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While I was in a local big box DIY store looking at exterior moulding, an older sales associate approached asking if he could help. I told him I had found what I was looking for and explained some of what I was doing. The associate looked up and down the aisle and I thought I was going to get an offer to have the work done but he told me that there was something he wanted me to look at and walked further down the aisle. I followed and was shown another rack of moulding but this time the shapes were extruded PVC. Awesome stuff. Comes in the same shapes, a bit more expensive than paint grade wood but otherwise functionally the same but without the rot. I am holding a 2x2 in the photo as I begin to rebuild my sill plate. Other than keeping future handymen in business, this has to be the way to go for exterior trim when building a home.
In a continuing theme for my troubled window, the previous owners painted the window frames and exterior moulding. Truly not a bad thing to do, but the rest of the house is stained to allow the wood to breath. Caulking is typically not used with stain and that method was carried over to the windows with the poor result seen in the picture. The paint does not allow the water that entered the wood through the non-caulked joints to escape and eventually rotted the wood.
I was going to strip out, caulk and paint around an upper story window this week but found much more than I bargained for when I began scraping off paint (and chunks of wood). Being held in my hand is the bottom rail on one of the windows---the maufacturer was kind enough to silicone the glass assembly into the frame but this only trapped water in the lowest places.
On my way to Vegas last Friday afternoon, several sand storms could be seen being pushed through the mountain valleys leading into the northern reaches of Death Valley. These storms typically falter out quickly but in one area a large set of dunes have been created.
