Siding

Somehow I got so preoccupied with putting up siding, that I forgot to take pics of the process. I’m still not sure I did it right. There seems to be two schools of thought on how to do it:

1. Put up trim on the corners, around doors and windows, and then put up shiplap or panel siding abutting to the trim.

2. Put up siding abutting doors and windows as well as overlapping itself at the corners, and then put trim on top.

Browsing instructions online, it seemed that the former option was prevalent, which is what I went with. Trimmed doors and windows, then did the corners, then installed 4×8 siding panels. It turned out to be extremely tricky, to keep the tolerances of gaps between siding and the trim to a minimum. Even though things are more or less plumb, once you start putting up siding, you have to measure very carefully on all sides of the cutout for the windows and doors to make sure the siding will align itself within 1/8 of an inch.

Naturally, I didn’t get so close, and some of the gaps I ended up with are more like 1/4” at extreme. Not great. Anyway, I caulked it all up and then plan to paint over to make it less visible, but the proper process still baffles me a bit – how do the pros do it?

I could have done siding first (and tolerances are a lot less of a headache, because you cover the gaps with trim), but then you need to caulk gaps between trim and the dimensional siding, and good luck changing the trim out at some point later. All in all, I need a professional advice here.

Gable end triangles were a bit tricky, but ended up looking pretty good. Every horizontal seam needs to be covered with Z-flashing, including door and windows to avoid water seeping in between the seams and under the siding, rotting your structure out.

Gable ends siding

Finished exterior

With that, the exterior work is done, and we can transition to interior work: electrical, insulation and drywall.