One home improvement item that takes up more brain time than any other is peeling paint. If you own a home with wood siding, it’s very likely that in the past year, you’ve seen and thought about the paint on the exterior of your home. You come home every day and look at it. You have every intention of painting it next weekend, but the weather is either too wet or too nice. So there it sits. At Wrightway Home Improvements, we can relieve the stresses that peeling paint put on you and your relationships. We aren’t a painting contractor (though we can refer you to one if that’s truly what you need), but we are a seamless siding installer with a track record and customer list that delivers a worry-free and painting-free lifestyle for years to come.
Wood Quality
Wood has been an excellent product for home exteriors since the beginning of humans. It’s shapable, cutable, and can be easily fastened with nails. For a long time, wood was the only option for the exterior of homes. On older homes (those built before 1950) exterior siding made of wood could last between 75-125 years if it is properly maintained. This is because the wood is clear and the wood was sealed with a stain or paint that likely included lead – more on that later.
The housing boom that followed WWII was built using the last remaining stands of America’s old growth forests. Old trees had greater fiber density and contained less resin. The wood was knot-free and, in industry parlance, was considered “clear”. But as the old wood was replaced with second and third growth cuts, the quality of wood went way down. At the same time, many different wood users, including window and door companies, had to get creative and find alternative options to replace wood. This is the time when the building products industry saw materials like vinyl, steel, and fiberglass introduced.
Paint Quality
As the building material industry shifted away from wood as the preferred substrate, there was a gigantic shift in the paint industry. For years it was known that lead caused developmental issues in infants and young children. The government enacted a phase-out of lead in consumer products starting in 1960 and, by 1978, lead was completely absent from paint. One of the issues that resulted from this change (besides the positive changes related to reduced lead exposure) was that lead in paint created an excellent bond with wooden substrates. When lead was removed from exterior paint and combined with weathered wood, the paint lost adherence properties. The paint industry has been chasing this ever since.
Replace vs. Paint
When your friends come over for dinner on your deck, it’s likely that they’ll notice that peeling paint. If they say something, you’ll say, “Ya, I just haven’t got around to painting it.” But as we discussed earlier, paint is now a temporary band-aid for peeling wood. No matter the cause of the peeling paint (wetness, age, resin content, warping), painting it this year is almost always kicking the can down the road 2-3 more years. In the 1970’s it was standard to paint a home every 10-20 years, now it is every 3-7. That’s a big difference and if you work with a painting contractor, it could be an expensive and time consuming effort.
ABC Seamless Story
One of the products that came of out of the age of building products innovation was steel siding. Steel has an incredible resilience and, when finished correctly, can perform for long durations. ABC Seamless is one of the manufacturing innovators in steel siding in that they produce a seamless siding product. Their siding has no cut ends to worry about and is coated during manufacturing in a controlled environment which allows for a perfect finish.
Here’s a video comparing our products to some of the other “minimum maintenance” products on the market. I think you’ll see what we’ve chosen to use steel siding from ABC Seamless.
ABOUT US
Wrightway is the Gutter Helmet gutter protection dealer in the Oshkosh, Fond du Lac, Madison, Milwaukee and Appleton, WI areas. We have an expansive service area and we are experts in replacing siding, Marvin windows, and gutters and installing gutter guards. Replace your windows today and free up some of your time for more important things. Find out more at www.WrightwayBuilt.com.
