Let me put it this way-- I've used sealer before that was WELL beyond its shelf life and had no adverse effects. That was before I knew better. Not sure that I'd do it now, just for safety's sake.

Regarding the Hardiplank, your husband is right by doing what he is doing. You can paint before installation or after, but obviously before would provide better coverage with minimal touch-ups at the end. Hardi sidings came out with pre-painted siding with limited colors and avail. It is concrete, so it should be primed(I believe Hardi reccomends)or minimally a high quality exterior paint. As far as courtreporter, it sounds as though you may want to contact an interior designer, or minmally go into a home center, grab up paint swatches that match your exsisting colors and then decide. Many home centers have paint computers available to homeowners to help decide on corresponding color matches.

Errant: gorgeous!!! I used a both caulking and wood putty depending on the type of joint/hole filling. I had recessed panels and at the point of recess needed caulking. Sometimes the paint will fill small gaps, but you really don't know how well until the caulking/filling phase is done. So it's just as easy to do it up front and be sure. I didn't caulk around the inside of the doors, but later I wished I had. Those paint gaps annoyed me even inside. I think I may have gone back over them afterwards. I had no shrinking or caulk issues at all in 4 years (then I moved). I think because the wood is 25 years old, it is very stable. Maybe with a lot of humidity, it may be an issue. Also be prepared that with white cabinets, they do show dirt easily. It amazed me to realize how dirty the wood cabinets were that I never saw. No hiding anything with white! I used BM Aura paint which was very durable and held up great to frequent wipe-ups. I also kept a small bottle of touchup paint handy. (Michaels: 2oz flip top plastic jars) Now BM has Aura Advance "cabinet" paint so either it's just a marketing change or presumably is even more durable for cabinets.

Perfect example of science moving "two steps forward and one step back"... often times the choices in the design of experiments, methodologies, interpretations, etc. are affected by unconscious biases coming from preconceived notions, monetary incentives, lack of a key piece of knowledge, etc... the motivations are not necessarily all selfish evil but more often stem from hubris and ignorance than anything else... and then of course mix in the human condition of cognitive dissonance and thus the path of science regularly takes that one step back (think of it as science making a correction)... why does this happen? "Its because you don't know what you don't know"... Unfortunately too many people hail science as being totally unbiased and thusly safe to trust/follow with blind faith... I rather look at science as being just another human endeavor and thus fallible, so its safer to reserve a bit of healthy skepticism when it comes to cutting edge science pronouncements. Thus that quote from an earlier posting above "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." Both of those quotes are very profound if one will truly expend some time to ponder on the deeper meanings. I've seen quite a few examples running through this thread where people don't seem to understand what those two quotes are referring to. Oh, and Ryan... have you added the rock dust yet? Ryan? Ryan? Ryyyyaaaannn.... (spoken like in that movie... Wilson!... Willlsson!!... Wiiiillllllllssson!!!... I guess Ryan too must have just floated away....)