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Evening all. The corner trim boards on our house are going soft at the bottom on three of the four corners, and a couple of the butt joints in the siding itself have opened up enough to slide a credit card in. Everything else looks decent. My neighbor says just caulk the joints and replace the trim pieces, and that sounds cheap and easy which makes me suspicious. House is in Wallingford, painted cedar, and it’s been about twenty years since anyone did real work on the exterior. What’s the right call here, and is my neighbour’s plan as reasonable as it sounds?
Your suspicion is warranted. Caulk is a maintenance material, not a repair, and forcing it into open butt joints often seals water inside rather than keeping it out. Soft trim at three of four corners also suggests a pattern rather than isolated bad boards – usually drainage, flashing details, or paint that has simply reached the end of its life at twenty years. Have someone open one corner to see what the sheathing looks like before committing to a plan. GotRot covers repair-versus-replace at igotrot.com/seattle-wa-siding-repair/ and they’ll tell you if trim replacement genuinely is enough. Sometimes it is, but you want that based on an inspection.
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