Our Home - built for us

It's much easier to prevent than to “repent” I've been told, and in this case it would have been much less work if RL would have done what he thought in the first place, and removed the trim early-on. As it was he had to replace a bunch of siding and paint the entire house because of a simple trim piece. As a seamstress we say "A stitch in time saves nine." Same applies here. What did I know about siding?

That type of siding requires upkeep in the form of scraping and painting on an almost annual basis. We always thought we couldn't afford vinyl siding so we never afforded it until this house.

PRICE OF VINYL SIDING

We paid $3,200 for siding, including the labor on an 1800. sq ft home, plus garage. Another advantage of doing it yourself, (the hiring and firing_that is) and shopping around for the best buy.

vinyl-siding is made from oil, so today, in just 1 ½ years, that $3,200 may be $5,000 today, due to rising price of oil.

Get a Quality Siding

Look for a contractor who will guarantee his work. Our sub guaranteed his work and we haven't had any trouble even in some very high winds.

If you brick or stucco, you need to see how they prevent the moisture from getting behind the brick or stucco. Many places just put up the “chicken wire” and then start applying the stucco. Up north here, they are having a bit of a problem from stuccoing jobs, due to the extreme cold and possibly moisture getting behind it and then freezing. It's kinda like the roads expanding and contracting and breaking up in the winter time.

With brick you can make sure there is a space behind it so if moisture does get in, there is room for it to get air and dry out, leaving less chance for problems later on.

Generally your exterior sub will do the siding, guttering and downspouts, as well as the soffit and facia and shutters. If you are bricking your home, then you may need an extra sub for the soffit, facia, downspouts, & shutters.

Look for a framer through a company that deals in exterior work. They can often do most of the exterior work, including framing, roofing, shingles, wrapping house, siding, guttering, soffit and facia, windows and doors. Get as much under one roof as possible to speed up the process.

We bought a Direct Club type membership, where we were able to use their buying power, and purchase power for much of the building materials, so we didn't get caught in the “trap” of paying our sub to supply the materials.

We provided most of the materials for our house and got them all at a very decent price, I'm sure we would have been tempted to let the framer provide the wood, the cement contractor to provide the cement, the shingle sub, to provide the shingles, etc. if we hadn't gone thru our Club Membership.

You can check them out at www.DirectBuy.com. Where we are building 3 homes, we saved the membership charges with the first build, so we reasoned that it was worth the investment and would be that much less on the next homes.

In the case of vinyl-siding, the contractor purchased the vinyl-siding and then we paid him. Maybe we could have saved even more by supplying the materials. Our contractor knew what he was doing, and guaranteed us a top of the line vinyl siding.

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