We’ve got this 24 x 28 garage to side with claps, with cornerboard trim, right after this holiday break.
I’ve done the layout on small jobs before, working alone, using a water level and a story pole.
But this time there are two of us, and we’ve an engineer’s tripod-mounted sight level.
What’s a good trick for doing the layout quick and easy?
Skim-coating with joint compound covers texture, renews old drywall and plaster, and leaves smooth surfaces ready to paint.
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Dig into cutting-edge approaches and decades of proven solutions with total access to our experts and tradespeople.
Start Free Trial NowGet instant access to the latest developments in green building, research, and reports from the field.
Start Free Trial Now
Replies
My two cents:
Put the level back in your truck and measure parallel to the eaves. Siding always looks best if it's a crooked as the building it's on.
cheers
..........Rik.........
Clapboard from the top down. This way you can snap your complete layout on the wall first. I recomend 15# felt, because Tyvek gets brittle and breaks down after a while. This will work well with wood claps because you never want them nailed together. Once you get the top started with a helper you can almost work alone. I use stainless 5D ring siders. Also, you can snap lines or mark the studs on the felt paper with roof tins tacked @ the stud location. The claps are face nailed slightly above the clap beneath allowing them to slip instead of crack when they expand & contract. Tack a clap, gently push the next clap in w/ the heel of the hand, tack it, then go back and nail off the course above.
There are a couple of ways to hang claps.
You can just hang them like vinyl. Same exposure all the way up the wall, cutting the claps to fit around the windows, etc.
Or you can vary exposure so the butts of the clap breaks at the bottom and top of the window. This will result in varying exposures as you transition from open wall to between windows, and again back to pen wall.
You can also graduate the claps at the bottom of the walls. Mostly an old method.
"Quick and dirty?"
Get your starter row set by finding the low point on the four corners, and use your water level to shoot level lines around the base. Run a starter strip to kick the bottom of the first clap out so its "kick" matches the kick of the uper courses.
Measure the height of the wall to figure your clap exposure. Then cut what I call a "preacher block" to use as a gauge for setting the exposure. I cut a couple at once. They HAVE to be identical. The preacher block essentially has a lip on it that catches on the butt of the lower course of claps, and the clap to be set next sits on the top of the preacher block. The distance form the lip to the top of the block is your desired exposure.
After setting the first course, just use the preacher blocks to set subsequent courses. Every five or six courses you can cross-ref with tick marks on the corner boards.
Cedar claps, I cut them slightly long, bow the ends in, and snap them into place. You don't want the bow to be too severe or you could actually displace your corner board...or the clap could get slightly wavey as you nail it off.
Other things you can do:
Prime the ends as they're cut.
Use a small piece of felt or flashing behind the butt joints.
I use stainless ring nails, diamond tip, small heads.
I nail into studs.
Clap butt joints break over studs.
"You can also graduate the claps at the bottom of the walls. Mostly an old method."
Mongo,
Do you mean larger exposures at the bottom going progressively to smaller exposures at the top? The few times I've seen that (it's subtle), I liked it. It seemed to give a sense of greater height to the building. Especially in a gable end.
Seems like it could help correct (slightly) proportions of a building. A long wall that looked too low, etc.
Or was it an old technique because they had some narrow claps and needed to put them somewhere?David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
Just thought of a question and then answered it. How would you quickly do the graduated exposures mentioned above?
I'd snap a line off of the corner board. 6" off the corner board at the top, for instance. And 8" off the corner board at the bottom. Then at each course, I'd use dividers to transfer the corner-board-to-chalk-line distance up the wall to mark the next course.
Do that on both ends of the wall and, working with a partner, you wouldn't have to walk back and forth with the measurements. Just check every 5 courses or so for distance from the eave.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
Actually, just the opposite.
Smaller exposures at the bottom, increasing to "normal exposure" after about 6-8 courses of claps.
If you picture a standard gable-roofed house, it was not done on the gable walls (typically the "side walls"), just on the front and back walls.
Reason was for weathering. With no gutters, water would run off the roof, hit the ground, and splash up on the walls, so with less exposure on the first few courses, the stacked claps had more "thickness" to weather.
Since no water would run off a gable wall, the gable walls had normal exposure.
That's the most traditional way.
Modern day construction with water control makes the varying exposure unneccessary from the functional poit-of-view, and often has the varying exposure on all four walls because some people think having it otherwise looks too quirky.
I have seen varying exposures as you've described, with the exposure becoming less towards the top of the building. It can look nice, and it's more of an aesthetic change in exposure vs the functional (for weathering) one I described above.
I've got one to do next year for which the archy has specified 6" exposure claps for the ground floor elevations, and 4" for all the second floor ones.
The roof structure has a big overhang all around, and the second floor walls all terminate down on the roof.
Someone said it's a Frank Lloyd Wright thing, the parallel lines getting tighter as you progress up.
We've all probably seen shingled jobs where the exposure goes wide-narrow-wide-narrow. I don't see why you couldn't do it with claps. Might look cool, in the right design context.
Gene,
I think the idea of using broader boards at the bottom predates Wright. There are a lot of homes around my area that use 1/2 x 6 at basement level, 1/2 x 4 at the main floor, and then cedar shingles on the second floor. Sometimes there's even a pebble-dash stucco material used in the gables. All the variations in siding just help to break up what otherwise can look like a monolithic structure, but I'm sure you already know that. I think the broader siding at the bottom (as opposed to the top) helps create an impression of stability.
As far as the alternating courses of bevel siding (to simulate the same type of work done with shingles), there are a few houses like that in my neighborhood as well. It looks nice, but it doesn't have the same effect as the shingles. It's still nice -- just different.
One of my clients has 1/2 x 4 beveled cedar siding with alternating courses of shingles! Just about everything's been tried at least once, apparently!
Edited 12/30/2004 4:33 pm ET by ragnar
That looks like the house I owned in Seattle. About time it got resided.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
About time it got resided
Yeah, the HOs have been putting it off for five years now!!
What part of Seattle was your old house in, and what year? The one in the photo is up on Phinney Ridge and is about a 1910.
1922 11th Avenue East in Capitol Hill. Built in 1910. Maybe they just share a floor plan.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
David,
I'm curious about this house you're talking about. Did the gables come together on all four corners of the roofline, so that there wasn't any fascia at all? I just got done helping the homeowners design some scuppers that integrated into the roof valleys.
Here's a couple of interior shots -- the muntin pattern on the upper sash is fairly unique, and the casings were pretty unique, too. I built the medicine cabinet for them -- it took some head scratching to match the casings!
Gene,
That's perfectly appropriate.
Exposure can be graduated for aesthetics (scale, design) or for practicality (anti-weathering).
Regarless, I'm sure by now that you know not to lay nekked cedar claps over spun-poly housewraps.
Hi. I am new here, but I do know the claps were CLOSER at the bottom. In the NorthEast, it was done because we didn't have very good gutters.
I like the forum, and will check in often. Thank you very much.
All clapboards are not the same. If you are using 6" with a 4" exposure and want the rows even with the top and bottom of the windows, I would use a story pole. I use a piece of 1x3, place one end against the soffit, mark the bottom of the corner boards and the tops and bottoms of the windows. This is the traditional way, but many today, do not try to come even with the windows. There can always be a window that just won't work with the layout.
Years ago, tapered wood clapboards were not always the same width. They could vary by a quarter. If you snapped lines for the top edge of the clapboard you would get uneven rows. This is why the old timers started from the top and worked down. Todays clapboards are the same width so you can start from the bottom up.
Once you have marked the tops and bottoms of the doors and windows on the story pole, you have to mathematically divide the number of rows between the marks. You should try to stay close to your intended exposure for the clapboards. For example, the claps up to the bottom of the window may divide out to 4 1/16" per row, from the bottom to the top of the window may require 3 15/16". You won't see minor differences but you will notice if the claps aren't even with the window sills. After you have figured your rows, cut the top of the story pole off the width of the clapboards, 5 1/2" in most cases. This will move your marks from the bottom of the clapboard to the top. Skip this step when starting from the top down. Simply place the story pole next to the corners and transfer the marks, snap chalk lines.
I've been clapboarding close to forty years, we used to build about 35 houses per year, almost all were clapboards. There are many homes and buildings in my area that date from the 1700's with pine clapboards. Before typar was invented, we used red rosin paper for building paper. The only times I have seen major problems with claps, related to using a non-permeable paper (15# felt) and inadequate nailing (24" OC). If moisture works it's way from inside the house, out to the sheathing, and it gets trapped by foam sheathing, tar paper or another non breathing surface, it can rot the sheathing. My personal preference would be to install the claps smooth side out, nail every eight inches and caulk around windows, doors and corners.
At one time we used siding gauges. Starting at the bottom, the gauge would space each successive board to the previous one. You can't vary your rows easily with gauges and any slight discrepancies are cumulative as you go. They caused more trouble than they were worth, not to mention having one more tool to handle.
Beat it to fit Paint it to match