Bill:
When we install the trim over, we put the siding behind it, put the trim on top of it, and there is no caulking joint here. I’m Bill with Advanced Home Exteriors. We’re here down in Wharton County today to talk about exterior sheeting and exterior wall siding. One of the questions that a lot of customers ask is, “How are we going to install the corner trim and window and door trim on the house?” A lot of that is left to how we find the house in its original condition. This customer has decided to add exterior sheeting to the walls, and we’re going to go ahead and put the sheeting on. We’re going to wrap it with house wrap around the corner so that it’s a watertight membrane. We’ll put the siding on and then we’ll finish by attaching the corner trim on top of the siding.
So here you’ll see a finished corner of the house. One of the issues that we always run across is dealing with what we’re faced with when we show up. In this instance, the homeowner doesn’t want to change the front siding on the house. So originally the house was installed, the siding was installed with the trim over, which makes sense to continue that same pattern here and install the trim over the siding. We follow it around the corner. We’ll run the siding all the way to the corner, and then we’ll put the trim on top of it. It allows us to put lots of nails into the trim and the siding to hold it flush and flat against the house.
The other option is to put the siding on first and then… I mean, put the trim on first and then butt the siding to it. You have to leave an eighth of an inch gap, which means that you have to add caulking to here. As the house continues to move over the years, the siding will move horizontally like this, and this caulking has a tendency to want to crack and fail. When we install the trim over, we put the siding behind it, put the trim on top of it, and there is no caulking joint here to fail. Continuing with our theme about finding and working around what we’re faced with, when we get to the corner here, you can see it in the window. We put the trim over the siding, then we run against an inside corner, which preludes us from having to butt the siding to the trim.
Then we’re faced with the existing garage door framing, which also precludes us to have to put the trim on first and then butt the two siding in between there. The thing that we run across constantly is that working on an older house and not framing it from new, is that we’re tied into the existing framing. So whatever this depth of this wall is, and this garage door jamb is thicker, if we put the siding on first and then covered it with the trim, it would stick out way too far, and you would have an exposed siding edge here, which we do not want.
