I am in the middle of a garage conversion and am replacing my two original 24" x 54" casement windows with 36" x 62" single hung vinyl windows. I have already made new, longer headers and removed one of the old windows so far.

I ran into a problem after seeing the makeup of the exterior siding. My house has vinyl siding over top of the original clapboard. The original clapboard takes up an inch of space between the outside siding and the plywood siding of the house. The new window of course has a channel around it to allow the vinyl siding to butt up against, however since there is clapboard underneath of the vinyl siding, I need to bring out the window exactly an inch to make up for space of the original clapboard.

Is it okay, once I have the rough opening for the windows framed, to fir out an inch with 1x4 (or maybe 1x2 would make more sense) to extend out the new window rough opening so as to be flush with the vinyl siding? Thereby nailing the window's "nailing fin" to the 1x4 firring strip? I hope I made that clear, it's getting late and I'm tired...lol.

Thanks for any help!

Howard

 

I'd frame the opening in the same plane as the rest of the framing. Use the same thickness sheathing on the exterior of the opening as what the rest of the garage has. Then to make up the extra 1" (to equal the existing lap siding), apply 2 layers of 1/2" plywood or OSB (cut into strips that are the right width) to the exterior so that you can mount the window at the right level.

Alternatively, you could use 2x6 framing for your R.O. (if the rest is 2x4) and rip it to the correct width so that you would only need 1 layer of sheathing that would be at the right level. However, I prefer not to do that in most cases- makes remodelling in the future more difficult if you want to change the window and siding down the road.

Be sure you apply some strips of building paper or felt across the bottom face of the opening, and down the side faces of the opening before setting the windows in place so that you protect the sheathing behind the nailing fins.

 

Thanks XSleeper, I don't know why I hadn't thought about plywood as I have so much laying around. That should work well!

 

I knew you were saving that stuff for some reason!

 

Yeah.....she says, "what are you going to do with all that leftover plywood"?