The right windows for the job?

[welshrabbit]

We contracted to have a cedar board and batten addition built onto our house. The builder used American Craftsman vinyl windows and ended up trying to jam the cedar into the j-channel but was unsuccessful most of the time. We fired him for various reasons and several of the contractors interviewed to fix the problems said that the windows couldn't be used with wood b&b siding. Is that true or were they just trying to sell me vinyl siding? I spoke with someone at Home Depot and he said you couldn't but someone at Lowe's said you could.

[Dragon]

It can be done.

A planer would help.

[TnAndy]

Hard to cram a 3/4" board in a J mean for vinyl siding of 1/2 to 5/8".......

The way I'd have worked it is to butt the cedar to the vinyl channel ( or maybe just cut the channel off....if you look close, you may see a score line in the vinyl...run a utility knife down that and it will snap right off ), then made a trim "casing" out of cedar to go over the top.....

or.....if you need a bit more weatherproof method depending on your roof protection over the windows, rip a pc of cedar about 2" wide ( to suit your eye ), and mount edgewise against the window all around it so the 2" is the "depth"......then butt your cedar siding up to that, and a use a head flashing over the top under the siding, lapping out over the top pc of trim.
The trim will end up sticking out about 1 to 1 1/4", and this give you a nice "inside" corner on the siding and the window for caulk ... ( and "inside" corners are LOTS easier to caulk )

[Animal AKA Will]

Hard to cram a 3/4" board in a J mean for vinyl siding of 1/2 to 5/8".......

The trim will end up sticking out about 1 to 1 1/4", and this give you a nice "inside" corner on the siding and the window for caulk ... ( and "inside" corners are LOTS easier to caulk )

Hear hear TnAndy.