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Are you ready for a free estimate for your next siding, windows or painting project?

P.S. We also made a new video for our Portland roofing company, Roof Life of Oregon. Have a look at our Roof Life of Oregon video when you’re done here.

At 1st Oregon Exteriors, we don’t install vinyl siding…and I’ll tell you why.

When the re-siding frenzy started and the class-action lawsuits were in full stride, it was interesting to see what all the homeowners began to choose. At first it was a mix of 40% choosing cedar siding, 50% going with fiber cement siding (like Hardie Plank) and 10% opting for vinyl siding. During the heyday of the siding market, at 1st Oregon Exteriors, we had 8 siding crews and only one that did vinyl. We chose as a company to only use the best, highest-grade siding products in each category. For vinyl that meant Wolverine’s thickest, toughest siding available. In Portland, everyone else was using some of the thinnest, cheapest stuff that I have ever seen. I am aware that the rest of the nation was in love with vinyl and expected the craze to arrive here but it never did. There were a handful of builders that used it but soon stopped after 5 years and Wolverine doesn’t even make the good stuff anymore.

So far, the problem with most vinyl siding is that it looks cheap forever. The seam…I personally cannot get over the seams, they just stare at you. For years, vinyl was used to hide problems; like old growth cedar siding painted with lead-based paint. Told that it was too costly to remove, folks in Portland were convinced to just cover it up. You can’t do that with the OSB products, because the siding products themselves were rotting and had to be removed.

Most of the vinyl siding in Portland was installed to make a profit for the siding company. It was not installed to look good, work right, and be a homeowner’s lasting solution to their siding needs. The end result is that in a very short period of time it looks seriously shabby. The color will fade on the southwest sides and the mold and mildew will grow on the northeast sides. And that’s for the siding that stayed on! Just try and match one or two siding pieces in a wall after the manufacturer decides that your style and color is to be discontinued. You cannot paint it, so you’re stuck.

The wind is also a factor in Portland. Just ask anyone whose 3-year-old vinyl panel ends up down the road. Most likely on inspection, it is determined that your vinyl siding was not nailed to the studs. If your home’s siding was nailed incorrectly, it will continue to blow off. Finally, when you can’t find the wind- blown piece, your contractor tells you that your color has been discontinued.

How about in your ourdoor entertainment areas? Loads of people put their barbecue too close and melt a piece of vinyl! Have you ever seen a new piece of siding in a field of old vinyl? No offense, but redneck comes to mind!

The area behind your gutter and under your roof is called a soffit and fascia. At the ends of your roof- line are gables. What do you do with those areas? These areas are big profit centers for the vinyl industry.  Here’s how it works: They show up with their crew to do your siding and tell you that you will need to have a painter pre-paint everything not covered in vinyl. (As if you have a painter on standby!) The fact is you’re asking the painter to do the gutters, soffits, facia, and barge rafters. All of these are high cost and low profit centers to the painter, because everything you’re requesting is tedious work with little chance for profit because it holds little value to the homeowner in the big picture of things. You can make the request and get a lot of response but once the painter finds out what you want done he will not likely submit a bid. If he does give you a quote, it will be high because he doesn’t want to do it.

Now you’re ready for the close: You decide to have the vinyl company close in the soffits, and wrap the fascia and barge rafters in vinyl-coated lead. This is a huge profit center. Personally, I find the entire charade a bit too slick for laid-back Portland.

How about those box elder bugs and the bees? They love vinyl siding; they get under and behind it with little effort and then find their way into the interior of your home. I have replaced many a home’s siding for this very reason. The vinyl siding industry claims “hey it’s not the siding product; it’s the installer that caused that.” I think it’s all a package. Remember, along with those east coast siding experts comes the “Tin Man” sales guy into your home with the slick sales pitch. No thanks!

The actual vinyl product is very inexpensive and the installation process in the fastest in the arena of all siding products. All of the profit in vinyl siding is made in the sales. You are paying a guy a lot of money to give you an inexpensive product with low costs of installation that will actually cause you grief for a very long time.

These are the facts for vinyl siding in the great Northwest. You are now an informed consumer!

Sincerely, Patrick D. Morin, President and Founder of 1st Oregon Exteriors, since 1996.

PS…We’d love to side your home. Just don’t ask us to use vinyl. Call us or get a free estimate.

Mold, mildew, and dry rot are not to be taken lightly and should be a major concern in Portland. Some of our largest repair jobs are the result of improperly flashed deck attachments and improper window installation. It costs soooo much less to do it right the first time than it does to come back and fix a disaster. The handyman from down the street, or the contractor who operates out of his mobile office (pickup truck with a ladder) may have a lower bid, but are you qualified to check his work and make sure his weatherization efforts are up to par?

Rich and Cindy Sutherland’s home had been sided with cedar lap siding. The original siding contractor decided to stretch the reveal so he could cover more area with less material. This is a very common cause of cedar siding failure in Portland. Every time a storm with driving rain came to Portland the Sutherlands would get a leak in their window and into the garage ceiling below. Needless to say, Rich and Cindy were concerned. They called a roofing contractor who told them their roof was shot and his solution was to have them spend $12,000 on a new roof. A new roof was installed and the following year, the exact same leak came back! The roofer did not know what to do about it so he referred them to 1st Oregon Exteriors.

1st Oregon’s AAMA Certified Window Expert, Peter Morin and I went out to the Sutherland’s home. Upon inspection, we determined that the reveal of the siding was stretched, meaning the boards didn’t overlap enough. Those siding boards overlap for several reasons. First, gravity won’t let water flow uphill, but if the overlap is too small, wind will blow it uphill and over the top of a siding board into your wall. Second, the proper overlap gives the siding the strength it needs to act as a system. The top edge is narrow and it needs the rigidity and strength of the next layer on top of it to keep it from warping and coming loose.

Simply put, if the siding were put on correctly, his long-term leak issue would stop. The product we recommended was a rustic cedar style Hardiplank siding. A fiber cement product that will do really well handling the southwest exposed front on the Sutherland’s home.

Today as you view the Sutherland’s home, the windows and the deck are all weatherized into the wall. All of the roof-to-wall areas are also properly weatherized. Everything has been done to the manufacturer’s recommended pattern so that their materials warranty will transfer to the Sutherlands.

In addition, the entire weather wall is covered by Portland’s only Transferable Lifetime Workmanship Warranty. Just one of many exclusives found only at 1st Oregon Exteriors. We can help you when you call us at 503-925-0124 or request a free estimate using our online form.

My son and I really liked Bill from his handshake. Our intent was to just meet the neighbors and leave a business card for future help in any of their exterior home projects. Bill told us about his ongoing re-siding project. Time, along with Oregon’s weather had worn out his cedar shingle siding. His current focus was the southwest walls, what we call the “weather walls.” This type and kind of siding is one of the most expensive sidings that you can put on a home, about $1,600-1,800.00 for every 10×10 area. In the remodeling world, an area of that size is called a square.

Bill put us on stand-by, just in case he couldn’t complete the task as he is getting up in age. But, before we left, he had something he wanted me to see. We went into his garage and he showed me a siding shingle that had given its life protecting Bill’s home for 42 years! As you look closely at the siding shingle Bill is proudly holding, you will notice the bottom seven inches are almost completely gone. The next seven inches is the backup row for the exposed row that would be in front of it as it sits on the wall. That bottom edge started out ¼ inch thick before Portland’s wind, rain, sleet and snow whittled it down to nothing.

Some say that a picture is worth a 1,000 words, and in this case Bill’s snapshot stands as a reminder to the rest of the Portland homeowners: Always check the two weather walls on your home, as they will wear out 2-3 times faster than expected.

You may or may not have planned the expense for this calendar year. Most of us try and plan big expenses. Others have their money out working for them or just want to retain their cash for other purposes. And then there are those who can do home projects if the costs are spread out a bit.

That’s why 1st Oregon Exteriors offers to its clients the best financing in Portland. Smart Money Financing is underwritten by EnerBank USA, located in Salt lake City, Utah.

With a short 10-15 minute phone call, qualified homeowners can get approved for a standard unsecured loan of up to $30,000. They have rates that reflect your good credit too!

1st Oregon Exteriors also offers 180 days same as cash financing at no charge, on approved credit.

“We install now, you don’t pay for 6 months!” ASK US HOW.

Every project we estimate for you comes with this special offering. Just think, it all starts with you and your dreams of what your home will look and function like. There are a lot of really neat and fun things to do to the exterior of your home. We are excited to help you to begin, give us a call 503-925-0124.

Let’s face it; most people really don’t care about their exterior siding until it fails, allowing water into the walls of your home. You may discover siding failure when you go to paint your home and you find that you can push your finger right through your siding or trim! And if you have wood windows, Portland’s legendary weather always proves to be too much for the exterior sills and trim.

After you make these discoveries is when you want to figure out what went wrong, or how to make it right.

The really good news is you don’t have to know what happened, or what went wrong. Just call us, and we will look at it for you and give you a solution at absolutely no cost.

If you’re the type of person who would like to know the types and kinds of defective siding here in Portland, Oregon, here is a simple breakdown:

In an effort to replace real cedar siding, at least three companies made Oriented Strand Board or (OSB). They made it out of wood chips and fiber and steam pressed and formed it to look like wood. Between the years 1990 and 2000, thousands of Portland homes were sided with OSB type siding. The most popular siding used in Portland, Oregon was made by L.P. (Louisiana Pacific). It was the first to the market and a lot of builders switch to it from cedar. (It saved them a lot of money and it met the wood siding requirements of the neighborhoods). Right behind L.P. was Weyerhaeuser and Masonite products with very similar products.

All of these products came with a 25-year warrantee, but within 3-5 years, the boards started to swell, absorb water and develop mold and mildew within the boards. All of these types of siding need to be removed and replaced as soon as possible.

The two other types of defective siding you will find in Portland is Masonite’s imitation stucco board. It starts out with a hard outer shell and then quickly softens and begins to rot. 50% of the problem is the product and 50% in due to poor installation. A lot of Tudor style homes built in the last twenty years used this stuff and it is bad news.

Another type of siding in Portland is called EFIS. (Exterior Finish Insulated System). Some call it “Fake Stucco.”

It looks great and you can make some really amazing accents and facades on your home, but when it fails, it will cost you a ton of money to fix or replace. The biggest areas of concern are the window trim accents, transitions between floors, and doorways. They crack out and leak; we have too much water here in Portland for this type of siding.

I hope this information is helpful and I look forward to serving you.

Do you have questions about your siding? Call us, or leave a comment below…

With Oregon’s weather bearing down on the southwest sides of your home’s exterior, something is going to give. And, it doesn’t matter what type of siding you have. It’s a matter of physics. A High-low pressure situation is created by the controlled environment inside your home versus the changing barometer outside. Your home environment creates a siphon for water and air penetration. This means if the caulking, siding, or flashing fails at any of the 100’s of intersections, or a window expands and contracts one too many times, you now have a leak. If you’re lucky, you will see the leak right away and get it fixed, but most leaks will go undetected in your walls and cause a lot of problems. Like mold and mildew to grow and/or dry rot to set in costing you a lot of time, energy, and money. Your best defense is to have your home’s exterior checked every 5 years. To ignore the outside of your home in Portland, Oregon is to make owning a home more expensive than need be.

The two largest repairs that we have remedied in our 12 years of business have both been stucco. One was an EIFS type (imitation stucco) installed incorrectly, the other was traditional stucco installed incorrectly. Both types allowed water to get behind the siding and remained undetected for a period of time resulting in dry rot and fungus inside the walls. Both of these projects were over $130K to fix. Removing and replacing defective siding on most homes will cost about $20-30K, as long as there are no dry rot issues.

Small repairs in your weather walls are a lot less expensive to fix than the above-mentioned projects. Often, it’s a structure such as a dormer that’s allowing water into your home. A dormer is a structure that sticks out of your roof line, usually with a window and it really takes the brunt of the weather. We may just have to take it apart and put it together correctly using components and a skill set not found in the new construction. You may have siding that has a leak, but can’t be detected from an outside ground inspection. The worst thing to do is ignore it. Letting it go just because the rain stopped will end up costing you a lot of money. Contact us if you have concerns about your siding.