Vinyl Siding

EvilGentleman: 3rd Aug 2006 - 04:44 GMT

They probably got tired of painting every 5 to 10 years.

Chris Erb: 3rd Aug 2006 - 14:07 GMT

I find that vinyl siding gets pretty crappy looking at around the 10-15 year mark. it gets faded and warped and might have holes and dents in it. With vinyl siding, you can't just replace a bit and paint it to match, the WHOLE house needs to be redone. With wood siding, the siding itself never really needs replaced, only a few pieces here and there as they become damaged (many century old houses still have much of their original wood siding).

Also, wood siding has so much more character, you can have a different colour house every time you paint, you can paint the trim a different colour than the siding (and there is much more trim on a wood house than a vinyl house, look at the windows and along the roof where the siding is). It also upholds the heritage of the house which is obviously quite historic.

I won't even get into the environmental benefits of wood siding over vinyl siding.

I do agree that it is easier to insulate but there are indeed ways to better insulate a house and keep the wood siding.

EvilGentleman: 3rd Aug 2006 - 14:54 GMT

Hmmm... With your fetish for painted wooden siding, perhaps you should consider eventually moving to St. John's, Newfoundland or Copenhagen, Denmark.

EvilGentleman: 3rd Aug 2006 - 15:06 GMT

My grandmother installed aluminum siding on her house over 30 years ago and it is still in fine condition. Her house dates to 1865. I agree that freshly-painted wooden siding is nicer to look at, but in the end, it is up to the homeowner to decide how their home is clad. After all, many of these homes are owned by elders who just wish to have the job done and be finished with it once and for all.

As far as being good for the environment, I'm not so sure. How many wood-clad homes have peeling paint that contains lead and arsenic? And I shudder to think of what lethal chemicals were used to treat the wood 100 years ago. Remember that in those days, nobody understood that everything causes cancer.

Chris Erb: 3rd Aug 2006 - 15:53 GMT

I definitly agree with the paint being an issue. With existing painted houses, there's nothing that can really be done other than removing the old paint and re painting with an environmentally friendly paint. Also, with the chemicals in wood, vinyl siding usually does little to reverse the problem as the wood siding is usually left on the house with a layer of Tyvek or styrofoam (can't get much worse for the environment that that shit!) and then the new vinyl siding.

I do see how vinyl siding has it's advantages but for me, the disadvantages outweigh the adavantages over wood.

It's probably a good thing I'm moving to a city with mostly brick and cement buildings so I can stop concerning myself with this haha.

Susannah : 6th Aug 2006 - 19:59 GMT

I like good old fahioned mud - whatever happened to good old fashioned mud huts - a little hay or field grass for decoration and you're good to go.

Cosmo: 29th Aug 2006 - 06:57 GMT

Ha! For three years I lived in an adobe house in New Mexico. Talk about ease of maintenance! Sure, it's dusty and coarse and you have to live in a desert to have it, but boy it's easy to repair or spruce up. I miss it.

As for the vinyl, I don't like the visual impact very much, but I hate Hate HATE scraping priming and painting and completely understand why someone would have the vinyl. Brick is the best approximation to adobe for wetter climates.

NZer: 14th Dec 2007 - 23:25 GMT

You CAN paint it and even patch holes...the answer to older wooden sided homes that paint cannot fix!

Franny Wentzel: 22nd May 2009 - 22:23 GMT

Vinyl siding - for the look that says 'trailer park meth lab'...

PCL: 22nd Dec 2012 - 18:03 GMT

What had been a nice looking, 30 year old Salem colonial house on my block just got vinyl siding, along with cheap-looking plastic windows (what a con-job!) last summer. It already looks like crap, with green stuff growing up the side of it. On the other hand, my parents had it done 28 years ago and it still looks about as ugly as it was when it was new. It depends a lot on how much sun the house gets; too much and the siding cracks into pieces; too little and it gets infested with mold and slime. The only guarantee is that it will be ugly. There are alternatives to scraping and painting wood (which is about as much fun as drinking bleach): I've put latex stain right over paint with minimal scraping, then kept touching it up until it stopped peeling, it looked fine from that point on and was much easier to maintain. Cement board is also a good choice; I've even seen wood siding gradually patched with it, though I imagine that would void the warranty. My favorite fix is brick and/or stucco, it does alter the look of the house, but at least its a step up and if it's (cross fingers) installed correctly, it can last nearly forever.