Siding installation in Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ
Ho-Ho-Kus walls mix clapboard and cedar with brick and stucco, sometimes on the same house, and most of them stand in the shade of old trees. We install cedar shingle and shake, wood clapboard, fiber cement, engineered composite and vinyl on the borough’s colonials, capes and Tudors, and match the trim so the house still looks like itself afterward.
Wood, brick and stucco, sometimes on one house.
The borough is almost entirely center-hall colonials, Dutch Colonials, capes and Tudors on generous lots, and one house can carry more than one cladding. A Tudor may set brick or stucco on its lower walls and timber and stucco in its gables; a colonial may have clapboard on the body and cedar shingle on a dormer or a gambrel end.
Our part of that wall is the wood and the fiber cement: clapboard, shingle, the trim around them, and every place where they meet masonry. That is where a mixed wall usually fails. Water running down a stucco face lands on the top course of the siding below, and unless a flashing turns it outward, it runs in behind. Where clapboard butts against a brick chimney or a stone foundation, the joint needs a gap, a backer and a sealant that can move, not a bead of caulk smeared over a tight seam.
How the wall is built behind the cladding, layer by layer, is on our siding page.
Five systems, matched to the borough’s houses.
We install five kinds of siding, and the house, not the sample board, decides which one belongs on it.
Wood clapboard on the colonials
A center-hall or Dutch Colonial built in wood usually only looks right in wood, or in something that copies its exposure exactly. New clapboard is primed on every face before it goes up, and an old clapboard wall can often be mended a board at a time instead.
Cedar shingle on capes and gambrel ends
Cedar shingle sits naturally on a Cape Cod and on the end walls of a gambrel. In shade it has to dry from behind, so on a damp elevation it goes over a ventilated gap, on stainless nails that will not streak or rust through.
Fiber cement where paint will not last
On a shaded wall that peels every few years, fiber cement in a clapboard or shingle profile holds paint far longer and will not rot. The catch is the look: its exposure, corner boards and window casings have to follow the house’s original lines, or a colonial starts to look like a new build.
Engineered composite on the less visible walls
Composite is the budget-led choice for a rear elevation or a garage, and a sound one, provided the corners and casings are built as carpentry rather than covered with stock trim pieces.
Vinyl where upkeep matters most
Vinyl needs no painting and is the least work to keep up, which suits a house already sided in it or a wall that is hard to reach. It is hung loose so it can move with heat, and its corners and casings get the same care as any other cladding, so the house keeps its lines.
What old trees and deep beds do to a wall.
Mature trees over most streets are much of the borough’s character, and they wear its siding out from the bottom and the shaded side first.
The shaded elevations
A wall that sees little sun stays damp after every rain. Paint lifts there first, green growth settles in, and cedar on it never fully dries. Those are the walls where a gap behind the cladding earns its keep.
Beds against the foundation
Mulch heaped against the bottom course keeps the lowest boards wet all year. We hold the bottom edge clear of soil and mulch, seal every cut end, and ask that it stays that way.
Shrubs and limbs touching the wall
Branches that brush the siding hold water against it and scrub the paint off. They are best trimmed back before work starts and kept clear afterward.
Under a spilling gutter
An overflowing gutter soaks the frieze and the window heads below it. If staining starts at the eaves, the gutter gets fixed in the same job; see gutters in Ho-Ho-Kus.
Mended in kind, not covered over.
The borough’s oldest houses, stone and frame in the Dutch tradition, stand along Franklin Turnpike, and three from the eighteenth century are on the National Register: the Hermitage, built around 1750 and reworked in the Gothic Revival style in 1847; the stone Terhune–Hopper House of 1790; and the Zabriskie House of 1796, now the Ho-Ho-Kus Inn. They are public landmarks, not our work. On the older frame houses around them the rule is simple: a wood wall lasts for generations when it is repaired in its own material.
Repairing in kind means cutting rotten boards out to sound wood and replacing them with boards of the same profile and exposure, primed on every face and nailed on the old lines, so the repair disappears once it is painted. Corner boards, window casings and the water table are mended the same way. On an old house, re-siding a whole wall is the last answer rather than the first, and when the clapboard is sound we tell you so.
The original wood windows in those walls deserve the same approach; see windows and doors.
Four stages, and what you see at each.
The cladding is the part you choose. Most of what decides how long it lasts goes on before it.
A look underneath
Where we can, a board comes off at the worst spot before we price, so the estimate rests on what is behind it, not on a guess.
Tear-off and sheathing
The old cladding comes off one elevation at a time. Soft sheathing is cut back to sound wood and replaced, photographed, and charged only where it is found.
Wrap, flashing, gap
A weather barrier lapped so water runs out, flashing at every window, door and roof junction, and a drainage gap behind cedar and on the damp walls.
Trim, then cladding
Corner boards, casings and frieze go up to the house’s own profiles first, then the cladding, then a final walk around the house with you.
If any part of the job needs a permit, we tell you at the estimate and take care of the filing.
Walls, gutters and windows together.
Ho-Ho-Kus
The borough as a whole, and everything else we do in it.
The borough →Gutters
Runs sized for steep roofs and heavy trees, so the walls below stay dry.
Ho-Ho-Kus →Siding, county-wide
The wall from the outside in, and every cladding compared.
Siding →Windows & doors
Openings flashed into the wall while it is open.
Windows →A new roof in Ho-Ho-Kus → · Roof, walls, windows and gutters as one job →
Do you install siding in Ho-Ho-Kus?
Yes, across 07423. We install cedar shingle and shake, wood clapboard, fiber cement, engineered composite and vinyl, along with the trim, flashing and weather barrier behind them. Every estimate is free and in writing, names the material and the profile, and prices sheathing repair separately, so you pay only for what the tear-off actually finds.
Should I replace the wood clapboard on my colonial with fiber cement?
Sometimes. If the wood is sound and only the paint is failing, repairing and repainting is usually cheaper and keeps the house original. If whole walls are rotting, or a shaded side will not hold paint, fiber cement is a sensible replacement, as long as its exposure and the trim are matched to the house so it still reads as a wood colonial.
Can you repair a few boards instead of re-siding the whole house?
Yes, and on an older house it is often the right call. Rotten clapboard or shingles are cut out back to sound wood and replaced with matching profiles, then primed and painted to blend in. We recommend a full re-side only when the damage runs across whole elevations, or the wall behind has never had a working weather barrier.
My Tudor is mostly brick and stucco. Is there any siding work on it?
Usually some: wood in the gables and dormers, the trim boards, and the joints where wood meets masonry. Those junctions are where water gets in, and they are rebuilt with proper flashing and a sealant joint that can move. If the fault turns out to be in the stucco or the brick rather than the wood, we say so plainly.
Why is the siding failing on only one side of my house?
Usually because that side stays wet. Under heavy trees one or two walls hardly see the sun, so paint lifts, green growth settles in and the lowest boards stay damp, especially behind deep planting. A spilling gutter above makes it worse. The cure is a wall that can dry: clearance at the bottom, a drainage gap behind the cladding, and gutters that keep water off it.
New siding that keeps a Ho-Ho-Kus house looking like itself.
Material and profile named, sheathing priced by what the tear-off finds, and the trim matched to the house, all in writing.