For you smart creative types: Mounting something flat to cedar lap siding?

a_kelley said:
Lol wood is inconsistent. Log finish.com sells color match caulk. 1/4" will be fine as long as you use elastomeric caulk. Make sure it takes stain if you have future plans for a restain. CNC routing a board to match siding would be cool though.
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Forget that noise. Actually, let me rephrase: I wish color matched caulk was my biggest issue right now. :D

The siding is painted, so all of this is getting painted, no color matching caulk required. I got light gray just to stand out less than bright white, even though it will eventually get painted over. I'm ready to prime the cedar mounting block... ...as soon as I have a cedar mounting block.

I think the gap will be at least 1/8", so maybe I'm good to go after a lot of glue-up. I wanted to make everything lower profile (instead of 3/4" board glued to bits of siding) but I think I'm done being picky until I have a better solution that actually works.

I hate being this anal, because it's all going to get replaced one day with different siding or whatever, but it has to be right until then. I'm doing all of my fitment experiments with the front porch light (also the biggest fixture), which doesn't see any direct water at all because of the porch. The other 4 fixtures are not so lucky, and need proper sealing.

Sadly, all the rest of the work will have to wait until the weekend, because now I have to spend my vacation day tomorrow cleaning the house for someone that I forgot I invited. That means putting away 600 tools that I don't have room for because I don't have the garage built yet.

I'm writing this from the kitchen while making apple sauce to de-stress.
 
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Got a cup of coffee, pondered things. Got out the toys, got it done. Still made it up as I went along, with some educated guessing....

It's pretty ugly on the back, but doesn't matter. I got the caulk gap I wanted, and the light fixture will sit a lot more flush to the house now. I might snip that tail off, if the back plate of the light still lines up. I don't like that the tail of the block overhangs that piece of siding.
  1. Countersunk the box flange with the router that has a circle jig on it.
  2. Cut the box hole with a hole saw.
  3. Put the wood on the wall, transferred the siding profile with a piece of scrap that's the same thickness as the siding (parallel transfer onto the edge of the wood).
  4. Grabbed the other router with the edge guide on it, made a nice quick and dirty relief channel on the back so I could cut each side with the jigsaw. Could have used a band saw with a large throat instead, kind of like doing a standard resaw on edge, wouldn't need the relief channel in that case.
  5. Grabbed a Forstner bit to make the corners stronger by drilling a radius at the siding edges instead of making a 90 degree notch with the saw.
  6. Cut the sides with the jigsaw.
  7. Kissed a couple of areas with a Surform tool to clean up the jigsaw cuts.
  8. Ready for paint! Took all of 1.5 hours, including head scratching and fitting to the house.
There isn't a lot of meat left, but the light fixture mounting holes end up in the right place on the siding lap to screw right through the block and into the siding.

Oh, I still have to add countersunk screw holes. It's not glued to the wall, it's just sitting on the edge of the box at the moment, holding itself in place on the hole.

Front_1.jpg
Front_2.jpg
Back_1.jpg
 
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Looks like a professional carpenter's finished product. Know the difference between a good carpenter and a poor carpenter?


You can't see the good carpenter's mistakes!! Alternately put, a good carpenter can hide the mistakes.

Much carpentry of the renovation sort does involved calculated guesses and that's why you can never get a hard fast price on a reno. Don't know what you got til you get into it, as you found out.

And watch out for fish eye photos. Fish eye hides inconsistences.
 
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Nice work!
 
Where did you find that?
 
shawn said:
Where did you find that?
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Hiline Outdoor sconce by Modern Forms / WAC. Not cheap, but I couldn't really find much else we liked. Not the brightest fixture, but it fits well for where it is. Dark Sky compliant too.

Hiline Outdoor Dark Sky Wall Light by Modern Forms | WS-W2308-BK

Well, there were two other fixtures that we also liked, both of which were almost twice the price.

Lumens and Lightology both carry them in all sizes and colors, Lightology is having a sale this month and 15% on top of that for black Friday.

I didn't want something that looks like it should hang on a 1800s stagecoach, which is most everything on the market.
 
I'll have to post pics of the brackets I made for the new house numbers; I designed them to stand off from the house about 1.5 inches, and they have the same rib profile as the light. Nerdy details.

They're getting 3D printed at the moment in aluminum-filled polyamide.

:D
 
It's hard to shop for light fixtures under any circumstances. I usually hire a guy to take care of that.
 
Here's the brackets. The numbers are a single unit that is powdercoated, and will mount to the brackets on the flat flange with VHB tape (I love adhesives). The other flange screws to the lap siding at the lap angle. The backside won't normally be seen, because people on the porch won't be standing to the left of the brackets. Nobody will probably ever notice the details on the brackets anyway, but I needed brackets and decided to do something cool.

Just something I whipped out while watching TV on Thanksgiving night. About 3" tall along the flanges.

Bracket_1.JPG
Bracket_2.JPG
 
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