8 Things About Siding That You Should Know About – Why We’re Not the Lowest Bid for Siding

By Thomas Williams, All American Renovations – Elite member of James Hardie™ ALLIANCE · Metro Atlanta and Middle Georgia

Let me answer this before you have to ask.

We’re usually $8,000 to $15,000 more than the guy with a truck and a few helpers. Sometimes more than that.

Against another James Hardie Alliance contractor, we’re usually within $3,000 to $5,000 — and that gap is almost never markup. It’s scope. Somebody’s proposal includes something the other one doesn’t, and you can’t see it from the outside.

This post is about siding because that’s where I’ve got the clearest numbers. But the reasoning is identical on a roof, a deck, windows, cabinets, flooring, an addition. It’s the same conversation with different products in it.

Start with the honest version: two good contractors, $4,000 apart

If you’re comparing two Alliance contractors and the numbers are a few thousand apart, don’t assume one of us is padding. Ask what’s different. Here’s where it usually hides, with real dollar figures:

Is OSB sheathing included? On a lot of houses around here, what’s under your siding is foam board, not a nailable surface. Adding OSB is a $2,000 to $4,000 adder depending on the size of the house. One bid includes it, one doesn’t, and the one that doesn’t is about to nail your siding to foam.

How are your windows getting trimmed? Leaving trim off drops the price roughly $1,500 to $2,000. It also changes what your house looks like for the next thirty years.

Double corners or single? Sounds like nothing. Averages $500 to $600 across a job.

What housewrap? There’s generic, and there’s HardieWrap. A few years back my James Hardie rep told me I was probably the only contractor in the area actually selling HardieWrap. So I made it an option customers can choose.

Is the design you talked about actually in the proposal? You discussed shake in the gables. Is it written down? Everybody remembers that conversation differently once the material’s on site.

And a difference that isn’t about money at all

Is what you’re holding an estimate, or a proposal?

We give estimates on the phone. That’s a range for a house like yours, built from a 3D model, before anybody’s climbed a ladder.

A proposal is what you get after we’ve been to your house, confirmed the details, and put every line item in writing.

Those are two different documents and they cannot be compared to each other. If you’re weighing our proposal against somebody’s phone estimate, you’re not comparing anything yet.

One thing I’d point out about ours, because it’s unusual: our proposals are built so you can tick options on and off and watch the price change live. Anything that doesn’t affect the installation — the stuff that’s purely how it looks — is yours to add or drop. I’d rather you build the project you actually want than have me guess and pad it.

Now the $8,000 to $15,000 version

Different conversation entirely.

Most of the time it doesn’t even arrive in writing. It’s “I had a guy tell me he could do it for ten thousand less.”

When it is written down, it’s a single sheet of paper. A name at the top, maybe an address. “$X for siding.” Sometimes soffit and fascia get their own line.

So here’s what I’d want to know, and what that page can’t tell you:

• Is paint included? I don’t know.
• Is disposal included, or is that pile staying in your yard? Don’t laugh. I’ve seen it.
• Is there enough material in the number? And if they run short halfway through — who pays for the rest?
• Is there a workmanship warranty? For how long?
• Are they trained on the manufacturer’s best practices? Here’s the thing — that one can’t go on an estimate at all. There’s no line item for it. You have to ask, and then you have to judge the answer.

I’m not telling you that number is wrong. I’m telling you nobody can tell you what’s in it, including you.

Choosing a Contractor & What’s in Ours that’s not in Theirs

Fair question, and I’d rather answer it than have you assume the difference is my margin.

Overhead. Insurance — not just general liability but workers comp on every man and commercial auto on every truck. Fuel. Supervision, which means somebody whose job is checking the work while it’s happening instead of after.

Training days. We take guys off production to walk best practices. Those days cost money and produce nothing, and those guys still have to eat.

Office staff, so the field crews have somebody behind them when a homeowner calls or a delivery goes sideways.

And porta potties. That’s not a line on your proposal — it’s just something we require on every job. Because guys need somewhere to go, and the alternatives are your woods or an hour of drive time to the gas station and back. Neither one of those is acceptable to me.

None of that is glamorous. It’s just what it costs to run a crew that shows up, does it right, and is still around in year four when you need something.

It literally takes a village.

Here’s what that money is really buying

Let me say something that most contractors won’t say out loud on a sales call.

If a contractor sits across from you and tells you this job is going to go perfectly and there’ll never be a mistake, he’s lying to you.

Things happen. Humans are human — we’re not robots and we’re not machines. A board gets cut wrong. A delivery shows up short. Somebody finds rot nobody could see. Twenty-five years in, I’ve never had a project where nothing went sideways, and neither has anybody else who’s honest about it.

So the question isn’t which company won’t make a mistake on your house. The question is what happens on the day one gets made.

Is there a supervisor who catches it before you do? Is there an office that answers the phone? Is there enough margin in the job that fixing it doesn’t cost somebody their week’s pay? Is the company going to be here in year four?

That’s what the gap buys. Not perfection — nobody sells that. What it buys is that when something goes wrong, it gets handled, and you’re not the one chasing it.

How we handle our mistakes is the difference between us and everybody else. It’s the only claim on this page I’d stake the whole company on.

What it costs when it’s done wrong

This is the part that turns an abstract argument into a number, so let me give you two real ones.

First: it gets caught.

Chris Brown runs Georgia Home Inspection Services. He worked for me in sales several years ago before he went into inspections, and now he’s on the other side of it — walking houses for buyers and writing down what he finds.

10-15 times a year or so, I hear from him or from a homeowner he’s sent my way.

I asked him what he actually sees. Here’s his answer, in his words:

“Some of the most common siding and exterior defects I find during home inspections involve improper installation. These may include missing flashing — especially drip-edge and kick-out flashing, flashing above horizontal trim, and flashing at masonry or stone-to-siding transitions — as well as improper fastener placement and inadequate clearances from the ground or at flashing locations.

When the siding and flashing is not installed in accordance with the manufacturer’s installation guidelines, this can contribute to premature failure and may affect or void the manufacturer’s warranty.”

Read that last part again. Not just failure — the warranty. The thing a homeowner thinks they’re buying when they pick a name-brand product is conditional on it going on correctly, and a bad install can cost you the coverage along with the wall.

Now here’s the part that should genuinely get your attention:

“I see these issues fairly often in newer homes and recent installations, including entire subdivisions where the siding itself may look good temporarily, but important installation details have been missed. These deficiencies can allow hidden moisture intrusion, which may eventually lead to concealed damage, wood rot, mold growth, and deterioration of the wall assembly.”

Entire subdivisions. Not 1980s houses that have had thirty years to fail — houses finished in the last few years, where it looks fine right now.

That’s a home inspector saying it, not a siding contractor who’d like to sell you something. He has no reason to flatter anybody in my business, including me.

And one of the things on his list is something you can check yourself today. Clearance from the ground — whether the bottom of your siding is holding the required gap or sitting down in the dirt. You don’t need a ladder and you don’t need me. Walk the perimeter and look.

Second: the buyer walks.

Recently a customer asked me to look at a house they were buying. They didn’t call me about siding at all — they had a list of interior items they wanted priced.

I asked them one question on the way up the driveway: “How real do you want me to be?”

I hadn’t made it inside yet. I’d already found significant installation problems from the walk-up.

So I sent them an estimate, and I didn’t just list what was wrong. Every photo I took was paired with the matching page from James Hardie’s own best practice guide, so they could see the failure next to the specification it broke, area by area. Not my opinion. The manufacturer’s instructions and a photograph of the house.

A few areas could stay. Everything else had to come off, because on an install that far gone, replacement is the repair.

$51,941.81.

They walked away from the house.

Sit with that for a second. That wasn’t a repair bill somebody eventually paid. That was a sale that didn’t happen, on somebody’s largest asset, because of how the siding went on.

And whatever that seller’s contractor saved them at the start, it wasn’t fifty-two thousand dollars.

So is the cheap guy ever the right call?

Let’s take the two cases people actually ask me about.

“It’s a rental and I’m selling it in eighteen months.”

Then it depends on what you want to deal with at the inspection. An inspector worth his salt is going to catch improper installation. Then what? You discount the house so the buyer will live with it, or you pay to have it done correctly on their timeline instead of yours.

And when it’s wrong, the fix usually isn’t patching. It’s tear it off and do it right.

“I just need it to look decent and last a while.”

Fine. Then here’s the only question: is it better to do it right once, or pay to have it done again in a few years?

You answer that. Not me. I’m not going to pretend there’s only one right answer for every house and every owner. There isn’t, and we’re genuinely not the right fit for every customer.

What if you want it done right and can’t afford it right now?

I’d rather tell you the truth here than sell you something.

Wait. If you want it done properly and the money isn’t there, waiting is a legitimate choice. If water’s being kept out, a stretch of time isn’t likely to cause serious structural harm. I’d feel differently about five or ten years, but a season or a year? Save up.

Or finance it. We offer payment options, and I’ll be straight about the trade-off. Your credit union can probably beat our rate. That’s usually true and you should check.

What we’ve got is speed. A credit union means an appraisal, underwriting, approval — often a few months. Ours takes about five minutes to apply and a few seconds to hear back.

Better rate, or better timeline. That’s the actual choice, and it depends on your situation more than mine.

What I’d tell you if you called me

• Walk the perimeter of your house and look at the bottom of the siding. Is it holding a clear gap off the ground, or sitting in the dirt and mulch? That’s one of the defects an inspector looks for, and it’s the one you can check today without a ladder.
• Never compare an estimate to a proposal. Find out which one you’re holding.
• Ask each bid the same five questions: sheathing, trim, corners, housewrap, disposal. Watch how fast the gap explains itself.
• Ask what happens if they run short on material. The answer tells you whether the number was ever real.
• Ask about the workmanship warranty and write down the answer.
• Ask what happens when something goes wrong — not whether it will. Who calls you, how fast, and who pays. Any contractor who promises you a flawless job is telling you something he can’t know.
• If I’m the low bid, something’s probably wrong. I mean that. We’re rarely the cheapest number on your table and I’d rather say so on a website than surprise you on a phone call.

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