Finishing the exterior took A LOT of time - as of the end of December I’m still not fully wrapped up with it, but moved on to other tasks after the majority of it was done. Most of August and September were focused on exterior finishing.
Gables and eaves
The first items to install were the gable and eave trims. I had mocked up these interfaces and how the soffit was going to look, shown in the photo on the right.
I had seen a house with a cedar soffit and really liked it, so tried to make the most of the rather small soffit I had because of the small roof overhangs to keep overall width in check. I used these 1/4” cedar tongue and groove panels that were originally meant to be closet liner, which were fairly affordable from Home Depot. These slotted into a dado in the actual gable/eave trim, which is a 1x8 pre-primed finger joined pine trim board (also from Home Depot). The 1x8 gets ripped down to 1x6-1/2”, and gets installed dado side down with regular wood screws underneath the roof zip panel, which was installed to be proud of the sub-fascia by 3/4”. This overlap was then tapped with ZIP tape, extending down the gable/eave by about 1-1/2”. I used the offcut of the rip of the 1x8 to create the backer strip into which the cedar soffit would get nailed into, with the other end being slotted into the dado. I used 3/4” stainless 18ga brad nails to attach the soffit to the backer. There will then be a 1-1/4” inch thick frieze board to cover those nails and manage the transition to the siding from below.
The cedar got a coat of stain before being installed.
Rainscreen
While researching siding, I found that a rainscreen was best practice to put under the siding to let any moisture back there dry out. Frankly, it probably wasn’t necessary with the house going to LA and my siding being lap siding that allows more air movement than for example, metal siding, but it gave me more peace of mind and seems like a good idea in principle. I decided to accomplish the rainscreen using furring strips as opposed to a drainage mat because I like the rigid dimensionality of lumber as opposed to a mesh type product. I chose 3/8” doug fir ply to make the furring strips after watching a Jake Bruton video about rainscreens, though on a bigger house without weight considerations, a full 1x3 or 1x4 might be better, especially if there is exterior insulation. We ripped the ply down to ~2-1/2” when placed over the studs and 1” when it was being used to “frame” a window. We installed the strips with #10 3-1/8” wood screws into the studs when applicable, and #8 1-1/4” screws when it wasn’t over a stud.
To close out the bottom of the rainscreen gap, I decided on the Cora-vent SV3 plastic vents that have a bug screen. We installed these all around the bottom edge of the house, and above the windows to let water drain out onto the drip cap. We also installed a tiny 3/8” strip horizontally over the Cora-vent to create the angle on the first piece of lap siding.
Window and Door Trim
I spent a lot of time thinking about, and eventually building, the window and door trim. Because of the rainscreen and siding dimensions, and I needed my trim to be 1-1/4” inch thick to be flush or proud of the siding. There weren’t any stock profiles that I liked and could get quoted quickly, and Home Depot didn’t have much selection. I decided to design and make my own - out of redwood.
The top and bottom profiles have drip cuts to prevent water from rolling back to the window, and the bottom profile is suspended off the siding by the two rails on either side to make sure water can’t puddle there. In all, for each window, there are 5 parts since the top rail and drip cap are separate because they can’t both be nested into a single 2x4.
To make these profiles I used mainly 2x4 and 2x6 redwood heart (from Home Depot) and joined and planed them to thickness at the makerspace before ripping on the table saw.
After making the profiles, I assembled them with glue and countersunk wood screws (all pre-drilled), and then filled in the screws with wood putty before giving everything a light sanding. The plain wood profiles looked so good I considered just staining them instead of painting. If I could do it again I would strongly consider that and use hidden joinery instead of the screws.
I had originally intended on spraying all the trim profiles and built a rudimentary spray booth, bought a used air compressor, and bought a harbor freight HVLP gun. This turned out to be a terrible idea. The spray booth was poorly ventilated so I wound up getting paint all over and couldn’t see through the cloud, and compressor could barely keep up and became molten lava after 10 minutes or so, and my air-water separator was so measly that it instantly saturated and I would blow a big drop of water out of the gun every 10 seconds of spraying or so. I quickly abandoned the spraying and resigned myself to applying 1 coat of primer and 2 coats of paint by roller. This resulted in probably ~16 hours of work, de-racking the trim, painting one side, re-racking, letting dry, then repeating for 12 assemblies. I used Insl-X tannin blocking primer since it is redwood, and for paint Ben Moore Aura mixed to Behr Night Blooming Jasmine (YL-W10). I bought 4 gallons and used 3 of them. After a few months the redwood tannins are already bleeding through, so either the primer is bogus or I didn’t roll it on thick enough (I only did one coat and they recommend two for high-tannin woods). Fortunately it is bleeding through at the rings so it makes the trim look more woody, which I actually like (for now).
These were shimmed around the window to get it all lined up (there’s a 1/8” gap all around to the trim), and after a test fit, caulking applied to back and then they were fastened into the sheathing with wood screws. I’d recommend using fewer longer/bigger screws as opposed to finish screws, because the finish screws don’t have the boring feature that pulls the two members together.
I also made some corner trim out of redwood that were installed at the corners of the house.
J-Blocks
All of the through penetrations (vents/wires) or exterior mounted devices (trailer lights, porch lights) are attached to the wall through junction blocks (J-blocks). These go on before the siding and make it a lot easier to mount and seal stuff that goes through the wall.
I made these 1-1/4” thick (just like the trim) out of redwood scraps leftover from the trim build. I also couldn’t find a good profile for the drip cap (to kick water out over the block) so I bought some .032” aluminum sheet and cut and bent the profiles on the shear and press brake at the makerspace. I sprayed them with Al primer and then painted them the same blue as the siding. The blocks were primed with the same primer as the trim, and also painted blue, then attached to the house with wood screws (from the inside for all the ones after the one in the picture below). The caps were installed over the top of each block, nailed into the sheathing, and a piece of ZIP tape prevents water from going behind the cap. The gaps to the siding around the J-blocks will get caulked and painted.
Siding
Siding was a big decision - and required a lot of thinking, quoting, and research. I originally wanted this nickel-gap cedar profile from LPSmartSide, but it turned out to be basically unattainable on the west coast, and was a 3/4” thick profile so would have been very heavy. I also considered natural wood, but that turned out to be cost prohibitive. We decided on the cedar texture 38 series lap siding from LP because 1) it’s cheap 2) it’s thin and light and 3) stocked and available (even at Home Depot). All-in the siding cost ~$1700 for the entire house which I think is fairly unbeatable in a wood product. The cedar-texture turned out to be good decision I think because it hides a lot of imperfections in paint and waviness in the texture. I got it quoted from Home Depot and a local lumber yard, and I thought Home Depot was giving me a good deal but it turned out one was for 12’ lengths and the other was 16’ lengths in the same total quantity of pieces. This turned out to be a decent mistake to make as I used 90% of the material (I would have underutilized the 16’ order) and the 12’ pieces were much easier to handle.
We decided on Infinite Deep Sea from Behr (S500-7) but had it mixed in Ben Moore Regal Select (flat finish) at a local store. The mix was ok but the color was not the exact same as the swatch - and I was originally down on how it looked on the house but have since warmed up to after the green of the ZIP was fully covered in siding. I bought 12 gallons and have only used 7 since I originally planned to paint the back of the siding, but LP says not to. The flat finish does get a little dirty, but it hides touch-ups super well which I like.
I spent 12 hours pre-painting siding with a roller.
We then marked out the siding locations on the house which was an awesome tip from a video from Kyle at RR Buildings - look up “story pole method”. We had to use the laser to get around some odd sections that were unmeasurable, and then used the chalk line to connect the marks to complete the “pre-marking”. The siding get’s attached to the house with 1-3/4” 0.110” ring shank stainless nails. These were probably a little big in diameter for the job, but this is what LP says to use if you are doing furring strips. We put in two nails at every furring strip location. I was originally renting a roofing nailer (these nails need a roofing nailer as opposed to a siding nailer since they are so big), but wound up buying a used DeWalt roofing nailer which was a great decision. The pneumatic one I rented had a feather trigger that would often overhsoot, and was very sensitive to the tank pressure. For both the electric and pneumatic nailers we often had to bang in proud nails with the hammer. At the butt joints we put a “sticky-note” of bear skin, painted the same blue, to kick-out water down to the next piece of siding. This allows the butt joints to go un-caulked in perpetuity.
At J-blocks and windows there were always some weird cuts to get around the block but continue the piece of siding. These cuts consumed a lot of time, especially when the process was measure-cut-test-fit-cut-install. We painted all cut ends.
Finishing touches
I made a small deck out of redwood offcuts from the trim build where the heat pump will go, and did an “extended soffit” under the overhang. Both of these turned out really good and added a warm wood touch to the blue.
