Repainting Versus Residing your Hardie Board Siding

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If you have a home covered in hardie board siding, you may have reached a point in its lifecycle where you’re wondering whether or not to replace it completely, or simply repaint over it. Thanks to its cement fiber and sand construction, hardie board siding is especially popular in regions that experience extreme weather conditions. But although it is much loved for its rugged defiance in the face of inclement conditions, that does not mean that it has an infinite life span.

Hardie siding is increasingly popular at the moment for a number of reasons, its hardiness – excuse the pun – being just one of them. Also loved for its wide range of colors and textures, if you have been won over by hardie siding and its ability to recreate the look and grain of wood, albeit in a tougher package than the real deal, chances are you won’t want to be swapping it out for a different type of siding anytime soon.

So where does that leave you if you own an older home and it’s time for an upgrade? As most types of hardie board siding come with a 50-year warranty, the good news is that it is not something that you will need to worry about replacing too many times in your lifetime. The finish, however, is a different matter, as most color options come with a warranty that lasts only around 10 to 15 years.

Hardie board siding: to repaint or to reside?

It is precisely due to its durable nature and ultra-rugged construction that hardie board siding is a good candidate for a simple repaint job. Bad weather conditions, no matter how extreme, will not chip, swell, or rot the siding, regardless of how much rain, hail, snow, strong sunshine, or humidity Mother Nature throws at it. Even airborne detritus such as twigs or branches would be hard-pressed to damage this super strong siding. In a similar vein, termites and other insects will have no effect on hardie board: those tiny teeth that can nibble away at wooden sidings and cause so much damage will not make a mark on hardie. In fact, even if you are unlucky enough to experience a house fire, due to the concrete construction, it is fire-resistant too.

So if there is precious little that can do your hardie board siding any real harm, it seems to make sense that repainting it, as opposed to reinstalling it, is the way to go. But what about when seen from a cost perspective? Does hardie siding’s unique nature make it prohibitively expensive to repaint? Would it just be cheaper in the long run to replace it?

Well, while hardie board siding might possess almost supernatural powers of impenetrability, the fact is that it is no more or less costly than the other types of siding on the market. However, because it needs barely a shred of maintenance apart from painting, it is a great long-term choice.

The other thing to note is that, because hardie board siding is considerably heavier than wood, aluminum, or vinyl sidings, it is more difficult – and more time-consuming – to install. Your property needs to be suitable, for one thing, and more manpower will be needed too. If you take into consideration that 100 square feet of vinyl siding weighs approximately 65 pounds, and hardie board siding weighs around 300 pounds, you can see how the cost of labor and installation are bound to increase for the latter. And that’s looking at it from the point of view from a new installation; if you are in the position of wondering whether to repaint or replace your hardie sidings, you will also need to factor in the not-inconsiderable cost of removing the old sidings in the first place.

The conclusion

If you are lucky enough to have this eminently durable type of siding protecting your home and it’s looking a little under the weather then, unless yours is an extreme case, we would definitely recommend repainting your hardie board siding rather than replacing it. Reinstalling it will be a large, costly job, whereas a professional exterior decorator will be able to restore your home to its former glory for a far lower price and much more quickly.

If your property has hardie board sidings and you’d like to know how a new coat of paint could give your exterior a new lease of life, get in touch with the experts at Sharper Impressions Painting today.