The layer behind
Housewrap lapped so that water running down the back face is always directed outward, taped where the manufacturer requires it, and cut around openings in the correct sequence rather than the quick one.
Siding
Siding in Stratford, NJ
The visible part is the cheap part. What keeps a wall dry is the layer behind it and the metalwork around every opening, and both are invisible the moment the boards go on.
The part nobody can inspect afterwards
Boards throw off the bulk of the weather and let whatever gets past them travel down their back face. Dryness inside depends on two things neither you nor a surveyor will ever see again: the barrier pinned to the sheathing, and the shaped metal around each window and door. Lap that barrier the wrong way round, or set a window above nothing at all, and the new wall performs precisely as badly as the old one while looking considerably better. All of that is decided in the short window after the old cladding comes down, which is the whole reason for insisting on counts and products in writing beforehand.
What the price covers
Metalwork at every opening
A formed cap above the frame, a pan tucked below the sill, and the barrier cut and tucked around both in a sequence that sheds outward at every step. Get those three wrong and you have built most of the wall leaks that homeowners later attribute to their boards.
Boards counted, not estimated
Squares of cladding, feet of trim, corner posts, J-channel and starter, each with its own number on the page so that what arrives can be checked against what was quoted.
What is found behind them
Soft sheathing is photographed and replaced at a rate printed on the estimate before anything was opened, exactly as decking is on a roof.
What is not included
Framing repairs beyond replacing sheathing, anything inside the wall cavity, and painting. Where a measure suggests the structure itself has taken water, you hear that before the estimate is written rather than on the morning the boards come down.
Have the wall looked at properly
The same free visit covers roof and cladding if both are on your mind.