It was one of those nice February days when walking around a neighborhood is a real joy, especially Portland’s historic West Hills neighborhood. We were going around meeting neighbors of one of our recently completed projects. We had taken an older home with very nice old growth cedar siding and replaced it with a narrower lap siding. The house went from a 10- inch reveal to a 5-inch reveal. (The “reveal” is the amount of siding exposed to the weather. It also makes a big difference in changing the look of your home.) We used smooth faced cement siding called Hardi-Plank. That and a lot of other neat stuff made this house unique in the neighborhood. Our client’s neighbor, Bill McClennan, had noticed the change and he gave us a “well done boys!” congrats.
My son and I really liked Bill from his handshake. Our intent was to just meet the neighbors and leave a business card for future help in any of their exterior home projects. Bill told us about his ongoing re-siding project. Time, along with Oregon’s weather had worn out his cedar shingle siding. His current focus was the southwest walls, what we call the “weather walls.” This type and kind of siding is one of the most expensive sidings that you can put on a home, about $1,600-1,800.00 for every 10×10 area. In the remodeling world, an area of that size is called a square.
Bill put us on stand-by, just in case he couldn’t complete the task as he is getting up in age. But, before we left, he had something he wanted me to see. We went into his garage and he showed me a siding shingle that had given its life protecting Bill’s home for 42 years! As you look closely at the siding shingle Bill is proudly holding, you will notice the bottom seven inches are almost completely gone. The next seven inches is the backup row for the exposed row that would be in front of it as it sits on the wall. That bottom edge started out ¼ inch thick before Portland’s wind, rain, sleet and snow whittled it down to nothing.
Some say that a picture is worth a 1,000 words, and in this case Bill’s snapshot stands as a reminder to the rest of the Portland homeowners: Always check the two weather walls on your home, as they will wear out 2-3 times faster than expected.
