# Forum Home Renovation Cladding  Grant's 1950's WB wall re-cladding

## Grunt_au

Hi everyone 
The latest chapter in my on going repair (South east Melbourne) involved replacing the weatherboards on the bathroom outside wall. The wall is south facing, and as there is a deck above it it has no eave. This means it gets wet and stays wet... After 50+ years most of the boards are soft at the edges. It has been repaired before but the boards were not painted properly and have rotted again. I am determined to do it properly this time. 
First I removed the trim to see the damage. I was going to repair again but when I realised more than half the boards were rotten I decided to do the lot.
As you can see, the top 4 boards are original, below that have been replaced before, poorly.   
Next is the FUN part - demolition!
The window frame is OK, and the meter box I replaced earlier. Notice above the window is the old vent. I have decided to cover them up as we now have evap cooling in the house and we run it on fan only a  lot. I cant see any condensation building up in the house now.   
As soon as I finished removing the cladding - Bloody Rain. Who would have expected rain in Melbourne in May?
I built a shelter, the kids thought I was camping! Although, lighting a fire crossed my mind, Mrs Grunt would NOT approve!  :Annoyed:    
Next I install insulation, R1.5 75mm by 430 mm batts. Where the diagonal cross brace runs I thought about trimming the batts around it , but instead I just insulated over them. I wont have the required 25mm air gap, but the foil wont be needed for heat insulation on this side of the house.   
I installed a new board to seperate the wiring into it's own duct and also I pre drilled a new hole for a future outsied lighting circuit and left a pull wire behind. Clever eh  :2thumbsup:    
Next comes breather silver wrap stapled to the studs. There is a 25mm air gap between the wrap and the batts, except for where the cross brace boards pusshed the insulation out.   
Next is the weatherboards - 220 mm square edge pre-primed both sides  held on by 2.8 * 50 mm gal nails. All boards are primed on the cut ends and installed with acrylic sealant. I also round-off the edge with a light sanding as I was told this helps the stop the paint from peeling later on as paint doesnt like a sharp edge - not sure if this is true or not  :No:    
I managed to get 1 good coat of Dulux w/shield on before the weekend finished. There is still the scotia trim and another coat to do next weekend, but it's mostly done I think it looks good. 
All up it was about $600 in materials and 20 hours of my time. I dont know what a carpenter / painter would charge but I enjoyed doing it myself - mostly  :Blush7:

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## shauck

Nice job. Looks really good. Both my brothers are painters by trade and yes the square edge is not recommended (looks good tho). The layer of paint is extremely thin on an edge. I hope you undercoated. Primed boards still require undercoat.

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## Grunt_au

Thanks, so it's true about the sharp edge, it makes sense. 
 The other thing I see with square edge boards is that the bottom edge is not parallel to the ground when mounted. It slopes up slightly towards the outside, opposite to a window sill. This makes the water run down onto the next board instead of dripping off. This is where many of the original boards rotted, not just on the ends. You need to get the paint right up into the join of the board below to form a seal and stop moisture geting in.  
As for the undercoat, I used sealer/primer/undercoat on the ends and cut edges, the filler over the nail holes and on the knots. I have used Dulux weathershield paint directly on timber a few times (fence pailings and trim) and it works well, not peeling or anything in 3 years. Anyway I'm not stripping it back now so wish me luck!

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## shauck

Fingers crossed.

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## eug_box

Hi Glenn - excellent post with pictures really helps. 
I too am currently undergoing a retrifot of insulation to a 1960 weatherboard home in Melbourne and am keen to know whether it is necessary for the 20gap between sarking and batts? 
I have ordered some 90mm bradford sono batts for a 90mm timber cavity.  I too have purchased some wall wrap.  In speaking to the sales guy athere I purchased the insulation, he suggested that the gap is not critical for Melbourne homes in cool climate.  Currently I am thinking of installing like this: 
plaster --> 90mm batts (90mm timber cavity) --> wall wrap (silver facing batts) --> weatherboard (bullnose) 
2 questions I have: 
1.  Should I replace the 90mm batts with 70mm batts to create a void between batts and sarking wrap?
2.  Does the silver side of the wrap face the batts or weatherboard? 
Advise appreciated. 
eug_box

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## Grunt_au

Hi thanks for the reply 
As for the sarking / foil - a "proper" builder may be able to explain it better, I'm just an electrician. As far as I know, the batts are to keep heat in, the foil is to keep heat out. So, as I said, the foil is probably not doing much on this side of the house (south) but I like an extra layer to keep any water that may get in away from the batts. I have sealed the weatherboards up pretty good, but in 20-30 years time, with more stump settling / levelling who knows what might happen. Make sure you use "breathable" foil for weatherboards, it looks like the same product but with lots of small holes poked in it. 
As for the right side out, I did a lot of Google work and most said the blue side is simply to reduce sun glare on teh poor installers, especially roofers. I did read you can get silver both sides wrap, but for OHS reasons it is blue on one side as the glare on a sunny day is painful. I am open to correction on this. Anyway, all the houses I see beeing built have the blue side out.  
The 1" gap is specified for the foil to work properly, it has to do with reflectance and heat transfer. I sort of get it, if you touch a hot surface you get burned, 1" away you dont. The air gap is an important part of the insulation to stop the transnfer of heat. I have a west facing wall which needs the same re-cladding,  I will need to be more careful there as the sun will hit it hard on a 40deg + day and I want to keep the room cool. I will also look into something to hold the batts against the plaster to maintain the air gap. 
The library on this site has a good file, same as the pdf file I got from another site, read it before you begin. 
Thanks, 
Grant

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