Last year I had a contractor stain my cedar-sided house. During the stain process, inadequate time between powerwashing and staining, as well as extensive rain damaged the paint job. With in a couple of months I had extensive problems with bubbling. The contractor's solutions was to scrape the bubbles, apply an oil-based primer and then apply a different stain. Bubbles occurred again. He tried again recently.. Same solution, scrap, oil-based primer, and stain - except this time he used the original color. I'm finding out that that the contractors "solution" had almost no chance of select. And in fact the combination of latex stain and oil-based primer has worsened the problem.. So essential now I have the remenants of the previous stain job, on top of that two coats of water damaged stain, in places primer and a different coat of stain, and in other places primer and the other stain.. At this point, we need a long term solution.. Not sure if scape the house and restain is an option - can you scrape stain? Or if I get an agreement to have the house scrapped again, stained, and then possibly a long term agreement to fix reoccurring bubbles? thanks in advance for your advice!

Greetings, I am in the early process of educating myself about window installation, and I have an incredibly 'newb' question for you pro's. In this property (pic): http://www.gfxmoo.com/front/homestead_10.jpg You can see the very small front windows. I am planning on replacing them with a set of 2x4 double hungs around a 4x4 fixed. I am familiar with the process from the interior prep, framing the opening and installing the 'window'. However, with regard to flashing it properly from the outside.....how is that best approached in this situation? Obviously that wood siding must come off to allow for flashing?...(gulp)....but how to do it without destroying the siding? Bottom line: How to approach the exterior work on this without tearing apart the whole front of the house? Thanks for any insight! (btw - I am going to hire someone to do 1 window set,....and then hopefully I can do subsequent windows,...I am aware this is not a simple DIY job for the novice like myself).