The Job

Our house was built in 1949.  Roughly 60 years later, an inexperienced painting crew wreaked havoc on the exterior surface of the original cedar siding while attempting to deal with severely blistering paint.

Damaged cedar siding.

The house needs to be resided but we can't bring ourselves to dispose of 1500 linear feet of 10" wide clear cedar lap siding.  The plan is to remove the siding, flip it over to expose the unfinished side, and put it back on the house. 

Backside of cedar board pulled from the garage.

We decided to document this project because of the lack of available information about reusing cedar siding in this manner.  Coop15, a Seattle-based architecture firm, does mention having done this on their blog and they were kind enough to talk to me about their project.

Front of the house showing epoxy applied in an attempt to conceal sanding marks.

There are a lot of decisions to make in every phase, from deconstruction to refinishing to reconstruction.  Over the next couple of months we will be writing about the process.