Siding in Lafayette, LA: Installation, Repair, and Replacement

Siding is the outer skin of your house. This work runs from swapping a few cracked or rotted boards to tearing the whole wall covering off, checking what is underneath, and putting up new material along with the trim, flashing, and house wrap that keep water out. The visible panels are only part of it, and what is behind them usually decides how big the job gets.

Doing this in Acadiana

Acadiana is hard on siding. The humidity stays high most of the year, so wood siding and the sheathing behind it hold moisture and rot from the back side where you cannot see it. Heavy rain and wind driven storms during hurricane season push water into any gap around windows, doors, and seams, which is why flashing and caulking matter as much as the panels themselves. Termites are common here and will move from the soil into wood siding and framing that sits too close to the ground or stays damp. If you have a slab that shifts on our clay soil, you may also see siding pull or crack along one wall as the house moves. Fiber cement and vinyl handle the moisture and bugs better than raw wood, which is a big reason you see so much of it around Lafayette, Youngsville, and Broussard.

How to tell where you stand

• Press on the siding and the wood underneath with your thumb. If it feels soft, spongy, or crumbles, there is rot behind it.
• Walk the walls after a rain and look for staining, bubbling paint, or dark streaks below seams and windows, which means water is getting behind the panels.
• Look for panels that are loose, buckling, cupping, or pulling away from the wall at corners and edges.
• Check inside near exterior walls for peeling paint, soft drywall, or a musty smell, which can trace back to failed siding.
• Tap along the bottom courses and near the ground for the hollow, papery sound or mud tubes that point to termite damage.

What makes the job bigger or smaller

• How much wall is affected. A few boards on one side is a different job than wrapping the whole house.
• What is found once panels come off. Rotted sheathing, damaged framing, or termite damage adds work that a surface look cannot predict.
• The material you choose, since vinyl, fiber cement, wood, and metal each install differently and take different labor and trim.
• Height and access. A two story wall, tight lot lines, or landscaping in the way slows the work down.
• Trim, flashing, windows, and corners. More openings and detail work mean more time than a plain flat wall.

Yourself, or a pro

A handy homeowner can reasonably replace a single cracked vinyl panel, re-caulk a seam, or repaint, and you can absolutely do the inspection steps above yourself before you call anyone. Where it gets past most people is anything involving water management or structure. If the sheathing or framing is rotted, if flashing around windows and doors has to be redone, or if you are covering a whole wall, that needs someone who knows how the layers work together, because siding installed over a bad moisture detail just hides the problem until it gets worse. Second story work and fiber cement, which is heavy and cuts up dust you do not want to breathe, are also better left to a crew with the right gear.

What to ask anybody quoting this, us included

• What will you do if you pull off panels and find rot or termite damage underneath, and how does that change the work?
• How do you handle the flashing and house wrap around windows, doors, and seams?
• What exact material and product line are you installing, and why that one for my house?
• Who does the actual work, your own crew or subcontractors?
• What happens to my old siding and the debris when the job is done?