Repairing area in exterior siding

Question

I have an area in the front of my house, here when I purchased, that I've been told used to serve as something for firewood. I'm interested in fixing the area by removing the 'indent' and making it look like the rest of the garage.

The siding here looks like pine, with one person indicating something called 'shiplap'. The problem is that there are two different sizes of boards here. The smaller ones, measured from the outside, are 8 15/16" long. The longer board is exactly 11 inches long.

I noticed that Home Depot sells pine 'shiplap' but it's in a 8" width. Is this the same width board? Is there a separate tongue and groove pine siding for the longer piece? I've posted pictures of both sides.

I'm also wondering about how sound my plan is. I've called a few contractors, all either not returning a call due to how small the job is, or getting a quote around $500 for everything. I feel that my 'home handyman' skills are good enough where I should take this on myself. I figure the cost of materials is less than $50-$100 and I could do this myself within 2-3 hours. I live in New England, so it will experience all 4 seasons.

As you noticed in the picture, the metal L bracket was unscrewed and the area is exposed. I had a plan to remove this, then remove the two boards on the sides of it with a prybar. Once this is completed, the curved part I can even out with a circular saw, so that the length is straight and easy to cut from a new piece of board. I can then cut some spare 2x4s to redo the frame properly, cut some sheathing (plywood) to nail, using finishing 1 3/4th finishing nails to the 2x4s, then attach on the new shiplap/pine siding.

Thanks!

Gallery/Picture link: https://i.sstatic.net/m5oNw.jpg (On the photo with the measurements, I took it at an angle, so it might look like the siding boards are the same width. They are not. I measured each individually to verify the width.)

Answer 1

The 8" Home Depot siding will be too narrow. It's 8" nominal, the actual exposure width will end up under 7". To avoid the need to exactly match widths, consider replacing the boards full height, then you have no butt joints in the siding.

If you don't want to spend for the extra material, finding siding that exactly matches width may not be that easy. You could get someone to mill boards to a custom width. Since you boards have no special exposed profile, someone with a table saw could easily cut boards to match what you have. The raw material would just be nominal 1x12 and 1x10 lumber with one face resawn, which is a pretty common siding raw material.

This is a relatively easy DIY project, but it may take more than 3 hours. Be sure the siding nails you use are either hot dipped galvanized or stainless steel. Electro-plated galvanized nails will still rust. Siding nails have more of a head than finishing nails, so the boards are held tight and can't warp, but smaller than regular nails so the exposed head is not too objectionable.