Repair Trim Rot (Skirt Board and Corner Board)

visit the onus carpenter comm and get your home related questions answered by a trade expert hi there I'm Ethan with the honest carpenter comm in this video I'm gonna show you how to repair some exterior trim specifically the skirt board made the siding and a little bit of the corner board next to it what I'm going to do in this repair is fix this damage that we got right down in the lower corner behind this downspout here there was a little bit of rot and then I think a dog or an animal got at it and clawed at all this material in tore a lot of it loose so I'm actually going to cut back some of the skirt board maybe four feet away I'm not gonna replace the full 16 foot run which goes all the way down there instead I'm gonna truncate it and I'm gonna replace it with a little custom piece it comes right up to the corner board for the corner board itself I'm gonna do something similar I'm kind of control line right here and replace the bottom foot with treated wood that has been dried out and then I'll be able to paint it up and with matching paint and matching the exterior paint and it should all blend in pretty seamlessly some people would want to rather replace the whole corner board but that would involve a lot more repainting and caulk work here and the client opted for the smaller repair I use a couple tricks that really make these notches blend in so I'll show those in this video I'm gonna narrate this segment of the video because it's just a little easier to do that way so to begin the repair I use a speed square and a pencil to mark a perpendicular line on the face and the trim that I'm replacing I then switch over to an oscillating multi-tool with the wood blade in it to make the cut through that line I start by just carefully edging the line with the blade and then I begin to sweep the blade up and down that clears dust out of the cut and I can begin to move this all deeper into the material that I'm cutting there when you punch all the way through the back it can be good to check your line again with the square just to make sure that you kept a perpendicular cut going after that I switch over to a utility knife and I cut any caulk lines that are between the piece I'm replacing and the pieces around it in this case it's the underside of the drip edge when that's done I repeat the same problem says for the corner board the lower portion of it again sweeping the blades side-to-side after I make a score line and clearing dust out of the cut and when I have both my cuts made I can begin to pry them out I'm using a five in one here which is a painters tool and I'm just very gently pulling the board lightly away from the wall and I'm listening for any stress in the lumber or the pieces around it I don't want to pop something else off on accident when that's partially pulled out I go ahead and tackle the corner board a little bit too you can see how deteriorated it is so I actually switch over to the other side there I'm able to get fully behind the piece and pry it out in one big chunk that's always ideal but again I do this really gently so that I don't mess up siding drip edge gutter or anything else and the corner piece is off I switch back over to the skirt board and begin to pry it off with a claw hammer again I'm just doing this really gently and when I get it pulled out just a little bit sometimes you can hit the board with your hammer and it'll pop out nails that are partially pried you can pull them with the claw and here you see the thing came pretty much free and you have all these Brad's sticking out the back I'll go ahead and bend those down I don't want to step on them I don't want anybody else stepping on we're catching their hand on them so why do they pull them out or bend them down before I even toss this thing aside then I pull the nails in any of the trim that's still on the wall I just do that with the nail puller because these nails will prevent your new piece from sitting flush so I just take a few of them out where they stayed inside that trim after that I take a precaution against further rot by sealing the endgrain that I exposed when I made the plunge cut in this case I'm using a silicon silicon eyes latex acrylic caulk to just basically fill up that endgrain and should any water try to get in there again this will protect the endgrain from sucking it up I also do it on the underside of the corner board where I made the cut just rub it in with my finger this goes a long way to helping prevent any future rot and I touch up other places that look like they absorb a little moisture but didn't quite get over to rot when that's done I pull the measurement for my replacement piece in this case I just hook onto the end of the drip cap and draw the tape out and I sight down the blade and I pulled something here like 53 and 7/8 for the measurement which I then transfer over to my new pint rim replacement board and I make the mark with a little V what we call it crows foot and I want to cut it at the point of that V it's how you get a more precise cut when the piece is ready I flip it over and I take another water protection step here that's called back priming you can see I've marked the back side of the board and what I do is I actually use a paint plus primer to paint the back side of the board and this way when I melt the board in place if water ever gets trapped behind it it's going to have a harder time rotting the board out because this layer of paint and primer is going to protect that that side of the board kind of like a skin and it's something that I do with all of my trim replacement pieces I also do the top and bottom edge and I especially focus on the end grain because that's where wood takes in and absorbs the most water because of the cellular structure of wood when it comes out of a tree when it's background I've give it just a minute to dry then I take it and test fit it in place here I just feel the end with my fingers and make sure it wants to sit flush with the other piece if it does I go ahead and shoot it on with a couple galvanized Brad's I don't go crazy yet I'm gonna keep feeling the board and make sure it's tied up against everything else if it is then I'll begin to shoot and something kind of like a continuous w pattern again with 2-inch galvanized Brad nails you you don't have to put a ton in the the piece doesn't you only want to go in and you go anywhere so I put it maybe on between 12 and 15 of them and then I repeat the measurement process for the corner board i hook on to the bottom of my skirt board pull up to the underside of the piece that we cut site down the blade and again get something you know like 9 and 7/8 here and corner boards are a little bit thicker there's 1 inch thick so I tend to use deck board um treated deck board that I've given a little bit of time to dry and I rip it to the width that I need it's already the thickness that I want because deck board is an inch thick put my crows foot on at my mark cut it and this you don't even need a back prime since its treated it's not going to rot I just move it into place test fit it with my eye and if it looks good I go ahead and shoot it on as well and then I can begin to prep for painting both pieces I caulk all the seams caulk the underside of the drip cap and then I fill in the nail heads normally it's not this messy but doing it with one hand can be a little difficult you just rub it in a little circular pattern it'll fill them in and when it has just a little bit of time to dry get your orbital palm sander with some 180 grit and hit the seams between the two pieces that you want to run together also touch up the edge a little bit you don't want to leave really sharp corners on replacement trim because it won't hold paint as well so here you can see I'm doing the seam between the two pieces of skirt board and sanding it down flush and I'm gonna hit all the little caulking spots over the nail heads as well there's just to kind of dress the board it's also going to make it paint better because it's going to give the board what we call a little bit of tooth it gives it a texture that's really good for paint to hold on to and then I always use paint plus primer and I just start coating our two new pieces and I make sure that my paint strokes also overlap the seams to the old pieces as well so you're creating a continuous continuous layer of paint across both surfaces that's the wrap-up on the skirt board and cooler on board trim repair there try the gutter out I'm going to put that back in just a second but you can see I get now to really good coats of paint on you can just barely see the thin line where I little joint and scene repair there and as he looked down the board other than the paint line where the new and old paint meet you really can't tell why spliced in that new board which is exactly what I wanted it's about halfway down that run but I continued on to touch up a couple other spots so that came out real well just need some time to dry up and nobody who comes around this side of the house is probably ever gonna notice that repair happen right here and it's protected against any water penetration that could happen down the line so I feel like that's a good job we're now offering live video consultations and phone consultations to homeowners nationwide to get your most important hunting related questions answered by trade expert just visit the honest Corp Norcom

Channel: The Honest Carpenter

Views: 297,559

Keywords: trim rot, trim, trim boards, rotted trim, rotten trim, casing, woodrot, wood rot, trimrot, rotted wood, house, house rot, rot repair, repair rot, the honest carpenter, do it yourself

Id: pqUXm_R-t-U

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2019