Siding in Orange, NJ

A lot of houses in Orange have been painted so many times there is no more paint left to hold, and that is usually when people call about siding instead of another paint job. Once the old siding comes off, we find out what has really been happening underneath, often for decades. Wood sheathing near the sills, around old window trim, and at the bottom courses is the first place moisture gets in, and on a house this age it is common to find sections gone soft and dark before anyone ever sees a stain on the inside wall. All of that gets cut back to solid wood before anything new goes over it.

Once the sheathing is sound, the house gets wrapped in a proper weather barrier before the siding goes on, not just siding nailed straight over the old boards. That barrier is what keeps wind driven rain from finding its way back into the wall the way the old siding let it. Trim gets rebuilt where it has rotted at corners and window heads, and soffit gets replaced with vented panel where the old solid soffit was choking off airflow into the attic.

Vinyl, fiber cement, and wood each hold up differently against our winters and our humid summers, and which one makes sense usually comes down to upkeep and what you want to be doing again in twenty years.