Siding Contractor in Little Silver, NJ

Little Silver’s housing is older than most of what we re-side, and age changes the job in a way that is easy to underestimate. Houses built in the middle of the last century and earlier were designed around trim. Deep window and door casings, corner boards, porch detail and the shadow lines those throw are where the character of the house actually lives — not in the flat of the wall. Strip that detail off, replace it with a plain panel and a thin corner post, and the house reads wrong even to people who could not tell you why. Fiber cement earns its place on those homes because it can be run in profiles and exposures close to the original wood and it holds paint well enough to keep the color you chose.

The capes and ranches from the borough’s postwar build-out are a different conversation. They are simpler elevations, and on them the decision is less about matching historic detail and more about whether to refresh the surface or upgrade the wall while it is open. Insulated siding reduces thermal bridging and cuts heating and cooling load, and a wall only comes off once in a very long time. Fading, cracking and panels that are bowing are the clearest signals that the existing material is genuinely at the end of its service life rather than just dirty.

Then there is the water. Little Silver sits on the Shrewsbury River, a substantial share of the borough is water, and a number of homes have direct river frontage. Houses near the water take wind-driven rain and salt-influenced air that inland houses simply do not, and that exposure lands on the laps, the fastener line and the sealant at every penetration rather than on the face of the panel. James Hardie fiber cement is built for coastal exposure and wind-driven rain, which is why we raise it first on the river side of the borough. Whatever material goes on, correct overlap, a fastener line that lets the material move, and flashing detailed properly at every window, corner and transition are what keep an exposed wall right in year ten — and installing to manufacturer specification is what keeps the material warranty valid.

How exposed any individual house is varies a great deal from street to street here, depending on how open the site is and how much mature tree cover stands between it and the water. That is a reason to look at the elevations rather than assume the borough behaves as one. On the shaded, tree-lined streets away from the river the problem reverts to the familiar one: damp north and east elevations, dark streaking, surface growth on panels that are frequently still sound underneath. Where a wall has stayed wet for years, we want to know whether moisture has reached the sheathing behind the panels before anyone quotes anything, so we inspect the sheathing beneath first and price second.

We also serve Fair Haven, Rumson, Shrewsbury, Oceanport and Red Bank. If your project involves more than the walls, our roofing work in Little Silver and our gutter services are handled by the same company, and our siding work in nearby Middletown covers the same corner of the county. Compare materials on our siding installation and replacement page, then call for a free written estimate and we will look at the trim as carefully as the walls.