Shabby Chic Boho Siding is the most important aspect of your home’s exterior. It covers the bulk of your property and serves a couple of key purposes:
- To protect your home from the elements
- To give it some lovely curb appeal
Good and properly installed siding will do both and leave your home looking fantastic. It can also increase the value of your house, which is a big boost if you plan to sell soon. Conversely, poor and deteriorated siding has the opposite effect. It makes your home look incredibly ugly and diminshes its market value. Lots of homeowners forget to look after their siding, and it can cost thousands to repair or replace – if you leave it for too long. That’s because damaged or worn down siding leads to serious structural issues that will also need to be repaired.
You don’t want it to come to that, so here are the critical signs it’s time to upgrade your siding before things get out of hand.
#1 Some areas are soft to touch
Shock horror: siding isn’t supposed to be soft. Regardless of what yours is made from, all exterior siding should be hard and rigid. You should be able to walk around your house and press on different panels, feeling firm resistance beneath your hand. If you press on the siding and it feels soft – almost like a sponge – then it’s time to pause and take action.
Spongy or soft siding is an obvious sign that something serious is wrong. More often than not it tells you the siding is rotting. This could be down to mold or water damage – though with wood-based siding you may also suffer from termite problems. The cause doesn’t necessarily matter; what matters is that you need to replace your siding righ away before it gets even worse, and even more costly.
#2 Part of the siding has come away from the wall
The whole point of siding is to give your home a protective shell. As a result, it will lie flat to the external walls and look like part of your home. There’s a genuine problem on your hands if part of the siding starts coming away from the walls.
This tells you the siding is too old and has basically lost its will to live. That sounds dramatic, but old siding deteriorates and peels away from walls, leaving gaps for pesky moisture to come in. Also gaps between the siding and external wall can be a sign of a botched installation job. It happens more than you think, so if your siding starts peeling away a few months (or even a year) after a new installation, you know the contractors did an awful job. It’s why this should never be a DIY job, and it should always be carried out by siding professionals.
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#3 Your energy bills are through the roof
Most of the telltale signs for you to upgrade siding revolve around the siding itself. You look for visual cues, but this sign is more about energy efficiency. Now, increases in your energy bills are common, particularly if:
- It’s the winter, so you use more energy to keep your home warm
- It’s a really hot summer, so you use more energy to keep your home cool
- You leave windows open all the time
- Your insulation is old and decrepit
- You’ve got poor seals around your windows
- Your roof is poorly insulated
But what if you check all of these issues and none come up, yet your energy bills are still increasing? This could be a sign that your siding needs upgrading. Perhaps the material isn’t as energy efficient as you hoped, or maybe there are structural failures behind the siding that cause heat loss. Unexplained energy bills could be down to bad siding, in which case an upgrade will solve the problem.
#4 The siding is starting to fade
You can inspect your siding and it could be flat to the wall with on visible signs of cracks or warps – and no soft spots either. It makes you think all is well, but what about the color? When siding starts to fade and look a bit older, this indicates something potentially serious. The coating on the outside of your siding has broken down, which means it no longer protects the material beneath.
Let the alarm bells ring immediately.
Faded siding will quickly deteriorate because it’s got nothing protecting it from UV rays or the weather. Getting an upgrade now will prevent very costly repairs from being done in the future. As a bonus, you update your home with colorful siding that brings charm to the exterior and refreshes the way it looks.
#5 You’ve already repaired it multiple times
How many times have you repaired your siding? Little fixes here and there add up, and it reaches the point where you need to replace the entire thing. It’s like an old car; eventually, the repairs become more costly than just buying a new vehicle. High-quality siding should last for a long time and doesn’t require countless repairs. The fact that you’ve already had someone over to fix it is a big enough warning sign.
It’s even more troubling when they’re fixing the same problems. For instance, they replace a panel here and a panel there because they’re warping or cracking. You won’t find a more obvious sign that your siding is about to die a slow and painful death, so heed the warnings and upgrade the entire system before you keep spending money on repairs.
When any of these five signs are present, you should take immediate action. Catching on early will save you a fortune on endless repairs. Yes, replacing your siding with an upgraded product will still cost a bit of money – but it’s far more cost-effective than paying to repair water damage or forking out loads of cash on higher energy bills. You’ll have to replace it at some point, so let these signs be a clear warning that something has to change.
Featured image: Credit
