These pictures are of Steven and Linda McGeady's coastal beach home. Steve McGeady held a long honored position as Vice President for what he humbly called the small business group at INTEL CORPORATION for 15 years. Steve appreciated the level of our integrity and professionalism we brought to their project by pointing out many problem areas that needed repair to their coastal beach home. The McGeady project presented several moisture rot and mildew challenges to endure. Weaver Painting makes it a standard rule to inspect and point out potential moisture problems that can harm our fresh paintwork and found many areas needing rot repair and siding replacement necessary. Mr. McGeady's pop-out windows had been installed unprimed and uncaulked behind where the wood trim meets the blind stop edges of the vinyl sliding sash. The sill board, however, had been caulked horizontally underneath it trapping in the rain water that was entering in from the open edges above. The un-caulked vertical trim allowed rain to penetrate into and behind the unprimed raw wood through the left and right side of the windows trim. The rain entered the raw wood soaking in gallons of rainwater with no place to go except downward saturating into the raw wood found underneath with no avenues for escape. The cause? Many times during new construction sill boards and vertical trim pieces are built using raw wood first and only then primed by painters on the exterior after having been installed. The backside of the un-primed raw wood trim covered up a substantial area below of even more raw wood underneath working like a sponge to pull water into the windowsill. By not fully priming and caulking all sides of vertical wood trim before installation, un-caulked entry points become vulnerable for water intrusion! In this case, even if the windowsill and trim boards had been primed behind, over time the raw wood un-caulked vertical trim from above would have eventually rotted the sills below because of the caulking that had been completed underneath the sills! What a mess! Never Caulk under a sill board. It's my guess the builder believed it should've been caulked since an extension piece was screwed in and wasn't extruding out far enough. Problem described in pictures and more detail below!

We fix rot that's very extensive provided it hasn't gone completely through the wood. Visit Smith and Company for more information on how we can successfully repair your rotten damaged wood.	We do a throrough inspection of all window sills and siding if we suspect previous moisture intrusion will damage our new coatings from behind the siding substrate!
If you look close you will see the windowsill is sectioned in two pieces with an extension sill piece added and only screwed and caulk seamed horizontally. 572 windowpanes all had the wrong type of non-paintable silicone that was either not primed or only received little paint coverage that had to be removed and re-caulked with paint grade caulking. It was a major "Pane" to say the least!	Unprimed plywood sheeting also rotting from leaking windowsill found above!

Epoxy Repair was completed to 11 different windowsills that were salvagable and hadn't rotted completely through the sill. We use Smith and Company epoxy sealer and Smiths' "Fill-it" combined together to repair rot damaged wood. Smiths' epoxy sealer dissipates wood moisture content and re-hardens punky wood while also effectively eliminately mold spores. This product has been used for years doing Victorian restoration projects and designed originally to repair and restore the bottoms of wooden boats. Marine products when used in coastal marine environments only makes sense their invaluable usefulness. After applying the sealer and after its cured, the "Fill-it" is applied next.

Fill it is a two-part epoxy made specifically for wood. The filler is given the properties to flex and expand with woods climatic movements through the seasons. You need a strong arm when mixing because its tough to work with. Its like spreading hardened dried chewing gum together when mixing. When throroughly stirred together it turns into a uniform gray color consistancy. The amount seen on the board takes about 5 minutes to mix into the gray color needed. Its ideal for repairing wood because it effectively expands and contracts with the woods movement through the seasons. Its' made from pulverized quartz stone and amines mixed 1 to 1 with hardening components designed into the filler when mixed together. We make certain the sealer is cured out first before apply the filler. The hole is filled over level then a piece of plastic is placed over it and spread farther to smooth the texure. Plastic is left on during cure time to protect from moisture or rain. We sand it when dry and re-apply more sealer before priming and painting the now repaired board.

More about Steve's windows continued..To add even more insult to injury, just under the sill and at the top of the apron board, (the apron board is located directly under the windowsill) Vulkem caulking was used the entire horizontal distance that trapped rain water into the raw wood causing rot to occur to the angle sloping ledge because the water soaked into the sill from above and couldn't escape through any draining points beyond the Vulkem caulk below. The Vulkem caulking effectively trapped in the rainwater to cause the sill rot and also soaked further behind the siding past a form of Ty-vec material used protecting the plywood below! (Unfortunately, carpenters don't carry primer buckets around with them.) This is a new construction problem commonly found by novices during building methods when all sides of new wood including plywood initial exterior wall sheeting were not primed and caulk wasn't installed correctly!

Mr. McGeady has a picture slide showing more related new construction rot problems and where they occured to his home on his personal website. Click here to view Steve's website's slide show!




Repairing windows correctly!

The windows had to be repaired by carefully hand-removing non-paintable silicone caulking and replaced using high grade paintable clear caulk to provide a weather tight seal next to the glass and painted wood. (See above where the paint is weathering off next to the glass edge of the window pane and silicone caulking that was used.)

A little paint lesson here. It's a misconception to believe keeping paint off glass is actually good craftsmanship. To the contrary, in order to protect windows correctly creating a weather tight seal, new clear paintable caulk needs to be painted over onto the glass. The paint and caulk residues left on the glass are shaved off clean by using a taping broad knife in conjunction with razor blades and exacto blades for the most precision clean edge possible where the wood and glass meet. This a great trick for where glazing putty (on older windows) is used and clear caulk. Upon painted completion the McGeady's windows were precisely shaved through the caulking next to the edge to remove all unwanted paint and leftover caulk residues from the glass. The final result ( see picture below )creates a perfectly straight line better than a brush alone could perform and the wood sash is now completely protected from water intusion entering behind the sash for years to come. Using clear caulk rather than white keeps the caulk build-up cleaner when looking through the window from inside. More labor? Yes, but your window investment is throroughly protected using this method!

The pictures also tell the story where several other water intrusion points had traveled farther down below the windowsills to the back of the cedar wood siding creating the beginnings of mold and rot to the plywood underneath. Other uncaulked wood corner joints actually rotted through some structural support beams within only fives years after the McGeady's project had been completed!

The interior of this home had several cracking problems on the inside of the sills caused from the saturation of roof leaks and unprimed exterior trim corners traveling inside the house causing stains to walls and ceilings too.

When it comes to hiring a paint contractor be aware your contractor is always on watchful alert for rot problems and knows their business about moisture related conditions and their preventative measures beforehand. Knowledgable reputation is priceless when it comes to doing the job right the first time! These problems could and would have been avoided by teaming efforts with contractors if we had intially received the job when it was built! To find more about this project, read our related articles written on newer woods to learn more about moisture related problems that can occur during new construction phases by clicking here!

If you want the exterior of your home painted right this coming year, its best to pre-schedule your painter in the winter months. Contact us for yourfreebid@weaverpainting.com!to make an appointment for your project.

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