Siding Replacement in Portland and Southern Maine

Signs the wall needs more than paint

Siding rarely fails everywhere at once. These are the signs that the problem is the wall, not only its surface:

• Paint that peels to bare wood within a year or two on one side of the house, usually the side with a bathroom, a kitchen or a roof edge draining against it.
• Soft or blackened bottom courses where snow banks against the wall every winter.
• Cedar shingles that have cupped, split and lifted on the windward walls, letting rain behind the course below.
• Vinyl panels unlocked at the laps after a windstorm, or cracked where a cold snap made them brittle.
• Water stains on interior walls under windows, which nearly always point at flashing rather than the window glass.

Trouble confined to one wall or a handful of courses usually calls for a repair, which costs far less. Trouble on every side of the house, or a product nobody makes anymore, tips the balance toward re-siding, so the wall gets fixed once instead of patched every spring.

What the towns ask for

Maine leaves permit rules to each town, and the published answers on siding run the full range. Portland lists re-siding among projects that need no building permit when no structural changes are made. Cape Elizabeth says no permit is required for the replacement of siding. South Berwick exempts replacing siding with like siding, so a change of material is a question for its office. On the other side, Saco names installing vinyl siding on its permit page, while Falmouth, Scarborough and Wells write their rules broadly enough that altering or repairing any building takes a permit.

The exemptions have conditions. Once rot reaches the sheathing or the framing, most of them end, and Hollis's ends as soon as plywood or framing under the siding has to be replaced. Historic districts add a separate review in several towns. Every town's own wording and number is on its page in our service area, and the whole table is in the permit guide.

What we expect to find behind old siding

The housing here is old: Census figures put about 53 percent of the metro's homes before 1980, and in Portland itself nearly half predate 1940. That tells us what the wall probably looks like before the first board comes off.

• Before 1940: clapboards or shingles nailed to board sheathing with nothing between them, no flashing above the window heads, and paint that is almost certainly lead.
• Mid-century: asbestos-cement shingles or a second layer of siding over the original, which hides whatever rot was there when it went on.
• 1960s to 1990s: plywood or particle-board sheathing behind vinyl or cedar, often with felt paper, and windows sealed with caulk instead of lapped flashing.

The places to probe first are the same on every house: under each window's lower corners, at the bottom courses, and wherever a roof edge ends against a wall. Ice dams send meltwater down inside the wall below the eaves, so on a house with an ice-dam history the top of the wall gets a look too.

Rebuilding the wall, in the right order

With the old siding off, the work that matters happens in a set order:

1. Sheathing repaired wherever it is soft, measured and priced against the area actually found.
2. A water-resistive barrier lapped shingle-fashion, each course over the one below, so water that gets behind the siding runs down and out instead of into the wall.
3. Window and door openings flashed: a sill pan or sloped sill flashing first, the jambs next, the head last, each layer over the one beneath.
4. A kickout flashing wherever a roof edge ends against a sidewall, which the residential code calls for and old Maine houses almost never have.
5. Trim and siding hung to the maker's instructions, with the gaps each product needs to move.

Nobody sees these layers once the siding is back on, so we photograph them as the job goes. You get the photos; the next owner will want them.

Choosing the material for a Maine wall

Most houses here were sided in what grew nearby: painted pine clapboards and white cedar shingles. Newer houses carry vinyl, fiber cement or engineered wood. Each has a place:

The siding guide goes deeper on each, and on why a historic district can decide the question for you.

Lead, asbestos and the old clapboard house

On a house built before 1978, tearing off painted clapboards or trim is covered by the federal lead-safe rule whatever the size of the job, because demolishing a painted surface is one of the things its small-job exemption does not cover. The company needs EPA firm certification, one of its certified renovators runs the job, the ground is covered and the debris contained, and you get EPA's Renovate Right pamphlet before work starts. What that looks like on the job.

Mid-century houses add a second question. Asbestos-cement shingles went onto many houses here in the mid-1900s. Left whole and alone they release nothing; broken, drilled or sanded they can. A sample is tested before anyone plans a tear-off. Covering them with new siding can be a sound choice, but it should be a decision made after the test, with the added wall thickness worked out at every window.

Historic districts and siding material

A building permit rarely cares which siding you choose. A local historic district often does. In Saco's districts installing vinyl siding needs a certificate of appropriateness, and vinyl is not allowed on a building there that is not already vinyl-sided. In Biddeford any change in siding material other than minor repair goes to the Historic Preservation Commission. York's zoning bars vinyl and aluminum siding in its Village Center zones, Freeport waives design review when the new siding is wood, fiber cement or engineered wood matching the old profile, and Brunswick's Village Review Board looks at every change of siding.

Being on the National Register, by itself, puts no limit on the siding you choose. We check which designation the address is under before we price a material that may not be allowed. The historic districts guide lists how binding each town's review is.

What a fair siding contract looks like in Maine

Maine does not license siding contractors, so the contract is where your protection lives. For a home job over $3,000, Maine's Home Construction Contracts Act wants everything in writing and signed by you and the contractor before work begins: when it will start and roughly when it will be done, the whole price, a deposit capped at a third of that price, the warranty language the statute dictates, a choice of how disputes get resolved, and a rule that any change in price needs a written change order.

On a re-side, the line to read twice is the one about rot. A fair contract prices hidden sheathing repair by the square foot, so the number on the final bill follows the area actually found. If a salesperson came to your door uninvited and you signed there, Maine lets you back out by mail within three business days, and nobody may start fastening siding to the house until that window closes. The Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division can tell you whether a contractor has drawn complaints.

Common questions about siding replacement in Portland

Where we work

Siding replacement across greater Portland and southern Maine: Cumberland, York and Sagadahoc counties, from the islands of Casco Bay to the Sebago Lake towns and the New Hampshire line. Each city has its own page with the permit rule and code edition that apply there: