How to Install Vinyl Siding on Your House
Begin the process by determining what look you want to give your house. Vinyl siding comes in a virtual rainbow of colors. So, take your time and imagine your home in your neighborhood. Pick a color that will fit with the overall feel of where you live and still be pleasing to your tastes. Make sure that you like the color because the siding will usually last between 25 and 50 years. Putting this on your house is a lot like getting married. It’s a long-term commitment.
While looking over the various color choices, notice the different styles that are available. These can change from region to region or with a change in supplier. Generally, the siding comes in strips that look like two or three pieces of lap or wood siding. You can get it with or without a wood grain appearance. It also is available with three or four shapes of the strips that run the length of the siding. The style doesn’t affect the installation. It all goes up the same way. Just pick what appeals to you since you will be the one seeing it up close and personal the most often.
Vinyl siding is sold by the square like shingles. This means that the price is per 100 square feet of siding. Before purchasing your selection, you need to go home and do some serious measuring. Measure the length of your outside wall space all of the way around your house. Next, measure the height of the walls. Multiply the length and height to get your square feet.
Compute the area of the gables. These are the triangles you may have at your house that define the roof line. To get the area of a triangle, measure its length. Next, measure the distance from the bottom of the center of the triangle to the peak of the roof. Multiply these together and divide by 2. This will give you the area of any triangles that you have to side. Add these to your previous number.
If your supplier will allow the return of unused materials, I would just use these numbers for the amount of materials that you will use. Material suppliers will almost always allow returns if you complete the work in a reasonable time frame. Two months is reasonable, but two years isn’t.
Your door and window space will give you a little surplus. This will make up for any waste you may generate, and there is always some waste just from partial pieces that can’t really be used elsewhere. If your supplier doesn’t allow returns, subtract the area of your doors and windows from the total before buying the siding. You will most likely need to return for a little more material, but this is better than having a square or two to pass on to your heirs.
You will need to keep up with the length of your outside walls because this is the amount of starter strips you will need. These are pieces of metal that you attach to your walls end-to-end to anchor the bottom of the first row of siding. Try to buy as near to an exact amount of this as possible. You will also use this footage for the top strips that the top piece of siding fits into. J-channels can also be used for this final piece if you prefer. I prefer J-channels here because they are just easy to work with for the novice.
J-channels are the strips that go around doors and windows to hide the ends of the siding that abuts them. To get the right amount of this, measure the distance around all of your doors and windows. If you are using J-channel at the top of the wall, add all of these together to know how much J-channel to buy.
Depending on the size of your house, you will need to buy enough nails to do the job. I personally just buy 25 or 50 pounds and go from there. If your budget is tight, have the lumber yard compute a rough estimate. My guess is that 25 to 50 pounds will be their answer.
Count the outside corners of your house. You will need at least one outside corner for each one. If you have tall walls like multiple stories, you will need more. These are normally 8 or 10 foot lengths. Just check with your supplier and buy the amount you need. The same story goes for inside corners.
Armed with more plastic than you’ve possibly ever seen, it’s time to start the job. You need a good hammer, a pair of snips to cut the vinyl when necessary, a pencil to mark your cuts, and a chalk line to mark a good straight line for your starter strips and maybe an extra or two up the wall to make sure you’re keeping the siding level. Overall, the vinyl siding is a pretty forgiving medium, and doesn’t require a lot of work to keep it close to level. A helper will make the work a lot easier.
Once you have struck the chalk line along a wall of your house the width of a starter strip, it’s time to start nailing. Attach the strip with a nail about ever 18 inches. Don’t try to get the strip too solid or you might bend it and make it difficult to attach your first row of siding. The strip should be attached with the lip piece pointing downward. This will create a little gap at the bottom so the siding can be snapped into place. Leave the starter strip back about 3 inches from the corners.
Attach the first vertical corner. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an inside or outside corner. You just need a place to start. In fact, go ahead and put up both corners for the wall that you are working on. It should run from the bottom of the area to be sided all of the way to the eave.
Take the first piece of siding and snap it into place near a corner. When it is secured to the starter strip, slide it into the groove on the corner piece. Pull up on the siding so it is close to the wall. Keep doing this along its length as you nail it every 18 inches or so. Don’t overdo the nails on quantity or on trying to imbed them too deeply. Vinyl does better if it can move just a little as it expands and contracts from hot and cold. Once the first piece is completed, you will note that the next piece is made to overlap an inch or two with the piece that you just put on. If there is room, just follow the same directions only instead of sliding it into a corner, slide the end over the other piece of siding.
Eventually, you will reach a point where there is not enough wall left for a whole piece of siding. Cut a piece to fit. Make sure to cut it from the end that doesn’t overlap the previous piece of siding so that it will fit correctly. Measure it long enough to extend into the groove on the next corner piece.
If things went well, you have a piece of siding left that is at least a foot or two long. Use it to start the next row. You want to work not to have the seams between lengths of siding match. This will make a better looking result. Just snap the next row of siding onto the first row similarly to the way you did for the starter strip.
As you work your way up the wall, you will eventually come to a window. Frame the outside of the window with J-channel. Just cut it to the right lengths and put it all of the way around the window. Cut the siding appropriately to fit into the channel on all sides as you side the wall past the window. Do this for all doors and windows. You can cut all of the J-channel at once for the whole house if you prefer.
Work you way up to the top of the wall. When you near the top, you can either install the strip to fit the last piece of siding into, or use J-channel in place of it. Both ways makes a nice looking job. You will need to cut the top row of siding to fit exactly into the space left near the eave of your house.
When you cut it, make sure to leave it long enough to fit into the channel at the top. If you do this right, you should not have to nail the top piece. If you feel it needs to be nailed, use finishing nails the color of the siding and drive them in carefully so that you don’t pop them all of the way through.
In the gabled areas of the wall, you might want to cut a pattern out of cardboard for the precise angle of your cuts. You need a bias cut in one direction on one end and the other direction on the other end. It’s not too tough, but you need to keep your head turned on, or you’ll generate a lot of waste.
With two people who can drive most nails on the first try, you should be able to side an average size house as amateurs in about 3 to 5 days easily. Working alone, you will need to double the larger number at least. Some of the long pieces of siding are tricky to manage as you get up higher when you’re alone. It also takes longer if you have to run up and down the ladder with measurements and making all of the cuts by yourself.
If you need to paint the exterior of your windows, I recommend that this be done before doing the siding. This way, if you’re a little messy with the paint, you will be covering it with siding. In the end, you will be impressed with how much difference such a simple process can make to the outside of your house. Friends will be impressed with your talent as a carpenter.
