Siding in Lawnside, NJ

The wall is the symptom

Cladding that has gone soft, trim that has blown, paint lifting in one vertical strip: all of it reads as a siding problem and almost none of it is. Water is landing somewhere above and running down behind the boards. So we open the wall at the top of the stain rather than the bottom, find the detail that put the water there, and fix that first. Replacing boards without doing it is decorating.

What we take on here

• Kick-out flashings

  The small piece nobody fits, and the single commonest cause of a wet wall under a roof edge.

• Step flashing into the cladding

  Renewed behind the boards rather than smeared across the front of them.

• Dormer cheeks

  Taken back, the junction behind them put right, then re-clad while the staging is still up.

• Wet sheathing

  Anything soft behind the cladding cut out and replaced while the wall is open.

• Trim and rake boards

  High timber that takes the worst of the weather and that almost nobody thinks to look at.

• Fascia and soffit

  What carries the guttering, and the slotted board underneath that lets air into the roof.

What we will hand on

Re-cladding an entire house is somebody else’s trade and needs different staging, so we turn it down rather than practise on your wall. Structural work and masonry go the same way. What we are good at is the part where the roof and the wall meet, which is the part that was leaking.

About matching the existing boards

On a wall that has weathered twenty years, a new section will not match and anybody who promises otherwise is hoping you will not notice. What we can do is put the new work where an eye expects a change, at a corner or under a break. If nothing like that is available, we will tell you before we start rather than after.