I am preparing to repaint a 600 sq ft cottage with old wood siding (horizontal boards). Scraping off peeling paint revealed a number of areas where the siding is rotted. In one case, the rot extends 3 feet wide and one to two inches tall. In some cases, it goes right through the wall. I had someone dig out all the rot and start filling in with bondo with hardener. He used one can and estimates that it will take 2 more to finish things. This is certainly the easiest way for me to do this rather than try to cut out and replace the boards. But is this OK? I am not planning to replace all the siding with Hardiboard and have put in alot of time in prep already. Will filling in buy me a few years? I live in the Pacific Northwest- no snow but lots of rain. There is also rot between some of the boards. Thanks for your advice! I really dont know what to do.

Hi there, We just did a copper repipe and we had to tear open a good amount of stucco. I am trying to figure out the proper way to install the new tar paper into the patch. I have come across several sites that say that when dealing with the new tar paper, the top piece needs to go under the existing paper and the bottom piece needs to overlap the existing paper. Makes sense. What doesn't make sense to me is how to overlap the top piece (which is behind the existing paper) with the bottom piece (which is over the existing paper). The top piece cannot go behind the bottom piece because that would be improper, but it is not possible to put the bottom piece behind the top. I drew a schematic to better illustrate what I am talking about. The grey rectangular is the hole to be patched. The dashed lines indicate the new paper is behind the existing paper. [url]http://www.cobblehillpartners.com/test/stuccopaper.gif[/url]