Wood Siding Restoration

Clapboard, Shiplap and the Trim That Frames It

Santa Monica reads as a stucco town from the sidewalk, but a good share of what is behind that stucco, and a good share of what was never stuccoed at all, is wood. Horizontal clapboard on the older Ocean Park cottages, shiplap on the sheds and rear elevations, board and batten on garages and the odd studio addition, and everywhere the trim that finishes it: corner boards, water table, frieze, rake, fascia and the casing around every opening.

That wood is the reason we exist as a business, and it is also the reason exterior painting here is not a two day job. The coating is a week of the schedule. The rest of it is finding out where the water has been going.

Where a Wood Exterior Actually Fails

It is almost never the middle of a board. Water gets in at end grain, at horizontal surfaces and at joints somebody sealed shut, and it stays because the marine layer will not let anything dry out overnight.

The recurring list on this housing stock looks like this. Butt joints between siding runs, where the end grain was primed on the day it was installed and never since. The bottom edge of the lowest course, which is the drip line for the entire wall. Corner board miters that have opened a few millimeters and now funnel water behind the boards. Window sills, and specifically the horns that project past the casing, where paint sits on top of a surface that is wet from beneath. And anywhere a previous crew ran a bead of caulk across a joint that was designed to shed and drain, which converts a working detail into a sponge.

We probe all of that with an awl before we quote. A sound board takes the point about a millimeter and stops. Punky wood swallows it. That five minute check is the difference between a real number and an optimistic one.

The Repair Before the Paint

Where the fibers are still present but soft we consolidate with a penetrating epoxy and rebuild the profile with a two part filler, which holds because it is bonded into sound material rather than sitting on it. Where the fibers are gone we cut the section out square and let in a matched dutchman, primed on all six faces before it goes in. Cedar or fir depending on what the run is.

Open joints get reworked rather than smeared. Vertical joints that should be tight are caulked with an elastomeric sealant after both faces are primed, because caulk on bare wood fails at the substrate. Horizontal drainage joints are left open on purpose, and we will explain that on site because it looks like an oversight and is the opposite.

Prep for a Coastal Wall

Salt is the part that gets skipped. Deposits build on the walls that face the water and the prevailing wind, and sanding a salted surface grinds the salt into the wood where the new film will sit on top of it and lift. So the wall is washed and rinsed clean first, then given a day, then sanded.

Failing paint comes back to a sound edge and gets feathered so the transition is not a visible shelf under the new coats. Bare wood is spot primed the same day it is exposed, with an exterior bonding or stain blocking primer chosen for what is under it, tannin bleed from old redwood and cedar being a real problem here rather than a theoretical one.

Then two coats of a hundred percent acrylic exterior finish, brushed and back brushed on the trim, worked in the afternoon once the surface has come up above the dew point. The south and west elevations take the sun and the wind together and they will always age faster than the sheltered sides, so we say what cycle to expect rather than implying the whole building will hold the same.

Call (424) 305-7634 for a survey of your exterior.