Siding and paint walk-around
Annual · typically June
Why it matters
Your siding and paint are the house's only raincoat, and raincoats fail at the seams: butt joints, nail heads, window trim, and anywhere wood meets weather. Once a year in good light, you walk the house and look for the failures while they're still touch-up sized.
What skipping it costs
$1,000–$20,000
Paint isn't decoration — it's the raincoat. Failed paint or a gapped siding joint lets water at the sheathing, and wood sheathing wicks and rots quietly for years before anything shows inside. Touch-up caught on a June walk-around: a few hundred in paint. The same spots after five wet seasons: rotted sheathing and framing at $1,000–$20,000. Nobody budgets for re-framing a wall corner.
Two ways to get it done
Do it yourself
You'll need: Screwdriver (for gentle probing), Phone for photos, Exterior caulk and touch-up paint for small finds.
- Walk all four walls in raking light (early morning or late afternoon shows texture). Sun sides get the slow look.
- Find: peeling, bubbling, or chalking paint; open caulk joints at trim and corners; nail heads rusting through; siding boards cupping, splitting, or gapped at the butts.
- Probe anything discolored or suspect with a screwdriver tip — gently. Sound wood pushes back. Soft wood is a repair, and finding it today is the win.
- Check the bottom three feet everywhere: splash-back from roof runoff beats up the base of walls, and it's where wood most often meets mulch or soil. You want 6 inches of visible foundation between soil and any wood.
- Touch up what you find: scrape loose paint, spot-prime bare wood, caulk open joints, dab paint. An hour of this annually postpones repaint years.
- Photograph the walls each year from the same corners — the comparison tells you when a repaint year is actually coming.
Hire it out
$3,000–$7,000National fair range — local labor moves this number.
A full repaint on a typical house runs $3000–$7000 — it's one of the biggest recurring costs of owning, which is exactly why this walk-around pays. Every year of life you add with touch-ups is four figures deferred.
When repaint year does come, the quote spread will be wild, and the difference is prep: scraping, sanding, priming. A cheap bid that skips prep fails in three years; a good job runs eight to twelve. Ask what's in the prep, get it in writing, and remember partial jobs are legal — the sun-beaten walls can get painted without the whole house coming along for the ride.
Ask the tech
- Is this a full repaint year, or will washing and spot-priming the failed areas buy me time?
- What prep is in the quote — scraping, sanding, priming? Prep is 80% of a paint job's lifespan.
- For siding repairs: matching material, or are we patching with something different?
Red flags you're being upsold
- A whole-house repaint pitched when only the south and west walls have failed. Sun sides age twice as fast — painting two walls is a real, legitimate job.
- Full re-side quotes for localized rot. Siding repairs by the board exist; companies that only sell full wraps don't offer them.
- 'Lifetime' coating products at 3–4x paint prices. The lifetime in question is the company's, and they're usually gone in five years.
Second opinion time: Any re-side quote over $10,000, and any 'we found mold in the wall' escalation mid-job — both deserve independent eyes before more boards come off.
The call
DIY the inspection and the touch-ups — it's a walk with a screwdriver. Hire the full repaint; ladder hours and prep quality are what you're actually buying.