My woodworking workshop build #3: Siding and exterior door and windows

My workshop construction got off to a great start with the help of my whole family. Mom, Dad and my Aunt Mary all pitched in the first kick-off weekend. Then they all went home. Thats when I realized that this project was going to take a while. But with some grit and determination I have all but completed it. I did have quite a bit of help from my wife but it was mainly a solo project. So please excuse the lack of progress photos.

So after framing was done, I installed the sheathing and house wrap over two or three weekends with the aid of LOML. Next came the door. This was slightly challenging by the fact that the concrete slab is sloped. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to install the threshold on a sloping surface so I blocked off the threshold with a piece of plywood and poured a thin mix of concrete into the threshold area. When that set I put in the door. Windows were easy after tackling the door.

By far the most time consuming, frustrating, and aggravating part of this build was installing the vinyl siding. As you can see in the following pciture, the workshop extends the front face of the garage.

So to install siding I had to merge the new siding into the existing siding. The back side of the garage was the most difficult to do because every course of siding from the bottom to the top has to merge perfectly. I researched how to do this and came up with diddly squat. Apparently nobody else is dumb enough to try this. If any of you refurbers have seen or heard of how to do this, I’d love to learn how you did it. Thanks!

Anyway, the procedure which worked for me in the end went something like this.
- To ensure that the edge of all pieces of siding were staggered by a minimum of two feet, remove the short pieces of siding from the existing garage wall.
- Establish the location of the starter strip relative to the existing siding using a water level and snapping a chalk line.
- Start installing the siding, interleaving new siding with the old
- About halfway up, realize that the courses of new siding are not aligning with the courses of existing siding. Swear a lot. Find out where I screwed up, remove a few courses and do it again.

In the end it came out pretty good. You can’t tell that new siding was mixed with old siding.

-- Chris