From Old Plank Siding to Cement Board

We’ve been working on a renovation on an older wooden frame house, located in Florida. The age and dampness of the locale caused rot, mold and a termite playground. Having recently replaced the old single pane windows with hurricane impact Andersen Stormwatch windows, we had damage to the siding. Earlier in our journey, we’d been “red-tagged” as the local building inspector insisted on only licensed personnel on the site, and no unlicensed work.

We had a big box store representative come out to give a bid on replacing the old wood siding around the entire house.

After measuring up the siding and the dormers, the box store guy did calculations. The quote came to $72850 and the “sale” pricing, or discount, of -$10927, brought the price down to $61922 for the permit, demo, installation and paint of soffit, fascia, siding, waterproofing. The price includes the shingled area around each of three dormers, and the cupola.

I didn’t have my contractor do the same bid, which would have been an apples to apples comparison. What we chose to do is to order the supplies ourselves, running the supplies through the bid room for discounted pricing.

We could see damage to the wood siding from a large bougainvillea plant. Termites caused further damage, and followed the water dripping from the window air conditioning unit.

The old siding comes out and we can evaluate the damage.  

As the contractor went around the house installing windows, he has been finding termite damage. So, on each specific run of siding, he has had to reframe, set a window or door, and then replace the waterproof membrane, and then install new cement board siding. This has allowed us to get portions done as needed, where the box store bid would have the two installation teams at cross purposes with each other.

Once the side of the house is watertight, and any re-framing has been accomplished, the window is installed.  

Lastly, a cement board plank goes up.  We chose this more expensive product because of its long lasting attributes, combined with mold, rodent, and termite resistance.