Wood & Fiber-Cement Siding Installers in Houston, TX

Houston Cedar Siding

You might like the idea of wood siding for your home, but once you start looking into it, you'll probably realize there's no way for wood to withstand the amount of rain Houston gets every year. The one exception is cedar. Cedar has a natural resistance to the rot that is nearly inevitable when other woods stay wet for prolonged periods of time. Installing Houston cedar siding is a viable home improvement project. Along with durability, cedar provides an immense amount of energy-efficiency and sound insulation.

Cedar Shake Siding
In Houston, cedar shake siding is the preferred siding material for those who want the look of wood. Shake is made from real wood and involves splitting logs into manageable pieces instead of sawing it on all sides. It produces a slightly different texture that many homeowners like.

Other types of cedar siding for Houston homes include beveled and panelized siding. Cedar can also be treated to provide an extra layer of protection and create interesting effects. Most protective coatings of this kind will need to be reapplied every few years, but will almost certainly extend the lifetime of your Houston cedar siding. Various stains and paints will provide a vibrant punch while maintaining the unique texture of the cedar wood. Cedar resists water absorption, but it's not impervious. To reduce the drying time after rain and help preserve your cedar, keep the sides of your home relatively free of overgrown trees and plants.

Vinyl Cedar Siding
Cedar vinyl siding is, as you might expect, not really cedar at all. This siding is made from vinyl and has a cedar wood finish that can often be mistaken for the real thing. Vinyl is all but maintenance-free and should be cheaper and easier to install than real wood. If you're not absolutely set on wood siding, you should at least consider and receive bids on vinyl cedar siding as well as the real thing. You might decide that the touch, aroma, and rich texture of real cedar siding is worth the extra cost, but at the very least be aware that this alternative material exists.

Cost of Houston Cedar Siding Installation
It's difficult to say just how much a cedar siding installation is going to cost. It depends not only on the size of your home but also the design, quality, and treatments of your cedar. Naturally, if you're going to make Houston cedar siding work, you'll need to select premium grade wood. Still, you may be pleasantly surprised to find cedar siding isn't much more expensive than its vinyl counterpart. It's not uncommon to see cedar siding installations for well under $10,000. Some of the cheaper projects can go as low as $5,000. It never hurts to get bids from Houston cedar siding contractors and talk to them about the quality, exact performance, and any warranties they may have on their siding products. Keep in mind, though, that part of the cost of installing cedar isn't just the initial installation but the cost of future maintenance.

Project Length
Siding installations tend to be labor intensive as it is and one of the reasons cedar siding costs so much has little to do with the price of the lumber. A quality cedar siding installation in Houston, or anywhere else for that matter, can take up to a week or more to complete. Combine this with the fact that weather may very well delay the project, and you?ll see why it's not uncommon for cedar siding to take the better part of a month to get up and running. Since siding installation involves consistent pounding of nails that cause noise and vibrations within the home, most homeowners arrange to have their Houston cedar siding contractors work on the project while they're not there. You'll still want to inspect the work as it progresses, but if you can figure out a schedule with your contractor, it shouldn't pose a huge inconvenience during the week or weeks of installation.

Houston Hardie Board Siding

Many homeowners start looking at siding for their home and immediately discover how beautiful wood siding can be and how durable and affordable vinyl siding is. If they dig a little deeper, they are sure to hear about Hardie board siding. This siding is made from cement fibers and delivers much of the look and feel of real wood and actually performs better than vinyl. In Houston, Hardie board siding is particularly popular, as it is in many places with severe weather.

Hardie Plank Siding
Hardie plank siding is the same as Hardie board siding: same thing, different name. But no matter what it's called, the cement fibers offer one of the only siding materials than can be counted on to protect your home year in and year out. It's also fire and pest resistant. You might wonder how exactly cement is supposed to create the look and feel of real wood for your home in Houston. Hardie plank siding must be painted, but this paint or color treatment can be applied to any number of Hardie siding designs to create virtually any look you can imagine. On the other hand, Hardie siding will absorb and retain paint long after any other exterior or interior paint job has begun to fade. There's no need to repaint or reseal every few years, as there is with so many of the alternatives.

Cost
Although generally more expensive than vinyl, Hardie board siding is one of the more inexpensive siding options out there. Given the unmatched durability and ease of maintenance, a Houston Hardie board siding installation is truly one of the most cost-effective siding options on the market. We see Houston Hardie siding projects come in as low as $3,000 to more than $10,000. Opting for different fiber cement products and different Houston Hardie board siding contractors may also change the final cost of your siding installation.

Project Length
The unparalleled strength of Hardie plank siding comes from the hard, brittle surface of the cement. This same brittleness, though, also makes it vulnerable to cracking. Your kids will be able to kick a soccer ball against your fiber cement siding without causing any damage, but a hammer and nail can ruin a plank instantly. Houston Hardie plank siding requires specialized installation techniques. This means that the work will most likely need to be done by a qualified professional and that it may also take an extra day or two longer than other siding projects.

Expect your Houston Hardie plank siding contractor to be pounding on the outside of your home for a couple days to a week or more. Naturally, periods of rain can set your project back somewhat. Plus, many homeowners arrange to only have contractors working on their siding during the day while they're away from home. Needless to say, the noise can quickly become a nuisance otherwise.

Houston Cement Siding

In Houston, siding is not an insignificant feature of your home. Heavy rains, strong winds, heat, humidity, and a piercing sun make siding an invaluable part of your home. Local climate also makes the performance of your siding an important issue when selecting a cladding material. If you've already started looking into home siding, you probably know there are quite a few options out there. In Houston, cement siding offers the kind of tough-as-nails performance you might expect from its name. What you might not expect, however, is that this siding is also among the less expensive options, and need not resemble the drab, coarse concrete of your sidewalk.

Understanding and Choosing Cement Siding
Cement siding isn't just cement. It's a composite of cement, sand, water, and wood pulp, which is why it's also called fiber-cement siding. This specifically engineered product has all types of benefits for home siding. It's fire-resistant, pest-resistant, and is all but impervious to moisture, rain, impact, and wind. In short, it's as indestructible as stone siding at a fraction of the cost. Consider cement siding a miniature Galveston Sea Wall for your own home. On a street full of homes with vinyl siding, yours may be one of the few left relatively unscathed the next time a hurricane roars through the Gulf. In fact, you should check your homeowners' insurance to see if you stand to receive a discount for installing this low-risk siding.

This is what the nature of cement siding has to offer you and your home, but you'll also have a few choices to make, even after you've settled on cement siding. The appearance of fiber-cement can be fashioned to imitate other popular and beautiful siding materials. Most commonly, fiber-cement is engineered to appropriate the look of wood or stone siding. If you don't have your heart set on one of these looks, though, you may want to paint your cement siding. Fiber-cement holds paint well, and you won't need to re-paint your siding for some time. Long after your neighbor's siding has faded into a lackluster material, your cement siding will remain vibrant and ready for a new coat whenever you feel the time is right.

Installation
As worry-free as cement siding is for homeowners, its installation is far from it. The inflexible nature of fiber-cement makes it difficult to work with, meaning only experienced professionals should tackle the job of installation. If you're a hardcore DIYer, you should probably look at a different siding material. Of course, most of us don't intend to install our own siding, anyway. Still, you'll want to talk to several different siding contractors about their specific experience with cement siding. You don't want someone who specializes in other siding materials to assume the basic principles are the same, and that surely they can figure it out. Fortunately, cement siding in Houston and around the country has become, and is becoming, more and more popular. Chances are we'll be able to match you with several local siding contractors who have experience specifically with fiber cement. Talking to all of these contractors can help you feel confident that you've chosen the right person for the job and for the right price.

Cost of Cement Siding
The cost of home siding is a slippery notion, especially with more choices within each siding material. Certainly, you can find vinyl or aluminum siding materials that won't run as much as cement siding. The problem is these siding products are thin, untreated, low-end materials. Vinyl and aluminum siding can be great siding materials, but only when they are constructed with additional thickness and/or coatings. The new upgrades to these materials are meant specifically to challenge the performance of cement siding. The problem is these upgrades also upgrade the cost, such that cement siding remains the most cost-effective siding over the long run.

HomeAdvisor tracks all the home improvement projects we process to give you some idea of how much your project may cost. Naturally, the size of your home will play the biggest factor in the final price tag, but again, the choices you make, such as the finish or paint you want, will also have some influence on the cost. Our data tells us the national average for cement siding is around $7,000, although in Houston it's common to see projects come in well under this number. We've even had a couple projects come in less than $3,000. Of course, if you've got a sizable home and you're installing high-end cement siding top-to-bottom, your project can also easily exceed the $10,000 mark.