint Shop Pro perspective correction tool to correct the vertical convergence in the original of this photo. After dragging a rectangle over the lines which should be vertical or horizontal, one click makes things parallel again. It's almost like cheating.  The Visitor Center has half-round gutters and round downspouts, similar to what we will be using.  In my opinion they look much better, although they are not so common and are harder to find.  The round downspout elbows look much nicer than the crinkled rectangular aluminum ones too.  The porch roof will also be metal and I was looking for someone who could install both in the same color.  The gutters often come from one manufacturer and the metal roof from another.  When searching for contractors I found Fall River Seamless Gutter.  They extrude seamless half-round gutters and make a snap-lock standing seam roof panel.  The roofer who installs the shingles can install the metal roof and the roof will match the gutters, although we haven't decided yet if these will be painted metal or copper.

The Visitor Center also has fibercement shingle siding in the upper gables. This is probably the HardieShingle siding. I had also considered a moulded urethane product by Chemcrest. The Chemcrest shingles are moulded very realistically, but their sizes would result in a fair amount of waste and would be relatively expensive.  I had also considered real wood shingles but wanted something easy to care for especially in the upper reaches.  Again I decided on a Certainteed product.

Their shingles have a 5" exposure, which is appropriate for the space available and they have a realistic woodgrain.  Although I don't have long runs of shingles, Certainteed has an interesting system.  They actually have three different shingle panels and a system to keep them random looking.  So much for the modernist principle of form follows function.  Instead it's more like form follows tradition.

The base of the Visitor Center also has a nice light grey-beige kind of color.  We haul our custom color siding samples around and I compared them to this color.  It's kind of interesting that they are a close match.

And here's our custom turtle from Acadia Weathervanes.

Finally, here are a few construction photos.  Eric Hakala and the guys from Pires Construction are doing a nice job on the trim.  Here's an eave detail which has worked out well.  I had carefully planned this so that the 12/12 pitch rake board will meet the corner of the 15/12 fascia from the front gable.  I can plan things out and provide details to try to make things come out just right, but rely on the skill of others to make it so.  I pre-planned the framing details and showed a perspective view to Eric and mentioned that, because of the different pitches, the trim construction sequence would be 1) install the 12/12 fascia, 2) install the 15/12 fascia, 3) install the 12/12 fascia trim and then 4) install the 15/12 fascia trim.  Others may not notice because it's on the side of the house, but I'll know.  So many buildings have odd details because things weren't properly planned.

And here are a couple of photos of the house with the cupola in place.  The cupola windows will go in later.
It's hard to get good angles with all the equipment and materials.  There's not much extra room on site.