Paint doesn’t really like the rain forest conditions of upstate New York. At least that’s what our painter said. His suggestion was to go over the old painted clapboards with cedar shingles. Well sir, that’s just what we’re doing – cedar shingle siding! To be exact white cedar shingles dipped in a bleach stain.
In the photo above, the clapboards on the left side are only about five or six years old and are premium cedar themselves. We’re not doing that. Instead I’m applying cedar siding shingle to the who-knows-how-old clapboards with the peeling paint.
Here We Go
To start the project I first needed to do a double row at the bottom. The double row is needed because there are no existing rows of shingles to “push out” on the visible portion of the shingle. We have only a five inch exposure, however the shingle is more like eighteen inches tall. So subsequent rows will have around 2 layers of varying thickness to do the aforementioned “push out”.
We started on the wall to the left of the tall ladders and to the right of the orange ladder and scaffolding. On the left side of that wall is a straight trim board going all the way up. Here you just butt the shingle up against that trim board and away you go.
As I shingle along I come the the right side of the wall. Here is an outside corner. There are many how-to’s out there for outside corners. Not so many though on inside corners. More on those later. Both types of corners are “woven”. In other words – in the first row, the right edge of the last shingle can’t be seen because it is covered by the left edge of the first shingle in the same row on the other wall.
Here’s a less confusing article of how these corners are done from the Journal Of Light Construction: https://www.jlconline.com/how-to/exteriors/shingled-corners_o
Besides being prettier, this helps keep out moisture. As in rain. Did I mention we’re practically in a rain forest?
I should note that we’re not shingling the mudroom. It too has premium cedar clapboards and a very nice sunburst as can be seen here.
So this is a few hours into the job. As can be seen (if you squint a bit), I am weaving this outside corner. Note (or don’t) that I start out alternating on the first three rows, then row four is the same as row three. Then I successfully alternate the next row only to mess up on row six, making it the same as row five. Of course it would be better to have each row alternating with the previous, but I think it looks pretty good and will work out just fine.
