House and Home

Man oh man… I have got to say that the recent remodel I did on my home this last month was very stressful and intense. We have wanted to replace the siding on our home since we moved in, because the cedar siding tends to mold so fast. If you dont clean it at least once a month, the once white house, turns green anywhere there is shade. Its really frustrating.

So before we started our project, we researched pretty much every kind of exterior siding that we could find. Home improvement, while stressful and hard work, is usually worth the payoff in the end. However, with this particular ongoing project that we started, I never thought that we would see the end.

We thought about installing vinyl siding, aluminum siding, and cement board siding also known as Hardie siding or hardiplank. In the end we decided that we would go with the one we thought would last the longest on our home which was James Hardie siding. I forget exactly what we pay per square foot but the upfront cost of Hardie siding over the vinyl and aluminum siding was actually more expensive, but after researching all the different products we figured that the Hardie siding would last us the longest.

First we had to demo the outside of our home by pulling off the old siding a piece at a time. With me, my wife and kids all working on it together, the demo took us about four days to complete. I’m sure if you got a professional siding contractor to come in and rip off the old siding and hang the new stuff, they would probably be in and out in about a week. Don’t laugh, but this project took us a little over a month to finish.

When I say a month, that only means the demo work and the installation work, that doesn’t even include all the caulking and painting that we had to do after we were finished hanging the siding. Our home only has two exterior doors and eight Windows, so we didn’t have to buy a lot of Hardie trim to trim out the doors and windows, but it was a little tricky getting it just right. Some people like to install the siding first and then put the trim over the top of the siding, however I prefer to install the trim around the doors and windows first and then butt the siding up to it. I feel that this gives you a much better seal, and a cleaner look.

I think our siding came with a 30 or 50 year warranty, not sure I would have to look that up to be 100% positive. I figure we won’t even live in this particular house for even 10 years, so a 30 year warranty is way more than we needed.

Overall it was a great experience learning how to put on the siding, and really the toughest part was getting it started. Once you have that level line for your first bottom piece, the rest of the installation process actually went pretty fast. We were only working on the siding about one or two hours a day after work, so this is the reason it took us what seemed like forever to finish.

Well that’s my experience with our siding project, if you are considering installing new siding on your home and have any questions feel free to ask I’ll try to answer as best as I can.