How To Install Vinyl Siding On Your House

hi Shannon here from house improvements calm and we've been getting lots of comments on our other videos asking about doing a vinyl siding installation video so today that's what we're going to do for you we're going to go right through all the steps of setting yourself up getting all the trim pieces put onto the round windows corners all that stuff getting your starter strip on cutting this the siding properly cutting around windows and obstacles and of course nailing it on so with vinyl siding you've got lots of accessories you're going to have outside corners that go on you're going to have inside corners as well that go on anywhere where there's an inside corner like this you're going to have a channel and it's called that obviously because of the shape this this will go around windows doors any other kind of obstacles that are protruding from the wall that you need to you know stop the siding at it'll also go up underneath the soften soffit of your house the eve of your house to make that transition another item that you may need is a starter strip these are obviously just samples I'm showing you they come in 10-foot lengths but this is the starter strip bottom of the siding when this is on the wall would clip right into the to this groove here and that's what starts you out and holds the bottom row of your siding from flopping in the wind so this is this piece here would be once you had all your corners and trims on this would be your next step figure out where your bottom row siding it's going to be measure this distance get a nice level line snapped along the wall and then install this to that line using these slotted holes you'll notice in all the accessories and the siding as well this is just a sample piece of the siding we're using today that they've all got a slotted nailing pin in them the reason for that is with the vinyl products you do not want to nail them right down tight you want to leave them so they've got a little bit of flop to them and this allows expansion and contraction of the materials they can move a little bit as the expander protract with the Sun cold so you'll see that in all of them you want to try to nail near the Centers of these slots as you can see so that you know it can freely slide each way as it needs to move it's very important if you especially on the siding itself if you don't do that you end up the siding buckling and warping and generally not looking very good but if it is allowed to move like it's supposed to it stays generally nice and flat and straight and ends up being quite a nice finish one of the other things that I'll show you as we get going with the siding itself is because it comes in 12 foot lengths and you'll be cutting into custom lengths as well you're going to have a few overlap joints and you need to pay particular attention to which way you're overlapping those joints because when they just one side when they're lapped one direction they're very noticeable as you can see there but now if we lap this the other way they're not nearly as noticeable when you're looking down the wall but we'll show you better that that instance when it's on the wall it's easier to show you so we showed you the accessories we've actually already pre-installed the accessories around the building really all you need is a pair of aviation snips to cut this product so with your corners and not you're just budding up tight to your soffit or whatever might be up top running it down I like to hang mine about a quarter-inch below where the siding is going to actually be I just find it usually looks a little better all my G channels are cut around the windows as you can see in the picture and yeah so basically we've got our accessories on this case here what we're doing we do not need a starter strip because we're mat trying to match up to an elevation on another part of this house so we've actually had to start with a cut piece of siding for the first row so we've started with a J channel on the bottom which you'll see as we get into the video and really not a lot of different things to talk about there but we will cover it when we get to it so the next step I'm going to do is show you that we've snapped a line to get our top of our elevation of our first row siding we're going to measure from this line down into the J Channel and then our first piece okay so I've actually taken some trim off some J trim off this one window just to give you a demonstration on how to cut it and apply it because I had already had it done before I started the video so I just pulled these off so I can re-expand it basically the first thing to do with your windows and end your doors really for that matter is you need to put a drip cap reen drip cap on the very top up here that's this piece now to measure that basically you want to measure the width your window outside outside okay then whatever width your G channel is you want to add that on each end of that measurement so in this case my window measure is 36 and J front lip measures an inch so I'm going to cut my drip cap at 38 inches okay so that it fully extends over top the jeans when you're done so that's what I did I cut it two inches wider than the window in this case and used the special little tool which puts this funny notch in it here right back against the back corner I'll show you that scrap piece here in a minute I nailed that on centered on the window then I've got to determine the length of the J channel that goes along the side piece here so basically all I need to do is measure from the very top of the window or the bottom of that drip cap we just put on to the bottom of the window which is 48 inches in this case I want to add one inch which is the width of the J channel area the J channel okay so I'm going to have my cup piece at 49 inches this is the piece I took off already okay so it's a square cut on the top pretty much square let me trust that a little bit so square cut on the top that butts into the bottom of that drift cap okay so nothing more to do on that end on this other end what I did is I snip the front face at a 45 degree angle just for looks just for cosmetics so this is cut at a 45 degree angle I also used this tool to knock that in basically what that tool does here is just a scrap piece of j.chan stick this tool in there all the way as far in as it will go and you can do a couple different things with this if you only squeeze it so far it gives you this nice little tab right like that if you pushed it in all the way it squeezed all the way it'll actually cut that right over there and that is one inch so that's the same depth as your teacher okay so that was a strap so that's that's what I've done here is I've only pushed partway so that I get this little tab here okay so that's our side piece so then I would apply it to the wall I push it up tight to the bottom of my drip cap it fold this little tab around the bottom edge of the window stick a few nails and I'm kind of pushing the G tight against the window frame again you don't want to nail it super tight you want it to have a little bit of nailing about every third hole one more up top a slots in there and it's all cut ready for the bottom piece now the bottom piece of jade channel same idea as I did on the drip cap I measure the width of the window adds an inch on each end for the width of the je and that gets me my length for my J channel okay so I cut that then I took my fancy dancy knockers here which you can buy for about 20 bucks 25 bucks and on this bottom piece I actually went in clip that right out of there so you can see I have an actual hole in both ends okay I've also already put on my J on the far side and it's the same it's got the 45 degree angle cut on it so now I'm going to install the bottom piece of G those little tabs I fold it under I want them inside of this J not between the J and the window so just tuck them inside there again fold them up and you can see how my J extended square underneath the side piece but because I cut the side on a 45 it gives it a nice mitered appearance it just looks nicer you can't leave these just straight 90 degree cuts but this just dresses it up a little bit so now the same thing is when I do it on the side I just want to push up tight against the window nail it semi news and the J's all this would basically apply to anything a door obviously you're not going to have the bottom J channel on it in most cases but you would have a drip cap and the two side pieces and this is where the siding comes into so that you can hide that cut and the space that you've got to leave around there so in this case you can see that we're trying to match up to an existing siding elevation on this side so we're using a J channel because we've got to cut our first rope and so I figured out where where this point here is around the corner we've snapped a chalk line level straight across the building and that will be the very top of our siding so now I can measure from that line down into here and I'm going to subtract 1/4 inch to allow for expansion so nothing's binding and I'm going to cut my first strip of siding to that height okay so I've determined that what I need there is 5 and 3/4 so I've got my length of siding I'm going to flip it over lay it on my bench here and Mark I marked a line all the way across this piece because we need the full length and I'm going to simply take my snap off Olfa blade knife and I'm going to cut a score line right across right at that mark and once I get it done I don't have to cut right through as long as I get a good half decent score I can wiggle it a few times and it'll just snap off so I'm just going to quickly cut that it cuts pretty easy long as you're not working with this when it's you know five below or something it does cut fairly good so I'm just making a nice score mark all the way across and I'm just going to simply pick this up start to one end get the bend just like that so now this is the piece I want this is the piece we're going to start out with on the wall but you notice with now what we've got is we're in the wide space of the siding on the back this is going to want to flap inside that j-channel so in order to kind of stop that I'm going to take the piece I cut off and you can see it's got a thick edge here I'm going to split this in half and I'm going to use this in behind there just to stop that clapping so I'm again I'm just gonna roughly sport downs full length leaving it a couple inches wide snap it apart once we move out to the wall I'll show you exactly wearing that put okay so you end up using a lot of these pieces you cut off for things like this so I'm going to take this all over the wall and we'll show you how it goes on okay so now this spacer piece that I've cut I'm just going to drop that simply into the J channel LIXIL so I've got that in there that's making this space in here a lot tighter so that when I drop my vinyl siding in in front of it it's not as much rattling if I didn't have it in there I didn't have it in there you can see how that just flops like baby we use this thing behind there just to take up some space okay so I've got got my first piece sitting down into the J channel and my next step is to get it positioned properly and nail it pulling it up or pushing it down to the line that I've got marked there very important as well any time you're putting siding inside of a jail or any other kind of trim push it in tight and then pull it back about a quarter inch to 3/8 you need that room around everything it can't be tight up against any obstruction so I pushed it tight I'm going to pull it back very simple we just simply use roofing nails with the large flat head appropriate length for what you're nailing into here we're nailing straight into the plywood and studs so I don't need to be super long I've got inch and a quarter 's here if we had styrofoam on the outside of these walls then we may need to use two or three inch roofing nails in order to get back into the wood it's preferred if you can hit the studs with your nailing so generally what I do once I found the studs I'll put a plumb line up on the building wrap just marked with a marker and then I know where those studs are all the time and try to get as many of those nails into those studs as I can you have a few that are only into the plywood that's alright but do try to get what you can into the studs to firmly fastened it so I've got that positioned I'm going to simply start out I'm just lining this up with my chalk line I've got the nail in the center of the hole I've got it started I just want to put it in like that just so it's loose and the siding would actually still slide if it needed to in there so we've got our bottom row all on there nailed and ready to go so I'm gonna put on an already pre-cut piece I've cut this one it's not a full length because we're trying to stagger the joints that we have so simply what happens is this piece we've got nailed acts as a starter for each subsequent row so your your next piece is going to hook into the bottom of that chunk there you just pick it up against the wall lift it up and we see snaps into that top track on the PC just nail then we need to slide it down to our corner again I pushed it over tight I'm going to bring it back a quarter-inch and we've got it in position now depending on your temperature or your weather at the time of installing you know if you're in a 40-degree day and you're installing this stuff it's going to be kind of expanded already so you don't want to stretch it or anything like that while you're putting nails in today we're at about 20 degrees Celsius just a nice day actually for doing this it's not real hot what I do once I've got it snapped in there I just simply hook hook my finger underneath this lip pull it up so I know that it's just snug I'm not I'm not forcing and I'm not stretching the heck out of it I'm just pulling it up snug with my finger and it's important to try to be consistent on the tension that you're putting on it all the way along otherwise you'll get it all wavy up and down it's that it can be difficult when two different people are nailing it as well because one person's pulling harder than the other and you end up with probably a lot of time to like one person doing all the mailing in that way it's all being consistently done by them so I've got my first piece of my second rope started here I'm going to nail it off and then we're going to talk about the overlap and the joint and we've also got an obstacle to cut around so I've got this small scrap piece of siding I just want to show you the factory cuts that come on these panels and how they work together at the overlaps so you can see the piece that we put on here I've got the factory end to this side it's got the top cut back a little bit and there's actually a slot like this on the bottom edge as well and the reason for that is these need to overlap each other and it does two things it gives you a guide on how far it overlap and it just speeds you up because you don't have to cut all this stuff off there so when when I go to put our next piece on but it snaps in just like I showed you there a minute ago and basically the end of this comes the edge there or even if you're a little bit tucked under it's alright you don't want to be tight like this because you don't have as much room for it to move you want to have at least an inch in between here but yet you want to have at least an inch of overlap on the two panels as well to help prevent as much water and rain and zip a tree behind there so you will always want to put factory edges to factory edges as much as possible so I try to cut my pieces that way so I don't have to recut it see this is a cut end that we've cut on the saw and you can see how everything's flush here now I could make this into a what I call a factory in by snipping this out snipping along there but it just takes time they give every full length has both ends done just like this so if you plan your job out and always cut your ends that are budding into things instead of the ends that are overlapping it's going to save you a lot of hassle the other thing is they've got a nice clean cut everything looks great so that's that's how the overlaps work I'm going to set this piece out of the way our next actual piece that we're going to install ends up being a full length the siding and we've got a couple things going on we've got the overlap here which we just discussed we've also got a dryer vent intrusion from the wall you can get a lot of these light boxes and vents and different accessories written cover snaps right off you can set it to the side get your siding all fit around there and slide this back over so that if it happens to end up in the middle of the sheet yarn having just slip the sheet get it around there you can easily slip it over and then pop that back so when you're going to measure around a protrusion like this what you want to do is I but my tape measure right into this factory top lip rate like shot now this is this isn't a rectangle it's got a bit of an angle on it so we've got a few marks to transfer here but I'm measuring exactly from that point 26 and 3/4 to this corner but now remember we want to leave 1/4 to 3/8 of a space all the way around this we don't want the siding to hit that so I've got to subtract that off of there I'm going to transfer that measurement right down to my siding so I'm going to hook right on the end because that's where my end is going to be is up there 26 and 3/4 it was up there so I'm going to go 26 and 1/2 and I'm just going to put a little pencil mark now the same the change up here is this this is further over than this corner is is about three-quarters of an inch so I'm just going to make that adjustment in my head down here transfer that mark and you do the same thing for all my corners now remember though on these corners here because I'm measuring this direction I'm not subtracting this time I'm going to add so I end up with my space in here so this is measuring 31 and 3/8 but I want to make it thirty one and five-eighths okay so I'm going to use a straightedge get that all marked out on my siding and I'm going to cut that out with snips you could use an angle grinder with a thin cutting blade in it as well if you have one snips or you know whatever you've basically got on you I'm going to cut that out then we should be able to bring it back and snap it right into place and nail it up I forgot to tell you how to get the height up from the bottom so I'm going to hook my tape on here because this is the actual where the bottom of my new piece will be I'm just going to simply measure up I'm going to deduct a quarter off of that measurement for the bottom so I'm going to go to for a corner and I'm going to add a quarter on the top okay now I'm going to take it to the table and make my cuts and I'll come back and put it on I've got it all marked out on my piece here using the reference points that I measured over at the wall it ends up being right in the top edge of the siding so I can actually snip this chunk right out it's not in the center of the siding just simply cut along your line now this you could turn in there and cut that with the snips I'm going to cut it with my knife just watch it doesn't follow the green of the siding that's going to stamp in there you may get a wonky line make a couple little slashes in it pull it's gone so now I can take it back to the wall it should fit right around my vent and get it all into place with your overlap and everything and nail it up so we've gone ahead and and done these couple of rows to get around this vent now I'm just simply going to slide this on that's good to go but it's a nice clean look okay so we've got three or four rows on now I'm just going to show you how to get the length we've got a full piece here we've got our factory cut end I'm going to show you how to measure this next piece in this role we're going all the way down to the corner so I'm going to stick the end of my tape right tight into the corner channel sometimes you may need somebody to hold it left tough got it there and I'm going to measure rate to this thick lip here at the top of the top of the last rule we put on I've got 111 and 5/8 I'm going to cut my piece exactly to that and then once we pop it into place again I go tie it into the corner pull it out my quarter inch and we're good so I'm going to show you how to cut that you can cut it with the snips because it's just a straight cut I'm going to show you how to cut it on a sliding compound saw so if you have access to one we definitely speed you up so now remembering that we want our factory end to the right-hand end okay so that's what I'm going to do I'm going to measure hooking on the right hand in I'm going to 111 and 5/8 just put a little pencil tick here I'm going to lay the siding on the bench here putting the in this case some sidings cut differently this one seems to cut better with the bottom of the panel against the fence so that's what I'm trying to do all the time so I've got a tight against the pan or against the fence I'm just going to bring the blade down line up to my mark lift the blade back up before I start I don't want to cut my finger off make sure my hands are back I'm going to start the saw plunge down into the siding and then I'm going to pull it the head slowly until I've cut right through the hole makes a nice clean straight cut no chipping no crap flying everywhere you should have safety glasses on I don't you want about a anywhere from a fifty to an 80 tooth bleed in your saw you don't want any fewer than that you're gonna have trouble there's no need to be any more than anything I've got a 50 or 60 in there right now it works just fine and you'll get a lot of cuts out of that blade doing this so I've made a nice clean cut this cut this end that I've cut is going into the corner channel that we've got on the wall and that's good the other side will just be the overlap so we've got it all cut up snap it into place I'm pushing it all the way tight that way bring it back a quarter-inch this way check my overlap it's good I'm happy I'm good to nail okay so we're not going to be able to get all the way to the top to the under edge of the soffit today so I'm just going to show you underneath one of these windows what you would do when you get up there so we'll pretend this is our last full course of siding before the soffit begins you can see we haven't quite made it here's the J channel that would be running underneath the soffit so we've got this odd width of piece here that isn't a full piece but it needs to be still filled in and finished obviously so you're going to hook your tape on the bottom here measure up tight into the top of the J and subtract 1/4 inch then you're going to cut your length however long you need it in this case I'm just using a small piece you're going to cut your length off at that height so that it's ready to go in there then because where I've cut it ends up being in the narrow part of the siding again it's not over here where the siding sticks out from the wall I need to add one more piece of trim up into this G channel to hold it properly and that's called an under sill trim so it's it's like a J channel but just really a tight fit so this would go up inside here secure it with a with the nails just as you would any other piece just going to stick a couple in because I'm taking this out after this would be the same procedure under a window as well so if you're siding ends up the same way you would use the same type of thing okay so we've got our piece imaginary piece cut to go up underneath the soffit I've got this special tool which is going to puncture a hole along the top edge and give it a thing that catches inside of that channel we just so I'm going to punch those little notches in about every six or eight inches with the tool so now when I stick this in here I want to hook it underneath my last raw siding but I also want to get this up in that under solution we just put on and you'll hear click right into the lip on that under sill trim and it just locks right in so the wind can't pull it out if if we would have had to cut and say say work Sarah cut was way down here so we're in the wide part of the siding going up in the G we could do the same trick we did down below on that very first piece of siding that we did use remember we used a cut off chunk to shim basically work as a shim in behind here so we've cut our siding off still snip it with these this little tool this is like 15 bucks at Home Depot no big deal you can probably find it on eBay when somebody's done their sucking job they're getting rid of it so we'd clip it just like we did this one we don't need the under sill we would actually have our scrap piece nailed up in there to take up some space but same idea slide it up in there this little clip would actually clip on the back of the J channel just like it did that under sill trim once you get doing it yourself to see exactly what I mean but you it is nice to use these you could if you wanted and you didn't want to buy those little pliers you could put a little bead of silicone in the bottom lip there slide it up into place and I want silicone dries it would probably stay there probably work just as well but I have the tool so I clipped it and I prefer to do it that way okay so that would do for any under window anywhere where your you've got that same type of situation okay so we've gone through all the steps I think is necessary to know for installing vinyl siding we didn't get done our project here today but we tried to get through everything that you're going to need to know one of the other things that I touched on earlier in the video was thinking about which way your overlaps are going to go your joints because they're much more visible than from one direction than the other so what I usually try to consider when I'm doing a house with the siding is where most people going to be standing looking at that wall so that I can put the joints facing the other way so if it's the driveways to the left-hand side of the house I'll usually have my joints so that they look nice from the driveway because that's where most people are going to create your own walk up to your front door it's not uncoordinated to every wall might have the joints going a different direction so your doors in the center of the house you might have the joints so they look good from both sides if you're standing at the door so we'll just consider that and consider that before you get going we touched on everything else we touched on the j-channel the drip cap corners all that stuff so I think I think you're going to be well set to to get your project underway pretty much all manufacturers have the same basic principles in their vinyl siding with the slots their trims and everything are all very similar so it shouldn't matter for manufacturer to manufacturer of vinyl siding as far as what I've shown you here today to be able to implement it for any type we show you some of the simple tools you can use and we've also talked about using you know power saws if you've got that available quite simply tin snips really will do anything you see me here to do today so hopefully the video helped you on a project and if it does let other people know and you can check that video out this video out and all our other ones on our youtube channel at house improvements calm and on the website and post important stuff

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 3,043,915

Keywords: diy, home, improvement, house, improvements, design, exterior, siding, stucco, installation, construction, Do It Yourself, Repair, vinyl, plastic, low maintenance, low cost, cost effective

Id: ZKpd1i2p9hY

Length: 33min 48sec (2028 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 13 2011