Surveying a repair on an older outbuilding with a seriously degraded exterior. Among a lot of other issues its shingling is paper-thin and nearly worn away in places, contrasting to adjacent buildings of equivalent age that were kept up minimally and still look more or less like new. Cedar siding doesn’t ask for much – the wood itself is very stable in the rain, the charred exterior can handle UV exposure more or less indefinitely, but the one thing it isn’t well-equipped to deal with is abrasion. Ladders and other junk leaned up against the shingles will immediately scratch them in ways difficult to repair seamlessly, weeds and leaf litter allowed to pile up will wear the surface away and leave the underlying material exposed to sun damage, and once covered it can’t stop bugs from taking up residence underneath.
Contrast to the adjacent house, whose shingles must be roughly a century old but have been kept free of debris:
The usual homeowner quick fix for this is to paint over the shingles, where worn or just all over – it is the quickest way to color-match without a mass replacement, and the paint does tolerate having garbage leaning on it better. But water and sun peel the paint away in a matter of a few years, and take any remaining surface treatment with it, forcing regular repainting or destroying the cedar completely. At this point the whole exterior needs replacement, no amount of Valspar slathered on is going to fix these tattered scraps.
