Siding Replacement

There is a point where painting a house stops being maintenance and starts being money spent on a problem you are not fixing. Cedar shake that has gone brittle, split at the butts and started cupping away from the wall will take paint and look fine for a season, but the water is getting behind it either way. When siding has reached that stage, the honest answer is that it comes off. Another coat is the expensive way to wait.

Everything about a re-side is decided by what is behind the old siding, and nobody knows what that is until it comes off. That is the part of the job I care most about, because it is the only chance anyone gets to see it. Sheathing that has been wet for years, framing that has taken damage around a window, a spot under a leaking gutter that has been quietly rotting for a decade. Some houses come apart clean and some do not. What matters is that it gets looked at and corrected while the wall is open, not covered back up with new material and forgotten for another thirty years.

The next layer is the one most homeowners have never heard anybody mention. Siding is not what keeps water out of your house. Siding is the first line, and water gets past it eventually on every wall that has ever been built. What actually keeps the structure dry is the weather barrier underneath, and on older houses around here it is often building felt that has torn, or it is nothing at all.

Every re-side I do gets WeatherSmart house wrap, installed the way the manufacturer requires, because their representative trained us on it directly. He also comes out and checks the wrap on each job before any siding goes on. Once the siding is up nobody can inspect what is behind it, so that visit is the only chance anyone gets to confirm the wall was built right. Properly installed wrap carries its own warranty separate from the siding warranty over it. It is cheap at that stage and impossible to add later.

For the siding itself I use James Hardie fiber cement lap, and I will tell you the trade-offs rather than sell it. It does not rot, insects have no interest in it, it holds paint far longer than wood does, and it stands up to weather here in a way cedar stops doing after a few decades. It also costs more than vinyl, it is heavy, and it takes proper cutting and fastening to install right. That last part is where the difference between installers shows up, and it is not visible from the street on day one.

Trim is where a siding job is actually won or lost. Corners, window and door surrounds, the transitions where two planes meet and the joint at the bottom of a wall are the places water finds its way in, and they are the details that get rushed on a job priced to be cheap. Every opening gets flashed and trimmed out properly and the caulk lines get run clean, because that is the seam that has to hold. A wall of siding installed well with sloppy trim is a wall that will leak.

The other thing worth knowing is that an open wall is an opportunity you only get once. On the Kelso job below, the owners wanted a back door off the bedroom, and cutting in a slider while the siding was already off and the sheathing was exposed cost a fraction of what it would have as a standalone project. If there is a window you have always wanted moved or an opening you have wanted added, the time to do it is while the house is already apart. Bring it up at the estimate rather than after.

Then it gets painted, and the paint on new fiber cement will outlast paint on old wood by years because the surface underneath is stable. Start to finish, this is my own work. I have been doing this thirty years, I am on the job every day, and I am the one accountable to you when the wall opens and something needs a decision. Electrical and plumbing go to licensed trades. The carpentry is mine.