Every August here, the air comes off the Bay so thick you could chew it, and your walls take that on the chin for months until a storm rolls in to finish the argument.
So yes, we can replace one panel. If a limb punched a hole in an otherwise sound wall, a proper siding repair swaps the damaged pieces and matches profile and color as close as sun faded vinyl will let anybody match it. When the sheathing behind it has gone soft, that's a different conversation, and I'll tell you straight instead of caulking over rot and calling it fixed.
What moves a siding replacement cost is square footage, the material you pick, how many corners and windows need trimming, and what we find once the first course comes off.
A promise while you're deciding: we arrive when we said we would, we don't talk over you, we don't lean on you, and we don't leave nails in your grass for the dog to find.
Keep reading and I'll walk you through how we repair siding step by step, what changes the number, and the questions folks ask before they book our local siding installation service. Ring (251) 551-3653 and I'll come have a look.
Siding Replacement
There's a point where patching stops being honest work. When more than a third of a wall is chalking, cupping, or hiding soft sheathing underneath, siding repair turns into a subscription. You patch, the next August storm finds a new seam, you repair siding again. At some stage the smarter move is siding replacement.
Here's how that goes. We strip back to the sheathing, replace any OSB that's gone spongy, wrap the house, and flash the windows and the roof-to-wall junctions properly, kickout flashing included, because that little bent piece of metal is what keeps water out of your wall. Then panels go on with room to move.
Nails driven dead tight are the classic mistake here, and vinyl that can't expand will wave like a Mardi Gras flag by the second week of July. Most single-story homes take us four to six days; gables, two stories, and a lot of corners add time.
What moves siding replacement cost is material, wall area, and what we find behind the old stuff. Fiber cement, vinyl, and aluminum all price differently, and our local siding installation service can walk any of those replacement siding options with you.
What the job involves
Most siding repair starts the same way. I unhook the course above the damage with a zip tool, back the nails out, and look at what's behind it. That's where the real story lives. Wind-driven rain off one of our afternoon storms slips past a bad J-channel and soaks the housewrap and sheathing for two seasons before you ever see a soft spot.
Then we repair siding the way it should have gone on the first time. Nails centered in the slot, snug but not crushed, so the panel can move when July does what July does here. Panels pinned tight buckle and ripple by August, and caulk won't save them.
Matching is the part nobody warns you about. Fifteen summers of Gulf sun fade vinyl, so fresh stock never blends on a sunny wall. We'll often pull good panels from behind the garage and put the replacement siding there instead.
Two or three panels is a morning. A wall with rotted sheathing runs a day or two, and the folks who handle our local siding installation service do that carpentry before any new panel goes up.
What it costs
Small jobs get priced small. When we repair siding on one gable or a strip of wall under a leaky gutter, you're paying for labor, a few squares of material and the trip out. Vinyl sits around $3.43 a square foot installed here, most of it falling between $2.81 and $4.05. Fiber cement and cedar climb from there, and some specialty profiles push past $10.
Full siding replacement on an average house here generally runs $3,000 to $14,000, so a patch is a very different animal.
Want a real figure for your wall? Ring us at (251) 551-3653, tell us roughly how many feet are damaged, and we'll come look. We price siding repair off the same sheet our local siding installation service uses on whole-house work, just fewer squares of it.
What swings the number is what's hiding behind the panel. Pull a course off a Midtown house after twenty summers of Gulf humidity and you may find soft sheathing, which is carpentry, not siding. Color match swings it too. Faded eighties panels aren't sold anymore, so we'll often borrow replacement siding off a back wall to keep the front looking right.
When siding repair is the wrong fix
Sometimes siding repair is money thrown at the wrong wall. If I push a screwdriver into the sheathing under a rotted board and it sinks in soft, patching that section just buries the problem for a season. That whole elevation needs to come off so the framing can dry, and putting fiber cement composite siding back on a weather-facing wall is usually the smarter move.
Chalky, brittle vinyl siding is the other one. Panels that old have faded past anything still made in that color, so one fresh piece reads like a bandage from the curb.
And plenty of times the siding never failed at all. Water ran over rotted fascia and soffit, or poured off a gutter that has been dumping against the same wall for years, in which case gutter installation solves more than new panels ever will.
Why choose us for this
You've got a few boards buckling on the south wall, maybe a soft spot under a window, and you'd rather deal with it once and not think about it again. Fair enough.
I measure at your house before I give you a figure, so the number I say out loud is the number on the invoice. What moves it is how far the rot has traveled behind the panel, how many courses have to come off to reach sound sheathing, and whether the wall is a clean run or cut up with windows and a porch roof.
I don't caulk over a split butt joint and call that a siding repair. That holds water against the wall and you're paying for it inside two seasons.
Somebody will hand you a lower number than mine. If replacement siding turns out to be the smarter buy, I'll tell you that, and looking costs you nothing.
Frequently asked questions
Can you swap out just a few damaged boards, or does the whole wall have to go?
Usually just the damaged pieces. Vinyl unzips with a zip tool and a panel comes off in about ten minutes once we've got the course above it free. The honest catch is color. Siding that's been baking on a south wall off Airport Boulevard for eight or ten years has faded, and new replacement siding won't match it perfectly. If the damage runs past three or four courses, siding replacement on that whole elevation often looks better than a patchwork.
Will pulling the old siding off wreck what's underneath?
No, and half the reason we repair siding by hand instead of prying it is to find out what's under there. Wind-driven rain from our summer storms gets behind loose J-channel and soaks the sheathing. If the plywood is soft, we cut it out, replace it, and tape the house wrap seams before anything goes back on. Hiding rot behind new panels is how a small job becomes a big one two years later.
How do we get started?
Ring us at (251) 551-3653 and we'll walk your walls with you. Most siding repair estimates take about half an hour, and our local siding installation service covers Mobile, Theodore and Daphne.
Contact Mobile Siding Pros now
If siding repair is sitting on your list, the sooner you pick up the phone the smaller the job stays. A cracked panel and two soft boards under a window is an afternoon of work. Let it sit through a wet stretch and the water gets past the wall covering, and now we're pulling off a lot more than either of us planned on.
When you ring (251) 551-3653, tell me where the damage is, what the siding is made of if you know, and whether the board gives when you press your thumb into it. That tells me whether I'm loading patch stock or a full run of boards. We work Monday through Friday, nine to five, and a message left after that gets returned.
We take siding repair calls in Mobile proper, Saraland, Semmes, Tillman's Corner and out toward Grand Bay.