So I Thought - Why Not?
We have old, cheap, poorly applied vinyl siding on the house. I hate it. No matter what we do to the house, it only looks as good as the siding - and that's best viewed at night. "Eventually" (god, who knows when) I want to re-side the house, better siding, maybe even a different color. In the meantime, and after putting new windows in the porch last summer, I just wanted the back porch to look better, right now. The front porch is shingled, so I thought - why not? Besides, shingles are pretty inexpensive.Okay, I didn't exactly get a "before" picture, but at least this time I took one pretty early on in the project!
After removing the old, cheap vinyl siding, I found old, cheap, very thin insulation. Ugh, I bet the whole house is "insulated" with this stuff!
It's always a scary proposition when you start digging around an old house, you just never know what's under there. Well, in this case it was clapboard. Old, broken, weak clapboard.
I decided not to remove the clapboard, after all - you just never know what's under there! So I covered the clapboard with 1/2" plywood.
I'm always paranoid about wood and water mixing. So I Googled "applying cedar shingles" and got the idea to cover the plywood with 30 W tar paper...
See that horizontal board? I got the idea on Youtube...Hang the board, level it and installing each course of shingles becomes quicker, easier and leveler (I know, I know). Beat the heck out of chalk lines!
That's it (for now). Still have to decide on a stain color. I don't think I would like the gray "weathered" look, so - what color? I'm thinking "coffee", but I don't make all the decisions!