Horizontal Siding Circus

A survey of basic millwork patterns and their installation.

By The OHJ Technical Staff

Wood, at one time or another, has been used to make every part of old houses, from foundations and structural framing to roofing and wall cladding. The first settlers that landed in North America brought with them the methods for covering roofs and walls with wood shingles split from short lengths of logs, however, it was the rich supply of tall, straight trees they found here that gave rise to a new and different kind of wood building material: horizontal siding.

The clapboard and its variants are the original horizontal siding, dating back to the earliest, hand-rived types from the 17th century, but they are only the progenitors of a family of materials that took off with the Industrial Revolution. With the widespread use of steam-powered millwork machinery in the 1850s, horizontal siding proliferated into patterns of striking creativity, to satisfy the Victorian taste for texture, or simply efficiencyÑsuch as ersatz versions of log faades or even the venerable clapboard. By the 1930s, standard millwork references listed no less than 28 different types of commonly available horizontal siding. Since many are no longer familiar today and are difficult to purchase (especially at one-size-fits-all home centers), we have put together this glossary of the basic types and how they are installed, for use by anyone who has to repair or alter a horizontally sided old house built in the last 150 years.

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