When cladding meets an opening...

[Crofter]

Hope to crack on with some of the wall cladding this week. 100mm wide vertical boards at 150mm centres, with a second layer of the same on top to close the gaps. All pretty standard stuff.

Question is- when I get to an opening, and it inevitably doesn't exactly hit the edge of a board, do I stick to the pattern and just rip the board down to the necessary width? And if it's a window, I would have to just take a chunk out of it. Seems a bit of a faff and a good way to expose end grain.

 

Or, alternatively, do I plan the spacings to be slightly over or under 150mm so that each opening is met with a full width board? Makes marking out tedious. I don't know if anybody would see the slight difference in spacing, it would only be a few mm.

 

@Tennentslager what did you do?

[IanR]

I've got similar cladding in 144mm/94mm boards and took the second option. Every opening has the same board set-out, and every opening is symm opp about its centre. I couldn't have lived it being random and different.

 

Mostly achieved by adjusting spacing, occasionally had to rip boards down slightly to a narrower section. The spacing changes do not notice at all.

Edited January 29, 2017 by IanR

[Tennentslager]

As per you second paragraph.

Kinda most of the cutting in with the base board so that the top board is whole...if possible.

It won't always work but my gaps vary by up to 20mm and TBH you'd never notice.

[Crofter]

Thanks chaps! Google image searches had suggested keeping boards intact, and I was starting to wonder if I should have thought of this way back when I drew up the positions of the opening! But I do tend to over think things...

[Tennentslager]

Rubbish pic as it was getting dark but went for a *hidden* door on the shed...although the hinges spoil the hidden effect just a tad?

[IanR]

Also not the best pic, and reveals unfinished including missing posts:

 

 

Both windows with same detailing at each end,

[Triassic]

This is what I did 

[Jeremy Harris]

We found that getting a neat finish where the boards around the reveal abut the window wasn't that easy.  In our case we have windows with integral cills, so the lower part of the reveals at the sides was easier to cut than those shown above, but I didn't like the idea of just a bead of sealant to fill the corner.

 

I found a supplier of small section black PVC angle, 6mm x 6mm x 1mm, and bonded this with clear neutral cure, high modulus, silicone into these corners.  It was a bit fiddly, but I'm glad I did it as it looks neater than a bead of sealant, I think.

 

 

 

This is a section of the way we finished the head of each opening:

 

Edited January 30, 2017 by JSHarris

[Crofter]

That's a slightly different aspect of the detailing but a very useful one, thanks.

I used black Siga Wigluv tape to seal the join between the window and the frame, and the reveal boards should hide that.  Te plan had been to run a bead of sealant but the PVC strip seems quite interesting.

[MikeSharp01]

16 hours ago, Crofter said:

 

Or, alternatively, do I plan the spacings to be slightly over or under 150mm so that each opening is met with a full width board? Makes marking out tedious. I don't know if anybody would see the slight difference in spacing, it would only be a few mm.

Adusted spacing is standard roofing practice for tiles, even the interlocking tiles have built in wriggle room. Roofers do it in both, sometimes three planes.