Wood Siding Restoration

The Half of the Job That Is Carpentry

A wood house that has been painted five or six times over a century does not need a sixth coat as much as it needs somebody to deal with what is under the fifth. Restoration is the part of an exterior repaint that decides how long the finish lasts, and on a Pasadena bungalow it is usually the larger half of the bill.

We work on lap siding, shingle walls, board and batten, and the trim assemblies that go with them. The material is generally old growth redwood or cedar, which is worth saying because it changes the economics. That wood is tight grained, dimensionally stable and largely rot resistant in the field. What is available today is not the same material. So the correct instinct on these houses is to save every board you can and replace only what is genuinely gone, rather than tearing off a wall and re-siding it with modern stock that will not last as long as the stuff you removed.

Where the Damage Actually Is

Almost all of it is at a horizontal edge, because that is where water sits and where cut end grain can drink. In order of how often we find it:

The bottom butts of shingle courses, particularly on the north and east walls where the sun does not dry things quickly after a rain. The bottom lip of lap boards, especially near a downspout that discharges too close to the wall or a sprinkler head aimed the wrong way. Exposed rafter tails, which on a Craftsman with a deep overhang stick out into full afternoon sun with nothing above them. Window sills, and the lower rail of a sash where the glazing putty has failed and water has been running behind it for a decade. The bottom of door casings, where the trim meets a porch deck that stays damp.

Notice what is not on that list. The middle of the wall. If the field of your siding is failing and the edges are fine, you have a coating problem or a moisture source inside the wall, and that is a different conversation.

How We Test It

A screwdriver at a low angle, light pressure, near the bottom edge of the board. Sound wood stops the tip almost at once. Compromised wood takes it in a quarter inch or more and often brings back damp fibre. We do this at every suspect location rather than sampling one and generalising, because rot is local. One rafter tail can be gone while the next one over is perfect.

We mark what fails, count the boards, and price the repair as a line item. You should never accept a repair allowance expressed as a vague percentage of the paint price. It is an invitation to find more work later.

What the Repair Looks Like

For a shingle, the damaged piece comes out without disturbing the course above, and the replacement slides up underneath so the nailing stays hidden. Keyways get held off the joints in the course below, the same rule as the original installation, and the butt line stays straight. Cedar and redwood shingle walls are repairable one piece at a time, which is precisely why they are worth keeping.

For lap siding, we cut back to the middle of a stud, splice in matched stock with the same bevel and exposure, and prime the cut ends on every face before anything goes up. End grain that gets primed on the ground stays sound. End grain that gets primed after installation, when you can only reach one face of it, does not.

For a rafter tail, we cut back past the punky material to clean wood, scarf or piece in a new tip cut to match the original profile, and seal it. Owners are often surprised at how much of a tail can be replaced invisibly once it is coated. The profile is the thing people see, not the joint.

Tannin, Primer and the Ghosting Problem

Redwood and cedar contain water soluble extractives that will bleed straight through a light coloured topcoat and leave brown stains, usually right over your new repairs and usually about a month after you paid the bill. The fix is a stain blocking primer on any bare cedar or redwood, chosen for that job specifically. A general purpose exterior primer is not interchangeable with a stain blocker, and neither is a bonding primer, which does a different job again on a chalky or glossy substrate. We pick per surface, not per house.

What Restoration Does Not Fix

If water is getting behind the wall, siding repair only hides it. Failed flashing at a chimney or a roof to wall junction, a parapet with no cap, a deck ledger with no drainage, or an irrigation head that has been hitting the same three boards every morning for six years, those are the actual cause and they have to be dealt with by someone before we coat over the symptom. We will tell you when that is what we are looking at, even though it means the paint job waits.

Call (626) 243-2387 and we will walk the elevations with you.