Mobile Siding

Siding Board And Batten

Board and batten siding is having a moment down here, and I get why. Those vertical boards with battens over the seams give a farmhouse look that suits a raised cottage in Midtown as well as it does a new build out toward Semmes.

Real board and batten needs furring or solid sheathing behind it so we've got something to hit, battens spaced somewhere around 12 to 16 inches on center, and Z-flashing anywhere two courses meet. The mistake I see most is a batten nailed through both edges. Wood moves in our humidity, and pinned on both sides it splits by the second summer.

What moves the number on siding board and batten is the material, engineered wood versus fiber cement, plus how many gables and windows we're trimming. Our Mobile Siding Installation crews plan the batten layout before a single board goes up.

House Siding

Your house siding has one job: keep Mobile's weather on the outside. Between August humidity, salt air drifting up from the bay and rain that arrives sideways, that's harder work than it sounds.

Every Mobile Siding Installation we take on starts with a walk around the house tapping walls, because soft spots tell you more than a tape measure does. Then we pull the old sidings off, check the sheathing for rot and termite damage (Formosan termites never wait for an invitation), replace what's soft, and get house wrap, window flashing and kickout flashing in before a single panel goes up. Skip that kickout at the roof-to-wall corner and you'll have a wet wall in two years, no matter how sharp the siding for house looks from the curb.

Four to seven days on a typical one-story home. Our siding installers hang panels loose enough to move, since everything expands in a Gulf Coast July.

House Outside Siding

The outside of your house has one job: keep the weather where it belongs. Around here that means rain coming at the wall sideways off the Bay, and humidity that never fully clocks out.

Most of what makes house siding last is hidden behind it. Housewrap lapped shingle style so water sheds down and out, flashing over every window head, kick-out flashing where a roof edge dies into a wall, and a drainage gap so the wall can dry. Skip the kick-out and you'll find a soft stud three years later, usually the hard way.

So when my Mobile Siding Installation crew strips the old cladding, we look at the sheathing and show you what's under there before anything goes back on.

A single-story house is usually a few days to a week, longer if we're chasing rot or waiting out an afternoon thunderstorm.

Board Batten Vinyl Siding

Vinyl board and batten gives you that tall vertical line without the maintenance of wood, which matters when August humidity in Mobile turns anything porous into a science experiment. The panels come in ten and twelve inch widths with the batten cast right in, so the look is consistent from the porch to the gable.

The trick is fastening. Vinyl moves, and a twelve foot panel can grow a quarter inch on a hot afternoon over Airport Boulevard. Nail it snug and it buckles into waves by the Fourth of July. We center the nail in the slot, leave the head about a sixteenth off the flange, and let the panel float the way it was designed to.

Our Mobile Siding Installation work on board and batten siding also means straight furring over an uneven wall, because crooked battens show from the street the way nothing else does.

Siding Business

Running a siding business on the Gulf Coast is a different animal than running one in Ohio. We get sixty-some inches of rain a year, salt air rolling off the bay, and a wind zone that decides your fastener schedule for you whether you like it or not. So when we quote Mobile Siding Installation, the first thing we look at isn't color. It's what's hiding under the old panel: soft sheathing, no flashing over the windows, house wrap stapled up like a concert poster.

Plenty of contractors for siding will just cover that up. New vinyl hides a lot of sins for a season or two, then the water finds it anyway. Water always finds it.

We work Midtown, Spring Hill, West Mobile, Saraland and out toward Theodore, and our siding installers hit studs, not just sheathing.

Lp Smart Siding

LP SmartSide is engineered wood strand treated with zinc borate, which matters down here because termites swarm every spring and our humidity chews through anything that isn't sealed. It cuts and nails like real wood, it holds paint better than most sidings, and it doesn't ripple in July heat the way thin vinyl can.

Fastening it right is the whole ballgame. Every cut edge gets primed before it goes on the wall, nails go into framing and not just sheathing, and we hold a gap where lap meets trim so the caulk has something to grab. Butt two boards tight together and the ends swell by August.

Most Mobile Siding Installation work on a single story runs three to five days, longer when we open a wall near the bay and find soft sheathing waiting.

Metal Siding

Metal holds up to our humidity better than most sidings, which is why we keep hanging it on houses this close to salt water. We run steel and aluminum panels, usually 26 or 29 gauge, with a PVDF finish instead of the cheap polyester that chalks out gray after three or four Gulf summers. What separates good siding installers from the rest is the boring part: hemmed edges, sealed cut ends, stainless or coated fasteners with EPDM washers, and screws snugged rather than gunned down until the panel dimples. Over-driven screws are why some metal walls oil-can and pop in a hard west wind off the Bay. We also leave each panel room to move, because steel grows in July. Most metal Mobile Siding Installation jobs take four to six days once the old wall is off and the wrap is on.

Corrugated Metal Siding

Corrugated metal has climbed off the barn roof and onto porches, gable ends and whole walls around Midtown and out toward Dauphin Island. I like the look. It just punishes shortcuts.

We hang 26 gauge Galvalume panels on furring strips so air can move behind them, because trapping humid Gulf air against a wall is how you get mildew and rust freckles. Screws go through the flat, not the rib, snugged just enough to seat the neoprene washer. Overdrive them and you get dimpled metal and drips in the first good thunderstorm off the Bay. Cut edges get hemmed, and we cut with shears rather than an abrasive wheel, since hot filings stick to the panel and bloom orange by August. Closure strips top and bottom keep rain and wasps out.

An accent wall takes a day or two. A full house of corrugated siding installation runs closer to a week.

T111 Siding

T1-11 is that grooved plywood panel you see on workshops, camps and plenty of older houses out toward Semmes and Theodore. It's handsome, it hangs fast, and it will absolutely punish you for a skipped step. My rule: every cut edge gets primed, back side included, before the panel ever touches the wall.

Bottom edges stay six to eight inches above grade. Horizontal seams get Z-flashing. Caulk is not flashing, and no tube ever sold has changed that.

Nails go six inches apart on the edges, twelve in the field. Then it wants fresh paint or stain every five to seven years, because our sun and the afternoon storms off the bay are hard on a wood product.

Most T1-11 we pull off during a Mobile Siding Installation failed in the bottom eight inches, where sprinkler spray and splashback sat. Good siding installers watch that strip like a hawk.

Aluminum Siding

Aluminum gets overlooked, and I think that's a shame. It doesn't rot, termites have zero interest in it, and it won't soften next to a grill the way vinyl will. On a lot of midtown houses built in the sixties and seventies, the original panels are still up there doing their job. What they've lost is finish. Salt air off the bay chalks the paint until the wall leaves white dust on your hand, and hail dimples the flat runs like a truck hood.

So we either refinish or replace. If we replace, we hem the cut edges, leave the nails a hair loose so the panels can move in August heat, and match the profile before we order. Panels nailed tight buckle by the first hot week.

We handle aluminum under the same Mobile Siding Installation crew that runs our vinyl and fiber cement work.

Painting Aluminum Siding

Run your palm down the sunny south wall. If it comes back white, that's oxidation, and paint will stick to chalk about as well as tape sticks to a wet windshield.

So the prep is the job. We wash with detergent and rinse at low pressure, because blasting aluminum at 3,000 psi drives water behind the panels and into the sheathing. Bare spots get a bonding primer, then two coats of 100 percent acrylic. We work the shaded side and stop by early afternoon in July, since paint skinning over in 95 degree humidity is how you get lap marks. Most houses take three to four days.

Honest limit: paint hides oxidation, not dents, and not panels rattling loose at the nail hem. When the seams have opened up, repainting is money spent twice, and Mobile Siding Installation is the better answer for that house siding.

All Siding

Whatever's hanging on your walls right now, we've probably pulled a version of it off a house in Midtown and put something better in its place. Vinyl, fiber cement, LP SmartSide, steel, aluminum, wood, stucco siding, rock siding and stone veneer, cedar shakes, board and batten. All of it lives on our truck, which is the whole idea behind Mobile Siding Installation as we run it: one crew, every material, no subbing out the tricky part.

Why does that matter? Because the material decides how the house handles a Gulf August. Vinyl shrugs off salt air and 90 percent humidity. Fiber cement holds paint through it. Wood wants attention every few years or it tells on you.

What moves your number is square footage, how many corners and gables you've got, and whether the sheathing underneath survived the last storm. Plenty of sidings hide rot we only meet on day one.

What the job involves

Tear off first, look second. Every honest siding installation starts with pulling the old boards and reading the sheathing underneath, and in this town the rot usually shows up in the bottom two feet of wall and at the lower window corners. We replace bad OSB, tape the window heads, lap the housewrap shingle-style so water runs out instead of in, and set kickout flashing where a roof meets a wall. Then the new sidings go on with the fasteners snug, not strangled. Vinyl needs room to move when August hits ninety-five, and a nail driven tight buckles the wall like a bad haircut.

A typical one-story house runs three to five days, longer if we find rot or a July afternoon storm rolls in off the bay.

Square footage, corners, window count, height and hidden rot are what move a Mobile Siding Installation quote.

What it costs

What moves a siding installation cost around here isn't the brand printed on the box. It's the house.

Square footage is the easy part. After that it's stories, gables, dormers and how chopped up the walls are, because every corner and window is cutting and flashing. Material matters too: vinyl lap goes on quicker than fiber cement, and board and batten siding wants furring and trim work that plain lap doesn't. Rock siding and stucco siding are a different animal again, with lath and moisture detail underneath.

Then there's what we find. Pull the old boards off a house that's taken twenty Gulf summers and a couple of named storms, and soft sheathing under the windows is common. That's carpentry before siding, and pretending otherwise is how you trap water in a wall.

A fair Mobile Siding Installation quote spells out tear off, disposal, wrap, flashing and trim separately.

Why choose us for this

Your siding's chalky, one panel's been flapping since the last blow came up the bay, and honestly you just want to hire somebody once and never think about the outside of your house again. Fair enough.

So here's what we won't do. We won't quote one number over the phone and hand you a bigger one at the end; if we open a wall and find rot behind the old sidings, you hear about it before we swing another hammer. We won't start your house and drift off to another job over near Airport Boulevard. There's no sign-today-or-the-price-vanishes routine, and no nails left in your grass.

I'm not the cheapest of the siding companies you'll call. The established siding installers around Mobile have been at this about nine years on average, and nobody lasts that long bidding blind.

An estimate for Mobile Siding Installation costs you nothing and commits you to nothing.

Frequently asked questions