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Do you fix wood rot, or paint over it?

We fix it. Rotten wood comes out and gets replaced before any paint goes near it.

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Why can’t you just paint over it?

Paint is a coating, not a repair. Rot is wood that stayed wet long enough for fungus to start taking it apart, and the water that started it is still getting in. Paint over the top and you get a good looking sill for one season, then the same spot comes apart again, bigger.

It also gets more expensive while you wait. Trim that was one board in the spring is three boards and a window frame two winters later.

How do I know if I have it?

Push your thumb against the wood. Sound wood pushes back. Rot gives, like a sponge, or crumbles at the edge. You can check most of these from the ground.

Window sills, and the bottom corners of window trim.
Door frames and thresholds, especially on the weather side of the house.
The bottom few inches of corner boards and trim where it meets a deck, a roof or the ground.
Trim under a gutter that has been overflowing.
Door frames that get splashed every time it rains.
Anywhere the paint is cracked and lifting in one patch while the rest of the wall is fine.

What does the repair cost?

We can see the surface of a rotten board when we walk your house. How far it runs behind that board shows up when the board comes off. So the repair gets priced at the house, board by board, by whoever comes out to look.

What you can control is how much of it there is. Caught at the sill it’s a board. Left two more winters it’s the frame, the trim and the sheathing behind them.

What if you find more once you start?

We stop and call you before we go any further. You get the extra work written up on its own line with its own price, and nothing goes ahead until you’ve said yes to it.

It runs the other way too. If a board opens up smaller than it looked from the outside, you pay for the smaller job.

What if it has gone too far to repair?

Sometimes it has. Rot that has run through the sheathing behind the trim, or along a whole run of siding, is a siding job rather than a paint job. We do siding and windows too, so you get both answers from one visit instead of chasing a second contractor.

Next: how an exterior job runs, step by step.

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Have somebody look at it

Send a few photos of the spots that worry you. Get close, and shoot straight on.