I was hired to paint a two story colonial with cedar claps. The homeowners inform me the 14 original windows were removed, and 24 windows were installed. The siding appears to be in good shape, but many of the clapboards are loose and are not nailed into studs. How can I find the new studs to nail down these loose boards?
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Well, I'm not a carpenter and I'm not really familiar with cedar claps, but I'll throw out this idea for what it's worth.
How difficult would it be to remove the last row of claps that was installed? If you could do this, I'm thinking you could then locate the studs using one of the more common methods, snap a plumb chalk line at each location, and then repair the claps as necessary using that reference. The chalk line could possibly be substituted with a laser line.
Just offering my two cents. These other guys will likely have a more practical solution.
One thing to do is to figure out to what extent there's a pattern to the studs. If the house is less than 80 years old or so (the newer the better) then probably the studs are fairly regularly placed (including under the windows), and once you locate a stud that's on the pattern the others can be guessed fairly well.
Your problem is that if the windows were replaced without opening the walls then there may not be predictable trimmers to anchor clap ends to. Depends on how they did that.
Ok, see here's my 2nd amateur idea...
A few dabs of exterior grade adhesive?
Could you get the layout of studs from the inside and transfer that by using measurements from an opening?