Siding, Exterior Paint & Dry Rot Repair in Camas & Vancouver, WA
Lap siding, full repaints, and the rot hiding behind them — from a licensed siding contractor Camas WA homeowners have used for thirty years.
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Out here, the rot comes first
Southwest Washington gets seven months of wet. Water finds every unsealed joint, every nail hole someone did not caulk, every spot where the siding was cut a quarter inch short. By the time you see paint bubbling or a soft spot under a window, the paint is not the problem — it is the symptom.
My first job in this trade, at eighteen, was with an exterior lap siding company. I did that for five years before I did anything else. Thirty years later I still think siding is the part of a house most people underestimate, because when it fails it fails quietly and behind a wall.
What we do outside
Lap Siding & Replacement
Full re-sides and partial replacement, cut and lapped properly, with flashing and house wrap corrected on the way back on rather than reused.
Dry Rot & Structural Repair
We pull rotted material back to sound framing, repair the structure underneath, then close it up. Covering rot is cheaper and we will not do it.
Exterior Painting
Prep is most of the job: wash, scrape, prime bare wood, caulk the joints. Paint over dirt and it peels in two winters no matter what the can cost.
Trim, Caulking & Weatherproofing
Corner boards, fascia, window and door trim, and the caulk lines that decide whether any of it lasts. The cheap part of the job that prevents the expensive one.
Windows & Doors
Replacement and re-trim, flashed and sealed into the siding rather than caulked over afterward and hoped for.
Roofing & Gutters
Roofing and seamless gutters, including the fascia and trim they fasten to. Gutters that dump against the house are one of the most common reasons siding rots from the bottom up.
How an exterior project runs
Walk the house
We look at every elevation, the trim, the joints and the ground contact, and we probe anything soft. You get a written scope and price with allowances spelled out.
Open it up
Rot is the one thing nobody can price from the outside. We open the suspect areas early, show you what is there, and tell you what it costs before we go further.
Repair the structure
Rotted sheathing, studs and headers get replaced back to sound wood. Flashing and house wrap get corrected, not reused.
Side and trim
New lap siding and trim go on with proper laps, gaps and fastening, so the wall can dry instead of trapping water behind it.
Prime, paint and seal
Bare wood primed, joints caulked, then finish coats. Followed by a walk-around with you before we clear out.
What changes the price of an exterior job
Siding is priced by the square — one square is 100 square feet of wall. Our rate runs about $900 per square installed. If the existing siding has to come off first, add roughly $300 per square for tear-off and disposal.
- Siding installed — labor and materialabout $900 per square
- Tear-off and disposal of the old sidingadd about $300 per square
- A typical two-story, roughly 20 squares, torn off and replacedabout $24,000
That rate includes house wrap, flashing, trim and corners — not a base price with the weatherproofing quoted separately later. Most houses we side land between 15 and 25 squares, so the example above moves by several thousand dollars either way depending on the house. We measure your actual wall area at the walk-through rather than guessing from the floor plan.
Exterior painting on its own, with no siding work, usually runs $6,000 to $10,000 on a typical two-story. Where it lands inside that depends on detail: how many colors, whether the gutters get painted, how many doors, how much trim there is to cut in.
Dry rot is billed time and materials. We open the wall, look at what is actually there, and give you a price for the repair before we do it. Nobody can quote rot honestly through a wall, and a contractor who gives you a firm rot number sight unseen is either padding it or about to come back with a change order.
The biggest variable is how much rot is behind the siding, and that is genuinely unknown until we open a wall. A house that needs a re-side and repaint with sound sheathing underneath is predictable work. The same house with fifteen feet of rotted rim joist is a different project, and no honest contractor can quote that sight unseen.
After that it is access and material. A two-story with steep grade around it takes staging that a rambler does not. Fiber cement is the only lap we install, so material is a known quantity rather than a variable you have to shop. Paint prep — how much scraping and priming the existing surface needs — is usually a bigger line item than the paint.
We put allowances in writing for siding, trim and paint so you can see exactly where the money sits and adjust before we order anything.
Exterior questions we get a lot
Can you just paint over the bad spots?
We can, and it will look fine for about two winters. If the wood underneath is wet or soft, paint seals moisture in rather than out and the damage keeps spreading behind a nice finish. If you are painting anyway, that is the cheapest time to fix what is under it.
How do I know if I have dry rot?
Press a screwdriver into the trim at the bottom of a window or where siding meets the ground. If it sinks in, that is rot. Bubbling paint, dark staining and siding that has cupped or pulled away from the wall are the other tells. We check for free during a walk-through.
What siding do you install?
Fiber cement lap — HardiePlank — and that is deliberate. Southwest Washington puts siding through a hard cycle: months of wet, then a summer that dries everything out fast. Fiber cement does not move with that swing, it does not split or check, and it holds paint far longer than most people expect. That is the whole reason we standardized on it. One product we know inside out, installed the same way every time.
What time of year can this be done?
Repairs and siding go on year round here. Paint is weather dependent — we need a dry stretch and the right temperatures, which in Clark County realistically means late spring through early fall. Booking the repair work in winter and the paint for summer is common.
Which areas do you serve?
We are based in Camas and work across Washougal, Vancouver, Battle Ground, Ridgefield and the rest of Clark County. Before you hire any siding contractor Camas WA has to offer, run their UBI through Washington L&I’s contractor lookup — ours is #603-267-042.
Let us take a look at your siding
Free walk-around, and we will tell you straight whether it needs work now or can wait a season.
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