Dry Rot Repair Cost in 2026: What We Find Behind Siding in Clark County

Every siding job starts the same way: we pull the old material off and find out what the house has been hiding. About half the time in Clark County, some of it is rotten. That is the honest number, and it is why the first question homeowners ask us is about dry rot repair cost — usually somewhere between “is this going to be bad?” and “how do I know you are not making this up?”

Both are fair questions, and dry rot repair cost is the one nobody wants to guess at. So here is how we handle rot at TLC Home Solutions, what we actually find behind siding in Camas, Washougal and Vancouver, and what the repairs generally run once the wall is open.

What dry rot actually is (and why we get so much of it here)

“Dry rot” is a lousy name. It is a wood-eating fungus, and it needs water to live. It gets going when wood stays above roughly 20 percent moisture content for long enough — which, from about October through May around here, is not a high bar to clear.

What that looks like in the real world: the wood turns brown and crumbly, breaks into little cubes when you poke it, and sometimes smells like a damp basement. Push a screwdriver into a sound board and it stops. Push it into a rotten one and it keeps going.

The fungus does not need a flood. A window without proper head flashing, dripping a tablespoon of water into the wall every time it rains, will do more damage over ten years than one burst pipe.

How often we find dry rot: about half

Some contractors will tell you every house has dry rot. Others act shocked when they find it. Neither is true. On our jobs it is close to a coin flip — roughly half the houses we re-side have dry rot somewhere, and most of that is small.

What tips the odds:

• Age and original siding. Houses built from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s with hardboard or T1-11 are the usual suspects. That material soaks up water at every cut edge.
• Missing kickout flashing. Where a roof edge dies into a wall, there is supposed to be a little diverter that kicks water out into the gutter. When it is not there — and on a lot of older homes it is not — every rainstorm dumps water straight down inside the wall. This is the single most common cause of serious rot we find.
• Gutters that overflow. Years of water sheeting down a wall does exactly what you would expect.
• Siding buried in the dirt. It should stop several inches above grade. When landscaping gets built up against the house, the bottom of the wall wicks moisture year-round.
• North-facing walls. They never get enough sun to dry out.
• Deck ledgers, hose bibs, dryer vents. Anything punched through the wall is a place water can get in.

How to spot dry rot before the siding comes off

You will not catch everything from the outside — the sheathing behind the siding is invisible until it is not. But these are worth a walk around the house:

• Paint bubbling or peeling in one specific spot rather than all over
• Trim that feels soft or spongy when you press a thumb into it, especially at the bottom of corner boards
• Dark staining that runs downward from a window corner or a roof-to-wall junction
• Siding that has swelled or delaminated along a cut edge
• Interior clues — a stain on the drywall at a window corner, or a baseboard that has cupped
• A musty smell in a closet on an exterior wall

Dry rot repair cost: what it runs once we open the wall

Here is where most contractor websites go vague, and we are going to stay a little vague too — just not for the reason you might think. A small trim or board repair barely varies from house to house, so we can give you a real number for that one. Past that, dry rot repair cost depends entirely on how far the damage traveled behind the wall, and we are not going to publish a made-up range for a job we have not seen yet. That is the same reason we do not post a flat hourly rate online — every wall is a different job, and a number picked in advance either overcharges the small stuff or undercharges the big stuff.

Every dry rot repair cost below is for the rot work itself, done as part of a siding job. They are on top of the siding, not instead of it — the siding still has to go back on either way.

What we find	What is involved	Typical range
Minor Trim, a couple of boards, nothing structural	Cut out and replace rotted trim, a corner board, a few courses of siding. No sheathing damage.	$350 – $1,200
Moderate Sheathing gone, one opening affected	Remove siding and housewrap in the area, replace sheathing, reframe around a window or door, correct the flashing that caused it.	Priced on site
Major Framing, sill plate, structural	A whole wall section down to studs. Replacing studs, headers, rim joist or sill plate. Sometimes temporary support while we work.	Priced on site

For reference, our siding itself runs about $900 per square — that is per 100 square feet — installed, including house wrap, flashing, trim and corners. Add roughly $300 per square to tear off and haul away the old material. So on a typical job, minor rot is a rounding error and major rot is a real conversation.

Why we bill dry rot repair time and material

We quote siding as a firm number. We do not quote dry rot repair cost that way, and here is the reasoning.

Nobody can see through a wall. Any contractor who hands you a fixed rot price before the siding is off is doing one of two things: padding the bid with an allowance big enough to cover the worst case, or planning to come back with a change order later. The first way you overpay when the house turns out to be fine. The second way you get a surprise.

Time and material means you pay for the hours and the material it actually takes. If we open the wall and it is two boards, you pay for two boards.

How it works on our jobs:

• We stop when we find it. Nothing gets repaired before you know about it.
• We photograph it and send you the pictures the same day.
• We give you an estimate of hours and material for that specific area.
• You say go before we go.
• Material receipts are yours to see, and hours are tracked as we work.

What a dry rot repair actually involves

A proper rot repair is not a patch. The sequence looks like this:

• Open it up. Siding and housewrap come off well past the visible damage.
• Cut back to sound wood. We go at least a foot beyond where the rot stops. Fungus travels farther than it shows.
• Replace what is gone. Sheathing, studs, headers, sill plate — whatever the damage reached.
• Fix the cause. This is the part that gets skipped, and it is the part that matters. New kickout flashing, head flashing over the window, a gutter that drains, siding held up off the grade. If the water still gets in, you are paying for this twice.
• Rebuild the assembly. New weather-resistive barrier, flashing lapped in the right order, then HardiePlank fiber cement back over the top.

Can you just patch it or paint over it?

Epoxy fillers have a place in dry rot repair — a small non-structural spot on a trim board, a window sill that is otherwise solid. For anything holding weight or anything that reaches the sheathing, filler is a way to hide a problem, not fix one.

Painting over dry rot is worse. Paint seals moisture in and gives the fungus a nice stable environment to keep working. The wall looks fine for two years and then the repair triples.

Keeping dry rot from coming back

• Keep siding at least six inches above grade, and keep bark dust and soil from creeping up the wall
• Clean gutters twice a year — once mid-fall after the leaves drop, once in spring
• Make sure downspouts actually carry water away from the foundation
• Cut shrubs back a couple of feet so the wall can dry
• Aim sprinklers at the yard, not the house
• Keep caulk joints and paint maintained; a two-story repaint here typically runs $6,000 to $10,000 depending on detail and how many colors, and it buys you a lot of years

Straight answers about dry rot in Camas and Washougal

Will my homeowners insurance cover dry rot repair cost?

Usually not. Most policies treat rot as gradual damage from deferred maintenance, which is generally excluded. If the rot traces back to something sudden and accidental — a pipe that burst inside the wall — that can be a different story. We are contractors, not insurance people, so read your policy or call your agent before you count on it.

Do I need a permit?

You do not need a permit to install siding here, and permit costs are already built into our siding pricing. Structural framing repairs can be a different matter depending on the scope and the jurisdiction. If we hit something that needs a permit, we tell you and we handle the call to the building department.

How much time does rot add to the job?

Minor dry rot repairs disappear into the schedule. A moderate repair usually adds a day or two, and the dry rot repair cost tracks the hours. A major structural repair can add a week, and we will tell you that up front rather than after.

Can I fix it myself?

Replacing a rotten trim board is a reasonable weekend project. Once you are into sheathing and framing, you are dealing with structure and with the flashing details that caused the problem in the first place. That is where DIY repairs tend to come back.

Should I wait until spring?

If you already know you have dry rot, no. Rot does not pause for the season, and our rainy stretch from October on is when it does its best work. Getting the wall closed up before the weather turns is the cheaper move.

Related reading: Siding Replacement Cost in 2026 for the full breakdown of what a re-side runs, and our siding contractor page for how we do fiber cement installs. You can verify our Washington L&I license before you hire anyone — including us.