Primed, Flashed, and Ready for Paint

About This Project

This is one of our favorite kinds of house — a Victorian-style two-story with a wraparound porch, a hipped turret, and diamond windows — wearing siding that had quietly given up. In fall 2023 we stripped it to the sheathing and rebuilt the envelope in HardiePlank with fresh HardieTrim at every window, door, and corner.

A note about the photos on this page, because your eye will ask: the finished walls look pale yellow. That's not the color — it's James Hardie's factory primer. The owner chose the primed route — she already had her own painter lined up for the color coat — and these photos were taken the day our work wrapped. What you're seeing is exactly what a re-side looks like at the moment it's ready for its color: every plank flashed, every trim line straight, every seam prepared — a blank canvas built properly.

What's Under the Primer

The system is the same one we build in every color: Tyvek HomeWrap over the sheathing, taped and flashed openings, planks fastened into marked studs at a 7-inch reveal, a butt-joint flashing behind every seam, and metal z-flashing above the windows and doors so water sheds instead of settling. Where the tear-off found rot in the sheathing, it was cut out and replaced before anything new went up. The caulk is OSI Quad Max — James Hardie's recommended sealant, engineered for cold-climate application, which matters in a Washington fall.

Her review filled in the part photos can't show: the crew was "prompt, professional, and polite throughout the entire experience," and "always went above and beyond, helping with several other fixes on the house."

The Finished Look

Same bones, straight lines, and a turret that finally gets to show off its geometry — with the color coat handed off to the painter she already had lined up, on a surface built to hold paint for decades. As the review puts it: "Siding Vault fully replaced our siding and it looks amazing."