Need yer opinion on this:

Tomorrow we start putting board and batten siding on the shop. It’s 1×10 plus 1×3, vertically of course, and it nets 1-3/8″ thick wherever a batten sits on a board. The windows and doors are trimmed with 2×4, net 1-9/16″ thick.

So, of course there are places where a batten will land on the corner of a window or door. This means that part of the batten would stop and the rest would continue until it gets below the trim… a big notch in the batten as it were. I’ve seen plenty of jobs done like that and think it looks heinous.

There are 22 windows and 3 doors and they are where they are. No amount of forethought could have prevented every single such ‘collision’.

My thought is to rip the occasional 1×10 strategically, narrowing down a piece or two so as to alter the placement of the potentially offending battens. It would have to be done carefully so as to appear random. I think this will look better than a perfectly spaced siding install where the battens occasionally klutz the window trim.

The siding is from a small mill, and there are already some variations in thickness and width, so we’re already gonna look somewhat random. The shop replaces a very old barn so we’re not trying for perfect.

Whatcha think?