Wood – How to keep dirt away from wood on shed

rotshedwood

I have a small (1 car garage) shed:
zoomed out

There is dirt along the side of it, and it seems to have rotted some of the boards in the bottom left corner of the above picture.

Front view: (the dirt had run-off onto the sidewalk, hence the front board is rotted as well. I recently uncovered the sidewalk and that is when I noticed the rotted part.)
front

Corner view:
enter image description here

So questions:

1) Do I need to do anything about this? Presumably rot is bad… but what actually happens if I just leave it alone?

2) How would I go about replacing the impacted boards? Do I have to replace the whole thing? Or try to cut it and only replace the bottom piece?

3) Do I/how do I prevent the dirt from sitting right against the wood so that this doesn't happen again?

Best Answer

You want to fix this, it will only get worse. You only have to replace the wood that's rotten but make sure you get it all. Cut out the rotten wood and square off the remaining strips. Frame some concrete backer board, wonder board, where the rotten wood was. Finish off the job with some stucco over the backer board and texture it similar to the wood grain. Paint it and you're good to go. That's one repair you won't have to do again. Good luck.