DIY Home Siding Repair
The look of exterior siding is usually what makes or breaks the overall attractiveness (not to mention resale value) of a home. There are many siding options available in new construction, but when purchasing a previously occupied home, the new owner is often times stuck dealing with the effects of time and weather on the original siding. Most home purchasers don’t have it in their budget to completely re-side a home; repair is usually the only viable option.
Sarah over at www.uglyducklinghouse.com has the good sense to know when she can tackle a DIY project, and when its scope exceeds her DIY ability. When Sarah moved into her Atlanta, Georgia house, she knew she had her work cut out for her bringing her fixer-upper up to neighborhood standards. She undertook a number of repair issues herself, sometimes with help, often alone.
She did stopgap repairs on some of the siding issues within arm’s reach from the ground; toiled away on the interior of her home; fixed some window frame wood rot and did repairs to her garage siding with caulk and paint. But when it came to the siding on the upper floors of her home, she realized she needed siding experts with the proper equipment and experience who could perform permanent repair work and not the stopgap measures she done on other problem areas.
As Sarah sagely says in her blog, being a homeowner means that she always has more time than money to devote to necessary repair work; siding issues languished for many months as a result of those budget constraints as well as need for more urgent repairs elsewhere in the house.
She used the necessary delay productively however, performing her due diligence with the help of a website called Homeadvisor.com, a free online service. The website offers varied services, hosts lots of reviews and a handy cost calculator that made her estimates more reliable and which helped her zero in on the best repair provider. The great folks at the website even vetted some of them for her when she got no initial bids on the work she needed done.
As a result she was able to find a local company with years of experience in her local area, who not only kept to her original budget, but did so in spite of finding and fixing problems Sarah didn’t even know she had in other siding areas on the house exterior as well as in the gutters on her roof!
Sometimes the better part of homeowner DIYer valor is knowing exactly when to call in the professionals like Sarah did. For a highly entertaining look at Sarah’s process and progress check out her blog at:
http://www.uglyducklinghouse.com/repair-replacement-and-exterior-siding-updates/
For more information on wood siding care and maintenance see our wood siding guides