Siding

Siding is the layer that takes the weather so the structure does not. It works by shedding water downward and outward, board over board, and by letting whatever gets behind it drain and dry.

Which means the interesting question on any siding job is never really about the boards. It is about what is happening behind them.

What failing siding is telling you

By the time siding looks bad, it has usually been letting water in for a while. The visible symptoms map fairly reliably onto what is going on underneath:

• Boards cupping, curling or pulling away — moisture getting behind and swelling the material
• Soft or spongy spots — rot, either in the siding or in what it is nailed to
• Peeling paint in patches rather than overall — moisture pushing out from behind the film
• Dark staining below windows or joints — water running where it should be shedding
• Gaps opening at butt joints and corners — movement, failed sealant, or fasteners letting go

The one worth acting on quickly is soft material. Siding is replaceable and inexpensive relative to what is behind it; sheathing and framing are neither.

Spot replacement or the whole elevation

Most calls do not need a full re-side, and we will say so when they do not.

Spot replacement makes sense when the damage is local — a few boards under a window, a corner, an area behind a downspout — and the rest of the wall is sound. Individual boards get cut out and replaced, keeping the courses and the overlap intact.

A full elevation or a full re-side makes sense when the damage is widespread, when the material has reached the end of its life, or when you are already doing enough exterior work that doing it twice makes no sense. Wind- and sun-exposed elevations often need it years before the sheltered sides do — replacing one elevation is a legitimate and much cheaper answer.

Matching, and being honest about it

On a repair, the profile has to match: the same board width, the same exposure, the same overlap, or the eye catches the change in the shadow line immediately even from the street.

Color is harder. Existing siding has weathered, and new material will not match it even in the identical product and paint. On a visible wall, a repair is usually followed by painting the elevation corner to corner — we tell you that up front, because it belongs in the budget from the start rather than as a surprise at the end.

What we handle

• Replacing damaged sections and individual boards
• Full elevations and complete re-siding
• Rot repair in the sheathing and framing behind the siding, when it has reached that far
• Sealing, flashing details and trim at windows, doors and transitions
• Facade updates as part of a larger exterior remodel
• Repairs where siding meets stucco, a common leak point on mixed facades

Built for what the weather here actually does

Bay Area exposure is specific. It is not extreme cold — it is long wet winters, persistent marine moisture, and strong sun on the south and west faces. The failure mode is slow saturation and UV, not freeze-thaw.

That shapes the details that matter: keeping the bottom edge clear of soil and paving, flashing above openings, sealing end grain at cuts, and leaving the drainage path behind the boards intact rather than sealing the wall shut. A wall that cannot dry will fail no matter how good the material on the front of it is.

What it looks like while we are there

Removal is the loud part. Work happens from the outside, so the inside of the house is largely undisturbed, but the affected walls will have ladders or scaffolding against them and the ground below needs to stay clear.

Weather sets the schedule. We do not open a wall we cannot close and dry in before rain, so wet-season work gets planned in sections rather than opening a whole elevation at once.

Across the Bay Area

We repair and install siding in San Rafael, Tiburon, Mill Valley and across Marin, in San Francisco, and out through Berkeley, Orinda, Walnut Creek and Vallejo.

Send photos — one close up on the damage and one of the whole wall from a few steps back. The second one usually tells us more than the first, because it shows whether the problem is the boards or where the water is coming from.