Installing Cedar Siding Is Easier Than you Think

[Music] Cedar tongue and groove is beautiful exterior sighting. But what if I was to tell you that the majority of people are not installing it correctly and sometimes even contractors? Well, I'll have to do my own research by talking to multiple master craftsman who know the insides and outs of these products. I'm here to show you all the lessons I learned to make sure that you don't get yourself caught in a pickle. This is my 2,000 ft A-frame cabin in the woods. And today is sighting day. Let's get into it. So, here's a little story for you. I recently got a bid for a sighting guy to come install this cedar tongue and groove sighting. And after getting all excited about it, I did have a question after playing around online to see that installation's a little bit different than traditionally. And then I sent him that same picture and I said, "Hey, are you guys going to install it like this?" And they said, "Well, we weren't planning on it, but that might not be a good place to start." And then I thought to myself, "Does he know what he's doing?" So then I decided to go a different direction and handle this myself. Now, I'm not here to dog on anybody. That guy just didn't know. And other people know this product and now I get to know this product as well. So when it comes to cedar tongue groove, traditionally what people end up doing it and they maybe borrowed from interior applications is that they nail it brad nails or whatever you have you straight to the exterior of the frame of the building. Here's the problem with it. This is an uncotated unsealed natural wood. And one thing that natural wood needs is the ability to breathe. When it comes to breathing, you have to be able to have hot and cold air to in exchange with each other. So as cold air comes, it becomes warm. It comes at the top and escapes and it cycles through. Now, how does that help? Well, it helps that whenever there's moisture built up in the back, it's able to air out. And what that does is it keeps your natural, beautiful cedar from corroding over time and turning into complete junk. First things first, we're going to start with this core vent. This is a material that you can't just buy anywhere local. In fact, I went through five different distributors. Nobody carried this. Finally got on the old Amazon and I found it. And what core event is, it's a sighting vent. And what it is is just a plastic PVC material that has perforated holes and it has this mesh over it that keeps the bugs from coming in. So, what we're going to do is we're going to nail it to the bottom here, right at the base of our OSB. We're going to nail it there. That's going to allow for the air to come in from the bottom and continue along the back of the siding while also having that mesh to keep any kind of critters and bugs from coming in the back of the cedar and causing a ruckus. The bugs. So, when it comes to installing the Corin, there's a couple different methods guys are using. Some guys are using staples, like electrical wire staplers that are going through, which is just fine. Um, you can also use exterior grade nails. That'll hold it in place as well. I just wouldn't use a gun just because this stuff is a PVC and you might just break that sucker with that nail gun. Come on. Oh, you know what I'm hitting? I'm hitting the uh metal tie downs that are coming through the concrete there. Ah, note to self. If it works, then it's not stupid, is it? Core vents installed. Now, we're going to do first strips. Now, what first strips do is they create that gap. What some of these guys are saying is the gap can be as little as 38 of an inch, but no more than/ an inch. One's too small, the other one's way too much air flow. So, you can use a couple of different products. You can use a natural wood, cut it in strips, and put it on. You can take plywood, you can take OSB, but the whole idea here is not only to create that gap, but also to make sure that these strips are attached right to the studs of the wall. When it's attached to the studs of the wall, that means anytime we start stacking our tongue and groove, we can attach them directly into the studs, keeping this thing from sagging and then falling off over time. There's a couple of ways installing these fur strips. Uh you could definitely use screws, which I think they're a lot stronger, but if you want to go a little bit faster and just add a few extra nails, uh siding nailer works just fine. Pretty quick and easy. As long as you're using appropriate uh exterior stuff, you should be fine. Here's something that I didn't consider when doing this. Every guy will recommend to install the siding tongue and groove using an actual siding gun. What does it do? It does really good job holding the pieces on. But the problem that it does is doesn't create a really good job concealing the actual nail head. So, what I mean by it is traditionally when you use brad nails, you shoot them right in the tongue and so the groove sits right over it and then you won't see anything. Moisture is not going to get in there or anything like that. The siding guns, the problem with them, just for illustration purposes, if we shot it like say as close to the center as we can, anything more than that will rip that tongue off. When you put it on, there's still a reveal. So, you would have to silicone that up and that's just an ugly look. Second method of installing them some guys are using is actual really like narrow screws like cabinet screws that have a very small head on top of them. They work great. They're actually pretty concealable. They hold really tight. The problem is is it's going to take you an eternity to actually install them all. The third best, which actually is probably the number one best solution here that I found after talking to all these guys is using a 15 gauge DA nailer. 15 gauge, that's the thickness of that nail. The DA, the D is for the head of that nail. It's shaped like a D. The A means it's an angled exterior grade nails. Here's the great thing about it. Uh, it's concealable. As you can see, I shot a bunch of them in here. And just for demonstration purposes, we'll throw in another one. It's beautiful. It's thin enough. And then on top of it, it conceals it. Well, that's a terrible example, isn't it? There we go. It conceals it perfectly. Here's the only kicker. Uh, you could still use them all, but it's helpful if you actually put two DA nails per fur strip. That'll allow for you to actually have extra binding in there. So, you're playing with essentially 30 gauge worth of steel in there. And to make it even better, shoot your nails at an angle. One at this angle, one at that angle, and allow for it to have so much more strength so this stuff doesn't start popping off like it's regular old brad nails. All right, guys. Over the past few years, we've been transforming our house with major home improvements from inside out. Well, that is why I'm excited to talk to you about the sponsors of today's video, Figure Helock. Whether you're revitalizing your home, consolidating highinterest debt, investing in education, or fueling the growth of your business, a heliloc empowers you to turn aspirations into realities. And here's how it works. As you live in your personal home and over time, it increases in value. You build equity. And a great strategy is to leverage the equity to invest in more home improvements in your personal home like a pool, a hot tub, a deck, or even a sauna. 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And right now, if you go to go.figure.com/finder rateate and you fund a loan with Figure, you will receive a $100 Lowe's gift card by using my promo code, build it 100. Now, let's get back to this video. Let's go. [Music] Your first starter row is going to include the nail both on the tongue but also on the face of it. That's to ensure that the bottom doesn't kick out and start flaring out on you. Once that's secured, you could start continuing your pattern just hitting the tongue itself. Like I said, two day nails per fur strip. And then make sure you're continue using a level cuz wonky things happen. Sometimes you can go off of like the ending of your OSB, but it's not always straight. Sometimes those guys will overlap it by, I don't know, like/ an inch onto the footing and then all of a sudden your line is all wonky on you. So, couple things to know when you're putting the window trim pieces on. Number one, have yourself a little of a backer right there. So, we have a few little strips going down there. Second thing to mind, do not conceal and put the trim directly over this little flange that's on your window. Reason why your window breaks, you need to replace it. You're going to have to strip your siding off in order to get to it. Versus here, you can cut that strip off and remove your window, change it if you need to. So, something to definitely keep in mind. And also, this backer strip is also going to act as your leverage point when you put the trim around the window, but also on the vertical size as well. This is the little sweet spot you want to get into. It's right in the middle of this little crease, but also you don't want to shoot the nails straight cuz that's going to blow this tongue off. You got to shoot them at an angle so it captures the back end of this 3/4 in thick uh tongue and groove. And that way, you have a good strong bond that ain't going nowhere. [Music] If you've watched the series when we install these windows, you already know we did all the flashing. There's all the waterproof tape right behind here. We got this flap right over that. And then we have our kickout flashing here. We'll throw one last nail in there. And then we're going to take the remainder of our waterproof flashing to cover that over. And then we'll be able to continue on getting the last piece on top. Not too shabby for just a couple hours right now. Just monkeying around here trying to climb this ladder on a slope that's not graded yet. Half the time I'm sitting on three points of contact on the ladder, which is still safe, but nothing beats four. Ah, my knife is dull. Back in business. the side of the bumpouts. They're getting a little bit tricky just because we're meeting with the A-frame of the roof. Uh we have our the same uh vent uh siding vents down below. We have our first strips going up that way. Here's the problem. There's no way of getting first strips going up the side here. And the reason why is we would have to stack so many of them for each, you know, 5-in board to actually get something to get nailed into on the side that it's almost impossible. So, we're just going to pivot it on the side. Yes, there's not going to be any air flow there, but it's a small piece. But the second thing that's most important is we also have to deal with drainage in terms of from the roof. So we got a little spacer block here just to continue this fur block to be equally spaced from the roof just cuz you know symmetry. And then second of all, we're making our own little custom flashing here where it actually holds the same exact thickness of this board. We're going to nail it across and because it's on a downward slope, anything that ever goes underneath here will catch that and kick it out and not go behind our spaced out fur strips and our beautiful cedar sighting. So, here's a little bit of a finished product on the other side. Water comes in. Flashing comes all the way up to here. You could see it right there sticking out. Comes down here. This is all siliconed down behind. Comes in there and then kicks all the water out this way. Not going behind the siding or anything. I think that'll do. I think overall installing cedar siding is not that difficult or different than traditional sighting. Again, apart from ventilating and fur strips and all that stuff, but the only part that gets a little bit more complicated is because of the gap that we're creating for airflow. It makes adding flashing a little bit more difficult because now you have all these nooks and crannies that are exposed. So then you have to seal it with extra material like a waterproof silicone or something like that to make sure that nothing trickles in there. Everything is diverted, but also no bugs are going to get in Making a lot of progress. We got the kitchen bumpout all fixed up. The way kind of teeters to the top. That's where it gets tricky. It's hard to get the nailer in there, but we started wrapping our way around the house here. Got the backside done. My favorite part is Ben came up with a cool way to wrap that beam. Remember that big glue lamp beam that we had, the ridge beam? Well, it was completely exposed. So, he's able to use soft material to bump it out. And the cool thing about it is once all this soft or fascia is painted black, that's going to get painted black and it's going to be disguised so perfectly, but most importantly, keep the moisture from getting absorbed into that freaking beam. And then we'll go. And then for all the like electrical boxes and all the vents, all these vents when you unscrew them, they have some slack that they're able to be pulled back. They have that uh insulated foam material on top of it. So you can pull them back, create your cuts, and put them on top so it looks nice and flush. However, with the electrical panel, you can't just take that sucker off. The wires are all running through it. So we got it as tight to it as possible, and then we just did a simple box line out of it. And I think it came out pretty great. Um pretty pretty happy with it. The sophets are also done on this side, which is good. They're looking it's looking real pretty. We do have to now start moving to the very front of the building where we have all the crazy triangles. [Music] we could get. So, an issue that we're running into is we got it level down below, but because it breaks up into about uh it's it's not lining up on top, basically. Long story. So, we're trying to figure out a good solution to it. make sure it gets to a tier that that's level as well cuz then we need to continue that same tier. You don't want it to be stepping up and not sitting in the tongue and groove of that cedar. Uh hopefully we can figure out a solution, but then again, we're going to have to experience that at the very top. This is funky, man. I I This is absolutely funky. You get things leveled and but it's it still screws you over [Music] somehow. We're trucking along. We have one small section left up there, but we ran out of flashing tape to get around the perimeter of that window. Um, but I don't want to skip any corners on that. So, tomorrow we're going to pick up a new roll. In the meantime, not to waste any more daylight. We got a couple more hours left. We're going to start hitting up these sophets cuz the electricians are coming tomorrow and they're going to start putting all the plugs and all the covers and all these lights. And we got to make sure that stuff is [Music] done. How sick does this look? Look at this. This is incredible. This was a huge pain in the butt. And shout out to Ben. He got employee of the week cuz he had to suffer through all the misery in that corner. Uh, and I'm glad nobody got hurt. That's all that matters. But now we're moving on to the side of the house. We got one last bit to finish off. It's this side right here. Also, as you can see, my sophet is not finished because last year when I was doing it, I was rushed by the weather. There's a bunch of snow on the deck. I couldn't do what I'm doing right now to get up here. So, this now is the time that we wrap this sucker up. Get everything on here. Got a ladder to make sure we're all nice and safe. Once that's done, we'll start handling all the little trim pieces and all the little transitions. And this sucker is going to be [Music] beautiful. The last official piece of sighting is in. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we're moving on. That was a little too aggressive. trim. All right, so the transition pieces are going to go really simple. Uh they're basically just to conceal all the exposed sections of the siding. Uh and let me show you. Let's get this damn ladder out of the way. So because we have gaps, right, everywhere. And that kind of comes with the territory. You want a little bit of wood expansion. You want a little bit of easier way to install. So we just ripped some of the remaining pieces of cedar into inch and a half material. That includes this part. We're going to do the same thing on the set material. Once all of that's done, we're then going to start moving towards the trim part. And that part's going to go relatively as simple, I think. But, uh, these triangles are going to be pain in the ass. I just carried a damn ladder. I'm already winded. I need to get back in the gym. [Music] Just our luck. We're getting rained out here, but uh we're attempting to keep the lumber dry so we could actually have time to seal it. Uh but here's the transitions that we're doing. We added a 1x3 down below. Even though we had a nice crisp cut, we wanted to conceal all the nail holes that are on the ends. And I think this creates a perfect barrier. Next thing we're doing is just classical trim on the sides here. Sandwich this together. put some uh DA nails right to join the previous uh board that's trim on the side. Same thing on the side. Modest uh header. Nothing to brag home about. But let me show you the front door. The front door looks killer. I am crazy about how this light fixture matches the roof with all the natural cedar tones in here. This looks so I want to say contemporary, but also it's warm. So, I don't I don't know. I don't know the design lingo. If you know, let me know. But look how clean these cuts Ben just knocked out. That's freaking phenomenal. But let me also wrap up the front to you or the front of the building. We got all of our filler pieces on both left and right hand side of the set all in. Cleaned everything up nicely. Now our only problem is we can't we can use a traditional 3 and 1/2 in trim on the sides here. But this span is about 8 in and it doesn't make sense to have two 4 in in there or rip them even smaller. So because we're running out of lumber already and I got to get another hole tomorrow. Uh I think I'm going to see if they can have 8in wide span. That way we can just run a straight board across, especially down the middle here to kind of create this like tie-in crosssection here. It'll look so much cleaner as long as we have the appropriate size wood. Now, I am going to get all the rest of the stuff. Ben and I are going to knock out all the the window trim, get all the triangles dead, nuts, and perfect. And then I will show you the beautiful reveal that I swear it doesn't even do it justice when you stand this close. You have to get down on that road and look at it. And man, this thing looks sick. I'll show you this in a bit. What we do here is go back back back back back. [Music] Boy oh boy did I overestimate…