Maintenance-free ... Or, at any rate, Better Weather Protection

UPDATED, showing almost completed result (click on photos for a larger image)..

I'm finally re-siding my house, which I have needed to do for several years -- the wood siding I installed about 1990 wasn't good quality, and, frankly, I made mistakes in installing it. So, sections of the siding, especially the west wall, were badly deteriorated.  

The biggest drawback to starting this project sooner was that I wanted the result to look much like the house's original look, but the nearest I could get was in vinyl ,,, and I detest vinyl (*) . The house's original siding is a style/design called "Dutch lap".  After I removed the (badly deteriorated) Masonite, which had probably been installed in the 1960s, I re-sided with pine "Dutch lap". Other than the knots showing through the paint, I was pleased with the result ... for a while. But, as I said, it wasn't high-quality siding, and I had incorporated a design flaw which allowed water damage.

The siding product I have finally settled on, after much resistance, is a cement/composite clapboard siding. I was able to get a smooth version of it; that is, without the fake "cedar grain" surface such as they sell at Lowe's.  Naturally, the smooth product that what I want costs more than that with the "cedar grain". Other than the original wood soffit/fascia at the roofline, I'll replace all the trimwork with boards made of PVC. Once painted, it will look look wood.

This first photo is of what is left of the east side of the original house.  By that I mean that my "great room" addition extends to the east of the original house, leaving only this bit of the second floor gable still expose to the sky.  This gable is my favorite of all of them -- I love how the cedar shingles and window-frame I installed in 1990 turned out. But, unless one is standing on roof of the "great room", the gable really isn't visible.

One of my sisters (Karen) volunteered to help me reside the house; that's what motivated me to finally decide on a product and start the project.  She took this photo of my progress as of her arrival in Mansfield last Friday noon.  

Because of the "great room" addition, there wasn't much tear-off to do on this wall: just a bit of siding below the frieze, the frieze itself, and the window frame (except for the top treatment, as the cedar shingles were cut and installed around that).  The sort of taupe-colored siding to the left of the window is the new (unpainted) cement-board siding. The body of the house will be painted to the color of these cedar shingles; the cedar shingles in the gables will be a lighter grey (I painted these with the body's color to see what an expanse of this color would look like; the trim will be a yellow close to what it now is.

 

 

 

The first photo was taken on Friday (June 27). This second photo was taken on Sunday. I think. There is a bit more detailing to do, and of course, the painting.  The trim which is yellow in this photo is either original to the house, or, in the case of the window frame header, what I had made in 1990. The trim which is still white is the new trim made of PVC.  The still-raw wall to the left of the photo (above the original gable) is part of the "sun room" addition.

It has been terribly hot and humid (and raining!) since my sister arrived, so we're moving slowly.  With this being to the east, we could work on this area only a couple of hours in the morning and then in the afternoon once some shade had developed.

 

 

 

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(*) Why do I detest vinyl siding? It's not the fact that it's vinyl which I detest, but rather the way it's manufactured, and intended to be installed, and that it tends to provide a foothold for the growth of algae (and I have enough problem with that).

 

1) Properly maintained wood siding does not show wood-grain; but vinyl siding is made with an ugly and pointless faux "wood-grain" ... which just happens to provide a convenient home for algae to anchor itself in.  Why do you think you see so many 'nice" houses with a hideous green film down their sides?

2) Vinyl siding is hollow, and it shows from a mile away.  Now, IF they would cover a solid wood or composite substrate with a vinyl coating -- smooth, of course, no faux "wood-grain" -- I'd have no complaints about vinyl siding.

3) Because vinyl siding is hollow, separate pieces don't butt together, but rather one overlaps the other. And it shows (from a mile away).  This "feature" also provides a convenient access for high winds to rip the siding off an entire wall.

 

4) Because of the way vinyl siding is designed and intended to be installed, there is a high probability that water will get between the siding an the structure.  

 

Water is the great enemy of buildings; well, water and the myth of "maintenance-free"  When I first bought the house, I had to rebuild an entire wall because water had gotten behind the Masonite siding which had been installed at some point with the (false) promise that it would make the house "maintenance-free".

UPDATE (2025/07/14):

This is almost finished result of the re-working of the east bedroom gable, after I decided on the color to paint the gable's cedar shingles (the color in this photo isn't the best: the blue of the cedar shingles is indeed a "deep" color, but it's also "vibrant" -- Ah! The color does show better in the "expanded" view). I still need to scrape and repaint the original-to-the-house soffit and fascia; that won't get done any time soon.

Finally, here is a wider view, also showing the east wall of the sun-room addition. I still have to build the window framing/treatment for both walls of the sun-room.

We managed to install siding on both exterior walls of the sun-room.  I use the word "manage" because the (unseen) south wall is in effect on the third floor, as the basement floor is grade-level on the south side of the house.  We had to put up five levels of scaffolding to be able to work on the south wall.

Lest you think that this is all we accomplished during the two weeks my sister was here, I'll make another post showing how/where most of our time was spent.