Story City is a small town that sits right against I-35 with open farm ground on most sides, and that setting matters more for siding than people expect. There is very little to break the wind before it reaches a house, so west- and south-facing walls take the brunt of driven rain, blown snow and summer hail. Those are the elevations where you tend to see fading, chalking and loose or cracked panels first, and they are worth checking before anything else.
The housing runs older near the middle of town and newer toward the edges. The blocks around Broad Street and the original grid hold a good share of early- and mid-1900s frame homes, many of which have had one or more layers of siding added over the original wood. Out toward the newer developments you find later ranch and two-story builds that were sided in vinyl from the start, some of it now decades old and getting brittle.
What ties both groups together is age catching up with the covering. On the older homes it is often what is hidden underneath that decides the job; on the newer ones it is vinyl that has done its time in central Iowa sun and cold and is ready to be replaced rather than patched.
On the older homes near downtown, the wall you are re-siding may hold two or three previous layers, and what is under them is the real question. It is common here to find original wood lap buried beneath later siding, sometimes with no housewrap and little or no wall insulation. Before you price a job by square footage alone, have someone open a section on a weather-exposed wall to see what is actually there — it changes the plan for insulation, moisture protection and how the new siding should be fastened.
Siding in Story City
We handle full siding replacement, fiber cement (James Hardie), vinyl, and hail/storm-damage repair here — one dedicated siding crew, a fixed written price, and a free estimate.