Mobile Vinyl Siding

Vinyl Siding Installation

The install is mostly about what happens behind the panel. We strip the old cladding, then check the sheathing for soft spots, because Gulf humidity and a slow drip under a window find each other every time. New house wrap, flashing at the openings, and a starter strip run dead level off a laser line, since a starter that's off by a quarter inch is off by a quarter inch all the way to the gable.

Then the nailing, which is where a lot of vinyl siders get lazy. Vinyl moves. A twelve-foot panel grows on a July afternoon, so nails go in the center of the slot, snug but not crushed. Drive them tight and you'll have waves by August.

We hang CertainTeed vinyl siding and Alside siding in dutch lap or traditional profiles. A Mobile Siding Installation on an average house takes us three to five days.

Colored Vinyl Siding

Color is where most folks freeze up, and I get it. Dark panels take a beating from the Gulf sun, and any wall facing south or west catches hours of it every afternoon. The good news is the material has come a long way: CertainTeed vinyl siding and Alside siding both run color-through formulas with UV packages that hold deep tones far better than the stuff hung on Midtown houses twenty years ago. A charcoal or hunter green will still shift before a sandstone will. That's physics, not a sales pitch.

Dark also moves more. A panel can grow close to half an inch on a 98 degree day, so we nail loose and centered in the slot. Snug it down and you'll see waves by August.

On a Mobile Siding Installation we order panels, corners and trim together so the run matches. Deep colors look richest on dutch lap siding, where the shadow line gives them somewhere to sit.

Vinyl Eavestrough

Vinyl eavestrough is just what the rest of the country calls a gutter, and on a freshly sided house it matters more than folks expect. All that water off the roof in a July thunderstorm has to go somewhere, and when it dumps against the foundation or runs behind the trim, the siding gets blamed for what is really a gutter problem.

Vinyl won't rust and never needs painting, which counts for something in salt air. It does move in the heat, though, so seams need room to expand and hangers want spacing around every two feet. Stretch them further and you get the sagging belly in the middle that holds standing water and raises mosquitoes like it's a hobby.

We set the fall toward the downspouts and run the discharge out past the slab, not into it. The same crew doing your Mobile Siding Installation hangs the eavestrough, so nobody's pointing fingers when it rains.

Panel Siding

Panel siding is the plain workhorse of the vinyl world. Long horizontal courses, one clean shadow line, nothing showing off. We hang it in double 4 and double 5 profiles, usually 12 foot lengths, and we stagger the seams so you aren't staring at a zipper running up the wall every time you pull in the driveway.

Thickness matters more than color. Thin stock oil-cans in August heat and chatters when a south wind comes off the bay, so we stay with heavier gauge panels from the Alside siding and CertainTeed vinyl siding lines.

The failure we get called out for most is nails driven tight. A 12 foot panel moves about half an inch between a January morning and a July afternoon, so it hangs on the slot with a little play, or it buckles.

Insulated Vinyl Siding

Here is where I get a little opinionated. Hollow vinyl siding rattles around at about R-0.6, which is basically nothing. Insulated panels have contoured EPS foam laminated to the back, so you land somewhere near R-2.5 and, more to the point, the foam kills the thermal bridging over every stud. In a July where the AC never really shuts off, that matters.

It also lies flatter. Foam-backed dutch lap siding doesn't oil-can and wave the way thin panels do once the wall hits 130 degrees in the afternoon sun.

The install is fussier, and any honest crew will tell you so. Thicker starter strip, deeper corner posts, jamb extensions at every window, and nails left loose so the panel can move. Nail it tight and you'll get buckles by August.

Most Mobile Siding Installation jobs on a single-story house run three to five days.

Board Batten Vinyl Siding

Board and batten is the vertical look, wide panels with raised battens running from the water table up to the eave, and it's having a real moment on the porch cottages around Oakleigh and Midtown.

Vertical vinyl siding isn't just panel siding turned sideways. It wants furring strips over the sheathing so the panels have something to grab, and the bottom cut has to be dead level, because a batten line that wanders tells on you from the sidewalk. Fastening is where most of it goes wrong. Leave each nail centered in the slot with a little play so the panel can move when a south wall bakes in July, and it stays flat. Snug them down and you'll have ripples by August.

We run it in Alside siding and CertainTeed profiles, often as a gable or porch accent over dutch lap siding on the body of the house. A whole house is a four to six day Mobile Siding Installation, weather permitting.

Vinyl Shake Shingle Siding

Shakes are what you put on a gable end or a dormer when the rest of the wall is doing its job quietly and you want one part to speak up. Half the older cottages around Oakleigh and Spring Hill wear them well. Vinyl shake shingle siding comes in panels with a staggered edge molded in, so the trick is watching the repeat. Run them straight out of the box and the same "random" pattern shows up every fourth course, and a wall that looks like wallpaper is the one thing nobody unsees. We break cartons and shuffle courses so it reads honest from the driveway.

The other killer is the nail. Center it in the slot, leave a little play, and August heat has somewhere to go. Pin it hard and the panel oil cans by July. Two gable ends is usually a day, more if we're on scaffolding. Cut-up rooflines and dormer work move the number, since Mobile Siding Installation on a simple ranch and on a steep Victorian aren't the same afternoon. CertainTeed siding and Alside siding both make shake profiles we'll happily hang.

Vertical Vinyl Siding

Vertical panels run top to bottom, so rain sheets straight off instead of sitting in a lap joint, which matters when a Gulf thunderstorm dumps two inches on Midtown in forty minutes. Most walls here aren't flat enough to take it raw, so we fur out with 1x3s roughly every 12 inches, shim the low spots, then set base and utility trim before a single panel goes up.

Here's where it goes wrong. Vertical vinyl siding moves more than people think, and a 12 foot panel can grow close to half an inch on a July afternoon. Nail it tight and by August your gable looks like a washboard. We nail center of slot, leave a gap, and let it float.

Gable ends and porch skirts are where our Mobile Siding Installation crews use it most.

Vinyl Shake Siding

Shakes are where I get to show off a little. Most of the time we aren't wrapping a whole house in them. We're putting them on a gable end, a dormer face, or the porch apron above a run of dutch lap siding, and the place suddenly looks like somebody thought about it. CertainTeed and Alside both make a staggered cedar profile that takes the Gulf sun without the splitting and graying real cedar hands you a few summers in.

The trick is the nailing. Shake panels move more than you'd guess when a July afternoon parks at 98 degrees, so we center the nail in the slot and leave it loose enough to slide. Drive it tight and you've got a wavy gable by August. It's the smallest part of a Mobile Siding Installation job and the first thing anyone's eye lands on.

Dutch Lap Siding

Dutch lap is the profile most folks picture when they picture siding at all: that little concave groove milled into the top of each course, so the shadow line reads deeper than a flat clapboard. It suits the older bungalows around Midtown and Oakleigh better than anything else we hang. Both CertainTeed siding and Alside make it in double 4 and double 5 panels.

Here's where it goes wrong. Vinyl siders who nail the panel tight lock it in place, and a July afternoon in Mobile will push a 12-foot panel a good half inch. Nail in the center of the slot, leave about the thickness of a dime under the head, and let it move. Otherwise you get waves by August.

We stagger seams and turn every overlap away from the street on Mobile Siding Installation work, so the wall reads clean from the curb.

Dutch Lap Vinyl Siding

The profile takes its name from the shallow concave groove milled into the top of each course, and that groove is the whole point: it catches low sun and throws a shadow line across the wall that a flat lap panel simply cannot make. From the sidewalk it reads like hand-planed cedar, which is why so many bungalows in Midtown, Oakleigh and the older blocks of Spring Hill wear it. CertainTeed and Alside siding both run the profile in double 4 and double 5 exposure, and the narrower course tends to suit a small cottage while double 5 keeps a two-story front from looking busy.

That shadow line is honest to a fault. A course hung an eighth of an inch out of level telegraphs the whole length of the wall, and once it starts running off, every course above it inherits the error. So the starter strip goes on to a chalk line, not to the old siding, and we check level again every four or five courses rather than trusting the first one. Heat is the other half of it. A twelve foot panel of vinyl siding can pick up close to half an inch of length on a July afternoon off Airport Boulevard, so nails get hung in the center of the slot with about a nickel's thickness of play behind the head, never driven tight and never through the face. We leave a quarter inch at every J channel and trim run, more if we are installing in January when the panel is already short.

Get those two things wrong and you own the result for twenty years: waviness in raking light, buckled courses in August, panels that pull out of the channel and let wind-driven rain reach the wrap. Most dutch lap siding jobs we do on a single-story house run two to three days once tear-off and any rotten sheathing are handled, and a little longer on homes with a lot of gable and dormer cuts.

It also mixes well. Dutch lap on the body with vinyl shake shingle siding in a gable, or a band of vertical vinyl siding under a porch, is a combination our vinyl siders put together often on older Mobile homes.

Vinyl Cedar Shake Siding

Cedar shake used to mean splitting real wood and then repainting it every few years while the Gulf humidity chewed on it. Vinyl shake shingle siding gives you that staggered, hand-split look without the rot, and it's the panel I get asked about most for gables, dormers and porch skirts in Oakleigh and the older streets off Dauphin.

The trick is randomness. Shake panels come with a repeating pattern molded in, so if the crew stacks them straight up the wall you get the same "face" every four courses and your house looks like a screensaver. We stagger and rotate as we go.

The other thing that goes wrong is nailing tight. Vinyl moves a good half inch across a hot Mobile August, so panels hang loose on the nail hem with room to breathe, or they oil-can by Labor Day.

A gable or two is usually a day for our Mobile Siding Installation crew, not a week.

What the job involves

Every Mobile Siding Installation we run starts the same way: the old panels come off so we can see what's underneath. Down here that's where the surprises live, soft sheathing under windows where wind driven rain has been sneaking in since the last storm season. No point hanging new siding over rot.

Then house wrap, flashing at every opening, a level starter strip, and panels hung rather than hammered flat. Vinyl moves. A twelve foot panel can grow close to half an inch on a 95 degree August afternoon, so the nail heads stay a hair loose and the ends stay short in the channels. Skip that and you've got waves by Labor Day.

We hang CertainTeed vinyl siding and Alside siding, usually dutch lap siding. Four to seven days on a typical house, longer with heavy trim work.

What it costs

Straight numbers, since you asked. Installed vinyl siding around here runs roughly $2.81 to $4.05 a square foot, and most mid grade jobs land near $3.43. A 50 foot ranch off Airport Boulevard usually falls between $3,000 and $7,000 by the time we're pulling the ladders off the truck.

What moves that figure is corners, gables and openings, not just square footage. A simple rectangle is cheap. A house with three dormers and a wraparound porch is not. Profile matters too, so dutch lap siding sits at the friendly end while shake and vertical panels climb, and CertainTeed vinyl siding costs more than the builder grade Alside siding line.

Call us at (251) 551-3653 and we'll measure yours properly. Every Mobile Siding Installation quote we hand you is itemized by wall, trim and tear off, so you can see where the money actually goes.

Why choose us for this

Your south wall has chalked out, a couple of panels behind the hose bib cracked in the last big blow, and you would rather not think about it again until the kids are grown.

So here is what I will not do.

Quote you one number on the phone and hand you a bigger one on the invoice.

Start your house, then pull the crew to a second job across the bay and leave your walls half wrapped.

Push you to sign today because the price supposedly dies at sundown.

Leave nails, offcuts and housewrap scraps in your azaleas.

What you actually want is to hire vinyl siders once and never supervise anybody. That is the whole job for me, whether it is dutch lap siding or a full wrap in CertainTeed siding.

I am not the cheapest quote you will get. Our Mobile Siding Installation estimates are free, and nothing about them obliges you to book.

Frequently asked questions