Painted Wood Clapboard Siding Which Lasts A Lifetime 

Glad it was helpful!

Large overhangs can indeed make a big difference in the longevity of siding and trim. Just keep an eye on your siding and look for paint failure in a single section or area, which would be a clue about the housewrap issue. It isn't ALWAYS a problem, but when it happens the degradation underneath can be pretty dramatic.

You're quite right--while some of these techniques used to be routine, now the knowledge seems to be fading. Carpenters don't want to get involved with painting, and their work tends to be about speed rather than quality. But, a job worth doing is worth doing right!

@@enduringcharm I recently had two dormas rebuilt. Lucky to fine the rare breed,the guy who cares. Primed and painted every thing before it went up. Put metal flashing behind the area where side boards met front up right unit. We did use pvc where we could but sides are wood and on an angle, not straight which he said is a bit of a problem as to the water flow, but said it is beautify.

Yeah, the flashing is something I do regardless if it is a repair or new work. It won't help if the original siding didn't have it, but at least my repair will hold up!

It can be difficult to judge potential problems in that scenario, because the current owners may have just painted for the sale and covered up existing issues. If you look closely you may be able to judge how well or how recently it was painted, and look to see if any bubbling is localized to a small area or covers the whole house. One huge advantage of wood clapboard siding is that it is repairable. If a small section or even one board is damaged or has some other flaw, it can be removed and replaced.

I've faced this issue many times with houses from the 18th century, especially. Often the decision comes down to money and circumstances. Houses with post and beam frames can be especially challenging. Newer houses with balloon framing or some form of stud framing aren't quite as bad. Plywood sheathing comes in 4x8 sheets, and a post and beam frame may require additional framing in order to find something to attach the plywood. Other factors include the possibility of disturbing or cracking interior plaster, the need to retrim windows and doors on the exterior due to the additional thickness, and the possibility that adding insulation will cause condensation problems in a home that for decades has been allowed to "breathe." As a general rule I am in favor of adding both insulation and sheathing if you can do at least one entire wall and there will be no loss of historical trim. I have used 3/8" plywood on occasion when I'm really fighting a thickness problem. For insulation I will generally use fiberglass NOT spray foam. I like to use tar paper or "felt" rather than Tyvec or the like. I typically need to retrim the wall corners at a minimum, and often the windows and doors too. A nail gun helps minimize plaster damage when installing the sheathing. If you have the money and the right circumstances, adding insulation and sheathing will result in a quieter house, better control of interior temperature, and longer lasting siding. As a bonus, you can fix electrical and plumbing problems when the interior wall cavity is exposed. See this example: enduringcharm.com/gallery/exterior-repair.html

There's actually a lot to unpack here. You don't mention your area of the country, but in most areas if you had wood siding installed in the 1980s it was cedar or possibly redwood. It's not impossible that it would be pine, but it's unlikely unless you live in an area where there is a lumber industry presence and they were pushing it locally. In the northeast where I live I only see pine clapboard siding on survivor houses going back to the 1700s and 1800s. The second thing to unpack is the quality of wood. Whatever you've heard or think you know about the durability of wood species is probably not true anymore. All wood of any species today is of poor quality, unless you are buying from a boutique local sawmill which specializes in finding and cutting vintage logs or resawing old lumber. The rot resistance of cedar or mahogany isn't a thing anymore. That was true when cedar was cut from the center of old growth logs where certain chemicals naturally concentrated and it was true when the mahogany you purchased was not a look-alike species without the actual benefits. I've ripped up miles of rotted cedar and mahogany. When you bought pine in the past it was eastern white pine or longleaf pine if you were buying pine flooring. Today you are likely to see "radiata" pine or several species from Australia or South America. In all cases, though, the pine is poor quality with wide set growth rings and case hardening from improper kiln drying. It's garbage. So what should you do if you want wood clapboard siding? The best bet is still going to be cedar, not because it is rot resistant but because it is lightweight and relatively stable. Unless you pay with an arm or a leg it will be fingerjointed. I don't like it, but that's often all I can buy. If you can find solid cedar it will cost a fortune and may not be that great anyway. If you follow the tips in my video you can still get long life out of cedar, fingerjointed siding, but you need to be meticulous about installation and painting. If you are considering buying pine siding, instead just take your wallet and throw it in the street where it will do more good. Another option is to forget wood and go with hardiplank or a similar fiber cement siding. It's a good product and will hold up well if installed and painted properly. It's not quite the same as wood, but it won't rot and it takes paint well.

​@enduringcharm I've had this exact conversation, almost verbatim...I saw cypress lumber at a sawmill for my living. We routinely cut trees in the 100-150 year-old range, but even these logs don't contain nearly the same amount of heartwood as the larger virgin growth did, and the heartwood it does contain isn't nearly as dark or rot-resistant. We have to ship sapwood boards mixed with the heart boards, too. I often wonder why anyone will spend the $4-$7 per square foot for modern cypress bevel siding when it will hardly last longer than pine. 🤦 But they do. Just burning money by the handful.

I say this all the time and by now my adult kids will use it against me if I ever feel lazy!

For the priming the back side it's fine to use a roller. You can make a production line out of it pretty easily if you have a place to store the boards for 30 minutes while the primer dries. Sometimes I'll take two extension ladders and lay them on the ground to create crude sawhorses on which to lay the boards as they dry.

There are commercial products to create such a gap and ways of doing it yourself with strapping. That said, I don't think the additional cost and effort is worth it IF the rest of the things I mentioned are followed. In other words, if the siding is well back primed, well painted, and the seams are sealed, etc., then it just isn't necessary. I would feel differently if the clapboard siding is left natural, or stained with a transparent stain, or if there is a known problem with moisture in the structure due to unique circumstances.

I don't think the primer brand is super important, but it should be exterior rated and latex based, not oil. I typically use Zinnser 123, which has never let me down. You can buy it off the shelf in white or gray.

I would assume Typar has a similar issue with cedar as Tyvek, but I haven't seen it personally. Just keep an eye out if you have this installed. It doesn't always cause a problem, but when it does you'll start to see failing paint and even rot coming through the boards. As for redwood, it's pretty rare here in the northeast where I am. Hell, even finding cedar clapboards can be problem nowadays! It seems to be more common in the west, since that's where the redwood grows.

A latex acrylic caulk which can be painted over is best.

@@enduringcharm thanks!

If you back prime there really isn't a reason for a rainscreen. The bottom edge of the clapboard should be tight against the top of the row below. If you install the siding, trim and flashing correctly there should be no water or moisture getting underneath the siding from the exterior. Some humidity or moist air may migrate from the inside of the house to the outside under certain conditions, but that is minimal and can happen slowly. There should be nothing behind the siding which needs to drain, put it that way!

That's a great question, and one that I have confronted many times when working on older houses from the 1700s and 1800s. Back in those days it was pretty common to install clapboard siding right onto the studs or timbers without any sheathing, and certainly without any kind of air barrier. Sometimes the stud bays would be empty, sometimes they would be filled with mud and straw, or bricks, or whatever else was on hand at the time. So when you go to replace the siding today, you are faced with a choice. If possible, it is worth installing sheathing and a barrier like "tar" paper or felt. Sheathing stabilizes the structure by preventing racking and movement, and the building felt acts as an air barrier and protection in the event of water infiltration. However, there are a few sticky wickets. First, the sheathing will add thickness to the wall, typically half an inch. For this reason, you really need to do at least an entire wall at once so that the thickness matches and the siding can be applied on one plane. And, when you add this thickness you may also need to adjust or replace the trim around windows, doors and corners. You may need to either shim out doors and windows or else build custom trim with a rabbet which meets the window and door jambs while overlapping the new sheathing. It can also be necessary to add framing members as nailers for the sheathing, since the original framing may not be set up with the right spacing for plywood. Or, you may have a lot of waste for the same reason. Of course, while the stud bays are open to the outside, that is also your chance to add insulation. All of these things take time and cost money. I have had situations where a homeowner just does not have the budget to add sheathing and deal with all of these details, but the siding must be replaced due to damage or decay. Or, the work to add sheathing would also mean destroying historical trim details that could not be easily replaced. In that case there is a fall-back position. You can skip the sheathing but add a 30 pound felt over the studs or timbers. This will at least add some protection for water infiltration and act as an air barrier. The felt adds little appreciable thickness. Another trick I have used is to apply a 3/8 inch plywood instead of 1/2 inch, which may be enough to help with the details I mentioned above. So, yes, sheathing, tar paper and insulation would be great if you can afford it. If the budget isn't there try to at least use the 30 pound felt.

Let's back up this train for a second to make sure we're talking about the same thing. So the walls are built with studs if it is a house built in the 20th or 21st century. Then sheathing is applied to those studs, which might be plywood or something called OSB (oriented strand board). Then on top of the sheathing should be a house wrap of some sort, which might be "felt" or tar paper if the house is older, or it might be something like Tyvek, a plastic sheeting. Then the siding is applied, and the siding may go under some of the trim or it may go up to the trim and just be caulked. With that said, the window trim nails should penetrate into the sheathing or even the studs if possible. The rotted or "punky" area that you see under the trim, are you certain that is siding and not the sheathing you are looking at? If it is indeed siding, there is not much you can do but replace it, or perhaps make the trim board slightly larger to cover rotted area that you remove. If it is sheathing, then you need to see how far the rot goes. A small section you might leave alone after you allow it to dry out and you cover it with new house wrap or flashing. A larger section should be removed and replaced with new sheathing. I have some other videos which I think might be helpful in your understanding here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6R_5CGKMJXw.html and also here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lb4QPUsK-1I.html

@@enduringcharm John, Thank you so much for your prompt response in details! Yes, there is indeed a siding behind the window trim board. It is a bay window. I think that is why the builder used siding planks instead of using bricks with sheathing around window frames. I am going to use a 1x6x8ft weather treated trim board to replace the original 1x4x76’ trim, so I could have some solid edge on the board to put nails into the good siding planks. I also plan to put a piece of 6 inch galvanized steel flashing at the back of the new trim board to protect future rain water penetration into the siding, if I do not remove partially rotted siding. Good thing is that Dallas normally only receives small amount of annual rain. I wish I could show you some pictures to explain why I am not really confident if I could handle the siding job since I do not have adequate power tools to make a straight cut on the siding…and I do not have any experience working with siding. I only want to improve the situation but not to make it worse… Do you think if I still need to put a layer of moisture protection sheet behind the steel flashing? I will certainly using ample amount of silicone caulking between the window (metal frame) and the 1x6x8 ft window trim board. Thanks!

Well, I definitely don't have a complete mental picture of what's going on--it's always difficult to try to explain these things with just words. But, I'll offer a couple of further tips. First, galvanized steel flashing is not used anymore, and I'd be surprised if you could even buy it. Instead, you can buy aluminum flashing in the form of a roll or in various preformed profiles. They also now make a very thin copper flashing which is backed by a plastic. It comes in a roll and because it is thin you can form it to many shapes. Copper offers an additional benefit in that it is antimicrobial when it bleeds copper over time. All that said, the most appropriate flashing is probably not metal at all for your application, but one of the self-stick plastic or rubberized membranes sold as "window and door flashing." Some, like the Zip System Stretch Tape, can be formed over almost any profile and it sticks tenaciously. What I'm not clear on is how exactly you are flashing the work, so I think I would need a picture to offer advice on that. As far as repairing the siding, you might consider purchasing a multitool for the job, which will get use for other work too. (See ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-X5oyljd-fTo.html). If you don't want to spend the cash, you could do it the old school way. Before we had these power tools I would repair clapboard siding with just a utility knife and a carpenter's square. Hold the square on the clapboard where you need to make a vertical cut and then use the utility knife to repeatedly score the siding until you break through. Above your cut may be a little bit of siding left which is hidden by the board above. You can sneak a saw in there and hack it off, or sometimes it will just snap off on it's own if there isn't much left. Worse case, if you screw up, you replace a few more boards than you anticipated and weave it in with the existing work.

In short, no. Wood clapboard siding must be nailed at the bottom in order to hold the boards in place. If you nailed at the top of the boards you would soon have warped and cupped siding and as the upper part of the boards split where they are nailed, the siding would fall off the structure. However, if you really want a clean look with no nails showing, you could install Hardiplank cement board siding instead. That product is installed with roofing nails at the top of the board so that the siding basically hangs from the nails. Each successive row covers the previous nails.

I bed my caulk sealant, meaning that I force the caulk into the gap with my finger and smooth the edges. Unless you have no gap at all, that should be sufficient. There are many who just lay a bead of caulk on the surface with the gun and leave it, but I find that lazy and ineffective. That aside, I do think about the building when considering the gaps I leave between trim and siding. A wall with a heavy southern exposure is going to experience greater movement in the siding than a wall hidden in shade all year long. So I will adjust the gaps according to local conditions.

Something overlooked by many homeowners and contractors alike is that a house or other structure is an interconnected system. If you focus entirely on one component you'll likely miss the impact had by other components in the system. Peeling paint seems like a simple thing to solve--just find the right finish or the right finishing process, and Bob's your uncle. But, it's more complicated than that. Peeling paint can have lots of causes including wall insulation type or condition, the type of exterior wall membrane, whether a rain shield was installed or not, the roof style and condition, the depth of soffit overhand, the use of gutters or not, the surrounding trees and vegetation, the style and structure of the house, the species and quality of wood siding, and a million installation details like flashing, caulking, ambient temperature and humidity and how the paint was applied. When I look at a paint failure I try to get a handle on all of this and more. So what is your issue? Even in your limited description I see some red flags. It's an 1886 structure, so if the siding is original or at least many decades old then it probably is not back-primed, and you may not even have sheathing underneath. It was a carriage house so it was not intended to be a home in the first place, and I'm sure insulation is lacking and there is no weather membrane under the siding. Since it is now a home, and a modern one at that, there is water vapor being created indoors from living, bathing and cooking, and that will tend to migrate to the outside. You live in MA so there are extremes in temperature and humidity over the seasons, and the wood will move with those changes. None of this is good for paint adhesion over the long term. When you stripped the siding, you exposed fresh wood, but that needed to be primed fairly quickly or else the sun will begin to damage the wood with UV light, and that can affect adhesion. You primed with an oil based primer, which may have been your biggest mistake. In New England the myth dies hard that oil based primer is still superior. I'm old enough to remember when the standard advice was to wipe the siding with boiled linseed oil, then paint with oil based primer and finish coats in a couple of weeks. Well, things have changed. A quality water based acrylic primer is a more flexible finish than an oil based primer. As such, it will move with the wood through the seasons more easily than an oil based primer and tends to have better permeability. Oil based primer with a water based topcoat can sometimes be a problem too, both at the time of painting and later. If the oil based primer isn't completely cured before topcoating there can be compatibility issues, and later the two layers of paint may tend to move at different rates with seasonal changes. My guess is that if you had used a waterbased primer and water based topcoat, your peeling problem would either be non-existent or at least minimized. As for stains, a pigmented stain does have a more "gummy" texture when cured, so it may be used to hide problems because it will accept more extreme movement. On the other hand, it also will not last as long and lighter colors may be a problem over knots or imperfections.

@@enduringcharm Thank o for your kind reply message. There is insulation in the wall cavity mineral wool and rigid foam and R15 fiberglass in the rim joist. I had to repair some of the cedar siding and there is felt paper and 2 x 8 board for the exterior system. The felt paper is in bad shape which is why I am considering a residing. After watching your video I am reconsidering paint. I was told that a stain enables the cedar to breath and will not peel

If you decide to put up new clapboard siding then you can backprime the boards and peeling paint will not be a problem. New siding may well be finger-jointed, though, unless you have a big budget. Typically it will come primed now, although lumberyards in your historic area may stock clear and if you order enough for a whole house you may be able to do a special order. You must, however, clean and re-prime both sides of the boards even when they come pre-primed. The factory prime is too old, scuffed and dirty by the time it gets to you to be effective. If you use a quality latex acrylic primer and finish paint, you backprime, and you put up new 30# felt, you won't have any problems. I've resided many homes from the 1700s without sheathing and still had success as long as I backprimed well. The pigmented stain is great for old barnwood or dark colors on other vertical siding. I even use it on my truck bed. But for traditional clapboard siding I prefer paint for longevity and looks.

You are quite right, it is difficult or even impossible to find a painting contractor who works by hand. About the best you'll find is one willing to spray the paint and then brush it out by hand. Unfortunately most painting contractors believe they can't make a profit working by hand, and exterior painting is often marketed on price. The irony is that painting entirely by brush can be profitable, especially since the contractor does not need to maintain and clean sprayers or take additional preventative work to protect from overspray. However, I see a lot of painting contractors who sell a job to ignorant homeowners at full price and then skimp on prep and roll the paint on (even in vertical strokes!) as quickly as possible. I can't change the industry, but I can tell you that hand brushing is the best way to apply the paint for longevity and authentic looks.

Never run across that, but I see no reason why it wouldn't be as good as another cedar.

@@enduringcharm you're my lucky charm! Local Lowes just got a pallet full of .5x6x196" (bundle of 10 per pack) 100% Western Red FJ cedar primed. bundle of 10 pieces for only $179! Puts it at just over 1$ a linear foot, which compared to my local lumberyard's 3$ a LF, is a steal. Shortly after my order was processed, Lowes increased the price of their remaining stock by 100$ a bundle so my price was clearly from last year when it was last in stock. Win!! Manager said they haven't seen a shipment of cedar in any store in ages... Jumped on it and bought 16 bundles at the lower price. Hopefully decent quality. Thank you so much for your advice and informative videos.