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What’s right with this picture?
comments (0) August 7th, 2008 in Blogs
Kevin Ireton, editor-at-large
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The phone rang just as I was getting ready to leave work last night. The caller ID told me it was Mark, a guy I’d been avoiding for a week. Mark is a builder in Vermont, a longtime reader, and a former author for the magazine. He had previously left me a message saying how disappointed he was with the photo on Fine Homebuilding’s current cover.
The cover story is about factory-painted siding, which offers warranties up to 25 years. The photo shows Scott Grice, another author of ours and a builder out in Portland, Oregon, installing a piece of fiber-cement siding over furring strips, a detail called a rain screen because it allows any water that gets behind the siding to drain harmlessly away rather than promote rot. A rain-screen wall also helps a paint job last longer.
Mark was upset (he actually threatened to cancel his subscription) because of three details in the photo. First, the bottom piece of window casing is unpainted on the cut end, exposing vulnerable end grain. Second, there are no tar-paper splines behind the window casing and lapping over the furring strips. And third, there is no groove or rabbet in the bottom piece of casing for the siding to slide into. All of these details would have been an improvement over what was shown in the photo, and all were covered in the article Mark wrote for us seven years ago, which was the first one we ever published about rain-screen walls.
When Mark looked at the photo on our latest cover, his reaction was “Hey, we’re going backwards. Didn’t anybody read my article?” When I look at that photo, I think, “Wow, that’s the first time a rain-screen wall has ever appeared on the cover of a national magazine. That’s progress.” I doubt if 2% of the houses built in this country use this detail, despite the fact that it reduces rot, mold, and premature paint failure.
I also look at that cover and think, “Thank goodness, John Ross got a dynamic photo of siding installation.” He shot this photo two weeks before we shipped the issue to the printer, and believe me, that’s cutting it close. John was out in Oregon working on another article, and he convinced Scott to take time off another job to set up this photo. So I also think, “Thank you, Scott, for helping us out.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever had a photographer take you over the jumps while you’re trying to work, but it’s a tedious process. “Move to your left. Hold the board a little higher. Lift your chin. Turn your head. Try not to look bored…Okay, now put on the red T-shirt and let’s do it again.” And again. And again. In other words, we interrupt the process big time. Under those circumstances, it’s easy for the builder and the photographer to forget a detail, whether it’s safety glasses or unpainted end grain on the window casing.
I’ve no explanation to offer for the other details. Clearly Scott doesn’t use them. He probably should, but who am I to say? I didn’t rabbet any of the windowsills on my house to receive the clapboards.
Reluctantly, I picked up the phone and let Mark yell at me. In the end, all he really wants is for all of us to build better houses.
posted in: Blogs
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About this blog
As the editor of Fine Homebuilding, I spend my weekdays trying to produce a magazine that will satisfy 300,000 of the most demanding builders, both professional and amateur. As the owner of a 200-year old Cape in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills, I spend weekends working on my house.
Each activity invariably informs, and complicates, the other. In this blog, I’ll offer observations from both worlds -- publishing and building -- with the hope of providing some useful or at least entertaining insights.
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