Everything outside the walls — trim, siding, decks, porches and the structure behind them. This is the part of a New Jersey house that takes the beating, and it's where small problems get expensive fastest.
Why exteriors fail here
Northern New Jersey runs through dozens of freeze-thaw cycles a year. Water finds a seam in the fall, freezes, expands, and opens that seam a little wider. Next season it gets in further.
That's why exterior damage here is almost never where you first see it. By the time paint is bubbling on a fascia board, water has usually been getting behind it for two or three winters, and it has been travelling — into the sheathing, along the rafter tails, down inside the wall cavity.
So we assess exteriors as a system rather than as a list of boards. Where is the water getting in, where is it going, and what has it already reached? Replace the board without answering those and you've bought yourself about five years.
Every exterior repair is really a water question. The carpentry is just the answer.
Services
Three service lines, though most jobs cross between them. A siding repair frequently turns into trim work; a deck rebuild frequently turns into structural repair at the ledger.
Fascia, soffit, corner boards, window and door casing, rake and frieze boards, porch ceilings and column wraps. Rebuilt in cellular PVC so it's finished for good.
Repair, partial replacement and full re-side. Cedar, fiber cement, engineered wood and vinyl — plus the water barrier and flashing details behind them that actually do the work.
New builds, rebuilds and structural repair. Footings, ledger attachment and flashing done properly, because that's where old decks fail and where inspectors look first.
Assessment
Every exterior assessment covers the same list, on every elevation of the house, whether or not you asked about it.
Anything soft gets probed. You get the findings in writing with photos, sorted by whether it needs doing now, soon, or not yet.
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