Walls facing the ocean take a year-round beating. Continual maintenance and periodic replacements are routine—and often, those everyday jobs also offer the opportunity for a timely upgrade. It’s bread-and-butter work for Mark Pollard and his crew from Thompson Johnson Woodworks, on Peaks Island, Maine. This spring, Pollard and his team stripped out and replaced some aging and outdated windows on a curved house wall, then took the opportunity to upgrade the existing clapboard siding with an advanced rainscreen system, complete with a new, vapor-open Henry Blueskin weather-resistive barrier, bulletproof window-opening prep, and custom-bent zinc flashing. JLC visited the island to follow the action (see videos).
To protect the wall from the weather as they stripped and replaced the existing materials, Pollard and carpenter Tyler Strout made wise use of the Blueskin’s attributes by applying the Blueskin immediately after stripping off the old siding, lapping the new membrane temporarily over the existing window flanges. Later in the week, they were able to slit the Blueskin around the old window edges and pull the units out one by one for replacement, without leaving the whole wall open to the weather, even briefly. (One lesson learned, Pollard noted: Existing Ice and Water Shield on the walls comes off easier if you use an oscillating multi-tool.)
The final phase was to flash the new window head casings with custom-bent zinc flashing, apply MortairVent rainscreen material, and replace the trim and siding with new cedar clapboards and pine trim. With a 3/8-inch air space behind it, the brand-new pre-primed and pre-painted cladding system should give years of trouble-free service before it needs its next paint job.
