Masonite House Siding Repair

Due to roof water splashing off of my deck I had to tackle a Masonite house siding repair project. The Masonite house siding had become spongy and punky. It was so bad I could push my finger through it with no effort whatsoever. Repairing Masonite house siding can be a bit tricky, particularly when you only want to replace and patch in a small section of it. In my case, I needed to replace the bottom 4 rows of house siding. Removing Old Masonite House Siding Clapboards I decided to first remove the 3rd row from the bottom clapboard.

This allowed me the ability to mess up the 4th and last row above it as I used my pry bar and claw hammer to lift it up and pull it out. In the end I had to employ a Sawzall to cut the house siding nails.

Once the nails were cut I was able to worry the pry bar underneath the clapboard and pull down on one end of the clapboard with my hand. With a little care I was able to easily remove the 3rd row with zero damage to the 4th row above it. After removing the 3rd row, or coarse, of Masonite house siding, I then used my pry bar and claw hammer to remove the bottom two rows with little care about damaging them. Finally I removed the 4th row of clapboard using the same method as I did on the 3rd row. Again, I used the Sawzall to cut the nails. After removing all of the old and damage clapboards I next removed the old metal drip edge.

I then used the backside of my pry bar and hammer to pound down the cut nails underneath the bottom edge of the 5th row of clapboards. I wanted to make sure they were flattened down so that I could easily slide the new Masonite house siding clapboards up underneath the 5th row.

Installing New Masonite House Siding Clapboards

So with all of the old and rotted clapboards and drip edge removed I next installed new drip edge along the top edge of the bottom trim board where the first row of clapboards rested on. I installed galvanized nails about 1-1/4 inch from the bottom of the drip edge on every wall stud location.

Next I began the process of installing the new Masonite house siding. To do this I cut pieces to length such that I left about 1/8th inch of space on each end of it. You don’t want the Masonite house siding pieces to fit so tightly that they can’t expand. If you do so, the Masonite house siding will buckle during hot days.

I then started with the installation of the bottom row, or first row, of clapboards. I used galvanized siding 8d nails to secure the house siding to the side of the home. I installed the nails approximately 1 inch down from the top of the house siding and on every wall stud location. However, before sliding the piece of house siding into place, I ran a bead of paintable silicone caulk on the edges where the clapboard piece abutted.

Next I made a pencil mark 4-1/2 inches up from the bottom of the length of house siding installed. I made marks along each wall stud line so that I could have easy reference points to place the second piece, row, of clapboards.

With the first piece marked, I cut a second length of Masonite house siding and position it in place. Again, I installed nails 1 inch down from the top of the piece of house siding, and at every wall stud location.

I repeated this process for the remaining two pieces of Masonite house siding. With the last piece I had to slide it up underneath the 5th row of house siding. I then installed nails into the 5th row of house siding about 1 inch from the bottom edge of the clapboard. I also made sure to place the nails into the old nail holes on the 5th row.

I then went back and installed additional nails into the bottom edges of the next 3 clapboards. I did not install one in the newly installed bottom row as I didn’t want to put a bunch of nail holes in the newly installed drip edge. Finally I applied two coats of paint to the newly installed Masonite house siding clapboards to wrap up the project. That’s all there is to it for Masonite house siding repair. It took me only 3 hours to do the entire project.