Starter strip vs J channel

We have been residing our house (vinyl old and new) and on one wall of the house the previous installers used J channel instead of a starter strip at the bottom. I'm not sure why they would've needed to do it this way and would like to understand for future reference. Any thoughts? Also, we are siding for the first time, an attached 10'x12' 3 season porch that currently has something that looks like cedar carside. I'm guessing we can side over it with no problem. Do we need to install flashing around the windows before putting up the J channel and undersill?

 

Welcome to the forums. It depends on whether or not the piece of siding sitting inside the jchannel is a full piece or not. Quite often when removing siding to install a deck, a piece of jchannel is required to reattach the siding just above the deck. When you side, you will need a flat surface to go with. Not sure what cedar carside is, but if it is shake shingles, it will be difficult to get a flat lay on it. Definitely you want to flash over the top of the windows prior to installation of the jchannel in that area. You may want to post a couple of pictures on a site such as photobucket.com and use the urls to post them to this site. That way we can see what you see.

 

Thanks Chandler. I've posted a picture on photobucket http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...e/SAM_0036.jpg of the house connected to the porch. I think you are right, they used j channel instead of starter strip because of the porch. I'm not sure if you can see how the porch is sided in the picture?

 

Yeah, they had to match the siding on the remainder of the house (lateral lines), so when they got to the back of the house, there was nothing to attach a full piece of siding as well as a starter strip and keep the lines moving around the house. Therefore, they probably had to use a j channel. You will probably have to do the same thing on the remaining addition in order to keep the lines pure.

 

Chandler, a guy at Menards said we don't need to flash around the windows because really all we have is a screen porch and flashing is designed to keep water from leaking into your house. He said water leaks in anyway. What do you think?

 

That was before I saw the pix. Since your windows are (or would be if you had any) at the top and protected by the soffiting, you won't need to flash them, just use j channel around them to slip your siding into.

 

Thanks a bunch - I appreciate all of your help!