Exterior Remodeling

What a multi-trade exterior job covers

Most of the exterior work we take on is not a single repair. A house that needs new siding usually has windows of the same age, trim that has been painted over rot for a decade, and flashing at the doors that was never right to begin with. When those parts get replaced one at a time, by different people in different years, every new piece is fitted against something old and tired.

An exterior remodel puts those trades on one plan. We walk the whole shell with you and write down what is being replaced, what is staying, and what we will look at once the old material is off. That written scope covers the siding and trim, the windows and the entry, the gutters where they tie into the trim, and the flashing that connects all of it.

It is a bigger commitment than a siding job, and it is not the right answer for every house. If your windows are ten years old and sound, we will tell you to keep them. The point is to replace what has reached the end of its life at the same time, so the new parts are designed to meet each other.

Doing the trades together also lets the design hang together. Window casings, corner boards and the frieze can be sized as one trim package, and siding courses can be laid out to line up with window heads and sills. Those are small things one at a time, but they are what make an exterior look built rather than assembled over twenty years.

Why the order of work matters on the shell

A wall keeps water out by layering. Housewrap laps over the flashing below it, window flanges sit on a sill pan and under the wrap above, head flashing kicks water out past the trim, and the siding sheds whatever gets behind it at the bottom. Each layer only works if it went on in the right order relative to the one next to it.

When windows go in one year and siding another, somebody ends up slitting the wrap to slide a flange under it, or taping over a lap that should have been woven. Those shortcuts are where we find wet sheathing years later. On a combined job we sequence it properly: tear-off wall by wall, sheathing repairs, wrap, windows and doors flashed into it, then trim, then siding.

We also work one side of the house at a time where we can, so a wall is never left open overnight with a nor'easter coming. New England weather does not wait for a schedule, and a well-run exterior job is planned around the forecast as much as the calendar.

You know which side of the house we are on this week, when the windows are due, and when an inspector is coming.

What we usually find once the old cladding comes off

Every exterior job has a moment when the siding comes off and the house tells you its history. On older colonials and Capes we often find original board sheathing gone soft under the windows, no housewrap at all, or asphalt felt that has turned brittle. On houses from the 1980s and 1990s, soft plywood or OSB below leaking window corners is common.

Ice dams leave their own marks. Water that backed up under the roof edge often ran down inside the wall at the eaves, and the top of the wall shows it. On the South Coast and the Cape, salt air shortens the life of fasteners and some trim materials, so we look closely at those too.

Nobody can see inside a wall before it is open, so the written scope says plainly which repairs are priced in and which are found conditions. When we open a wall and find rot, you get a call that day with photos, what it takes to fix it and the change in price, before the work goes forward. Nothing gets covered up while you are at the office.

Older houses can hold other surprises too: knob-and-tube wiring feeding an outside light, a porch roof framed into the wall with no flashing behind it, or old siding nailed over even older siding. We would rather find these and deal with them in the open than bury them under new material.

One written scope and one person to call

Steve started Modern Remodeling after years of working for contractors who did not keep their customers informed, and exterior work is where that difference shows most. A multi-trade job has a lot of moving parts: window orders with lead times, a dumpster and staging, a licensed electrician if exterior lights or outlets move, and inspections from the building department.

You deal with us, not with five separate trades. You know which side of the house we are on this week, when the windows are due, and when an inspector is coming. If a window order slips, you hear about it when we do, along with what we are doing in the meantime so the house stays closed.

Structural work on a one- or two-family house falls under the Massachusetts Construction Supervisor License, and Steve holds an unrestricted one. Replacing windows, doors or sheathing commonly calls for a building permit under the state code, 780 CMR. We pull it, schedule the inspections and keep you posted on each one.

Keeping the house closed up and the site clean

A house under exterior work is still a house people live in. We protect plantings and walkways before tear-off, sweep the lawn and driveway with a magnet for nails at the end of each day, and keep debris in the dumpster rather than on the grass. Windows that come out go back in the same day, so no room is left open overnight.

If the house was built before 1978, we treat painted surfaces as possibly containing lead and follow lead-safe work practices during tear-off: ground covering, controlled cleanup and no dry scraping into the yard. That matters most for families with young children and for anyone with a garden along the foundation.

At the end, we walk every side of the house with you against the written scope. Anything that is not right gets fixed before we call the job done, which is the standard customers describe when they say Steve will not put his name on work that is not right.

See the rest of our exterior work, or browse the gallery for rooms we have finished.