Siding Replacement in Green Bay
Siding is a water-management system, not a colour. What sits behind it — house wrap, flashing, a drainage gap — decides whether your wall survives twenty Wisconsin winters. We photograph every wall before we cover it, and you get the pictures either way.
What We Install and Repair
Full re-sides, and the repairs that mean you do not need one yet.
Fiber Cement Siding
The best performer in this climate — dimensionally stable through freeze-thaw, and it does not move at the joints the way vinyl does. Heavier, slower to hang, and worth it.
Vinyl & Insulated Siding
Cheapest per square and genuinely fine when hung correctly — which means hung loose so it can move. Nailed tight, vinyl buckles the first hot week.
Engineered Wood & LP Siding
Real wood texture at a workable price. Every cut end gets back-primed, because the factory only coats the faces and the ends are where water gets in.
Soffit, Fascia & Trim
Ventilated soffit is what keeps your attic dry and your ice dams smaller. It is also the most commonly skipped part of a cheap re-side.
House Wrap & Flashing Repair
Window head flashing, kick-out flashing at roof-wall junctions, and a properly lapped WRB. The invisible half, and the half that decides everything.
Exterior Rot & Sheathing Repair
Priced as its own line once the wall is open. Never bundled in as leverage, and never covered up.
Gutters & Downspouts
Sized and pitched properly, with discharge far enough from the foundation. Undersized gutters put water down the wall you just paid to re-side.
About one house in four that asks us for a full re-side gets told to do soffit, fascia and flashing repairs instead. That is a much smaller invoice and it is often the right one.
Siding Sheds Water. The Wall Behind It Manages What Gets Through.
Every quote you will get talks about the product — the brand, the profile, the colour, the warranty. Almost none of them talk about the four things that actually decide whether your wall is sound in twenty years, because those things are invisible the moment the siding goes on.
Wind-driven rain gets behind every cladding material ever made. That is expected, and it is fine, provided there is a properly lapped weather-resistive barrier, flashing at every penetration, a drainage gap for water to run down and out, and dry sheathing to begin with. Get those wrong and the siding still looks perfect while the wall rots behind it.
- ✓Weather-resistive barrier, lapped shingle-style so water runs out
- ✓Kick-out flashing where a roof meets a wall — the single most-missed detail
- ✓A drainage gap behind the cladding, especially with insulated vinyl
- ✓Dry sheathing first: we photograph it, and you see the photos
Five Lines That Explain a Three-Thousand-Dollar Gap
When two quotes differ by thousands it is almost never the siding brand. It is these. Ask every contractor about all five, including us.
Is the old siding coming off, or being covered?
Going over the top is faster and cheaper and it means nobody looked at your sheathing. On a house over thirty years old in this climate, that is a gamble with your wall.
New house wrap, or reusing what's there?
Thirty-year-old felt that has been perforated by a thousand siding nails is not a weather barrier. New WRB should be a line item. If it is not on the quote, it is not happening.
Flashing — named, or assumed?
Window head flashing and kick-out flashing at every roof-wall junction. These are small parts that prevent the two most expensive failures we see. A quote that does not name them is quoting a different job.
How is rot handled when they find it?
Everyone finds some. The question is whether there is an agreed per-sheet rate in the contract, or whether you will be negotiating on day three with your wall open and no leverage.
Soffit, fascia and gutters — in or out?
Leaving them is a legitimate way to save money, but it should be a decision you made, not a gap you discover. New siding beside twenty-year-old fascia is also just visibly wrong.
Walls Around Brown County
Including a couple of photographs of what we found once the old siding came off.
What Zone 6 Does to a Wall
Green Bay runs roughly forty freeze-thaw cycles a year and sits under snow for months. Detailing that is adequate in Tennessee fails here, and this is where.
Freeze-thaw opens every joint
Water gets into a butt joint, freezes, expands, and levers it wider. That is why joints get flashed and back-primed here and why we do not rely on caulk as a water barrier.
Ice dams push water uphill
Meltwater backs up under the roof edge and gets in behind the fascia. Ventilated soffit and proper attic airflow do more for your siding than the siding does.
Snow sits against the bottom course
Cladding needs to stop clear of grade and of where snow piles. A course buried in a drift for three months wicks, no matter what it is made of.
Vinyl has to be hung loose
A vinyl panel moves over a half-inch across our temperature range. Nailed tight it buckles, and buckled vinyl is almost always an installation fault rather than a product one.
Back-prime every cut end
Engineered wood and fiber cement are sealed at the factory on the faces only. Every cut you make on site exposes raw material, and unsealed ends are where swelling starts.
Assess, Strip, Photograph, Clad
The third step is the one that separates us, and it is the one that costs us money.
Wall assessment
We walk the elevations, probe soft spots, check flashing lines and look in the attic. Often the honest answer is repairs rather than a re-side, and we say so.
Quote with a rot rate
Itemised, naming the wrap, the flashing and the trim — plus an agreed per-sheet rate for sheathing replacement so nothing is negotiated with your wall open.
Strip & photograph
Old siding off, every wall photographed before anything is covered. You get those photos the same day, and if there is bad news you see it before we price it.
Wrap, flash & clad
New WRB lapped correctly, flashing at every penetration, drainage gap, then cladding with back-primed cut ends. One to two weeks for most houses.
The Photos Cost Us Money and We Take Them Anyway
Once the old siding is off, your wall is visible for about a day. After that it is covered for thirty years and nobody — including you — will ever see it again. That single day is the only moment anyone can verify what was actually done.
So we photograph every elevation before it is covered: the sheathing, the wrap laps, the flashing at every window head and roof junction. You get them the same day. It occasionally costs us a contract when the photos show rot we then have to price, and it is still the right way to run an exterior company.
- ✓Every elevation photographed before cladding goes on
- ✓Sheathing condition, wrap laps and every flashing detail
- ✓Sent to you the same day, not on request
- ✓Rot priced at the agreed contract rate, never renegotiated
What People Say
They took the old siding off and found the sheathing was black under both bathroom windows. They photographed it, called me out to look at it, and priced the repair before covering anything. The last contractor would have wrapped straight over that.
Two quotes were three thousand cheaper and neither mentioned house wrap or flashing. I asked Weatherborne why theirs cost more and got a twenty-minute answer with photos of other people's walls. That was worth the three thousand.
Four winters and the joints have not opened. They back-primed every cut end, which apparently nobody does, and it is the reason the paint still looks like it did.
They said our vinyl was fine and just needed the soffit and fascia done plus two flashing repairs. Saved us about twenty thousand dollars we were fully prepared to spend.
Not Sure If You Need a Full Re-Side?
About one house in four that asks us doesn't. The wall assessment is free and the answer is often a much smaller invoice.
Siding, Honestly
Can you side over the top of the old siding?
Physically yes, and some contractors will. We will not on a house of any age in this climate, because it means nobody has looked at your sheathing or replaced a weather barrier that is likely perforated by decades of nails. You are paying for thirty years of cladding over an unknown wall.
What does a full re-side cost in Green Bay?
For a typical 1,800-2,200 sq ft house: vinyl runs about $14,000-$22,000, engineered wood about $22,000-$32,000, and fiber cement about $28,000-$42,000. Those include tear-off, new house wrap and flashing. Sheathing repair is separate and quoted at an agreed per-sheet rate.
Fiber cement or vinyl?
Fiber cement performs better through freeze-thaw and holds its lines; vinyl is roughly half the price and genuinely fine if it is hung loose enough to move. The real answer depends on how long you are staying. Anyone who tells you vinyl is always the wrong choice is selling fiber cement.
What happens if you find rot?
You get photographs the same day and it is priced at the per-sheet rate already written into your contract. That rate exists precisely so nobody is negotiating on day three with an open wall and no leverage. In about one house in four we find something.
How long does it take?
One to two weeks for most houses, weather permitting. We do not strip more wall than we can dry-in the same day, so your house is never left open overnight — which matters here in a way it does not everywhere.
Do I need to do the soffit and fascia too?
Not necessarily, but decide it deliberately. Ventilated soffit is what keeps your attic dry and your ice dams smaller, so if the existing soffit is solid board with no ventilation it is worth doing while the scaffolding is up. New siding against tired fascia also looks exactly like what it is.
Will new siding fix my ice dams?
No. Ice dams are an attic heat and ventilation problem — warm air melts snow, it refreezes at the cold eave, and water backs up under the roof edge. Soffit ventilation helps, and we will tell you if that is your issue, but siding is not the fix and anyone selling it as one is wrong.
Is there really a difference in installation quality?
It is almost the only thing that matters. Every mainstream siding product performs adequately when installed to its manual. Nearly every failure we are called to repair is an installation failure — missing kick-out flashing, unlapped wrap, nailed-tight vinyl, unsealed cut ends. That is why we photograph the wall.
Get a Wall Assessment
Free, and often the answer is repairs rather than a re-side. We check the elevations, the flashing lines and the attic before we quote anything.