Siding is the other half of your home's weather envelope, and it fails quietly. Roof Commander installs and repairs vinyl, fiber cement, and Hardie siding across Franklin, Brentwood, Nashville, and Middle Tennessee. Because we also handle roofing and insurance restoration, a hail event that damaged both your roof and your siding gets documented and repaired by one contractor instead of two.
After a hail or wind event, everyone looks at the roof. The siding on the storm facing elevation often takes just as much of a beating and gets left off the claim entirely.
On vinyl, hail creates cracks, holes, and chipping, most visible on the sun aged panels on the south and west sides where the material has already gone brittle. Wind pulls panels loose at the locking channel, and a panel that has unlocked will let water behind the wall.
On fiber cement, hail chips the surface and breaks the paint film, which starts the clock on moisture absorption into the board itself.
Behind any siding, the real risk is water reaching the sheathing. Once it does, you have rot in the wall assembly and the repair is no longer a siding job. Look for warped or bulging panels, gaps at the corners and around windows, staining, and any soft spot in the wall when you press on it.
Related: storm damage restoration.
Vinyl is on the majority of homes in this region built in the last thirty years, and there is a good reason for that. It is the lowest cost option, it does not need painting, and modern insulated vinyl performs far better than the thin panels people remember from the nineties.
Its weaknesses are worth knowing. It goes brittle with UV exposure over years, so hail on a fifteen year old wall does more damage than on a new one. Color fades, and matching a discontinued color for a partial repair is frequently impossible. And it can warp near a heat source, including a grill placed too close to the wall.
For repairs on older vinyl, be realistic about matching. If we cannot find your color, the honest options are replacing a full elevation so the mismatch falls at a corner rather than mid wall, or replacing the whole house. We will show you what the match actually looks like before you decide.
Fiber cement, of which James Hardie is the best known brand, has become the default on higher end Williamson County construction, and it is what most of the newer Franklin, Nolensville, and Thompson's Station builds use.
It is dense, non combustible, resists impact better than vinyl, and holds paint extremely well. Expected service life runs thirty to fifty years. It handles the humidity swings in this climate better than wood and it does not go brittle in UV the way vinyl does.
The tradeoffs are cost and installation. Fiber cement runs meaningfully more than vinyl, it is heavy, and it requires correct fastening, proper gapping at butt joints, and caulked and flashed transitions. Installed poorly, it traps moisture behind the board and the advantage disappears. It also needs repainting eventually, typically every ten to fifteen years, which we can handle. See painting.
The parts nobody thinks about until they fail.
Fascia is the board behind your gutters. Soffit is the underside of the eave. Both are constantly exposed to water running off the roof, and both are the first place rot appears when a gutter has been overflowing for a couple of seasons.
If you have peeling paint on the fascia, sagging gutters, wasps or squirrels getting into the eave, or visible dark staining under the roof edge, you likely have rot behind it. We repair and replace trim, soffit, and fascia as part of siding work, and we replace rotted wood rather than painting over it.
This ties directly to your gutters. Overflowing gutters are the most common cause of fascia rot we see. See gutters and downspouts.
If a storm damaged your roof, check the siding before your adjuster comes, and tell us if you see anything. Siding is covered under the same loss, but only if it is documented and included in the scope.
This is one of the most common items left off a loss summary, because an adjuster on a roof is focused on the roof. When Chad meets your adjuster, siding, gutters, screens, and detached structures get walked as part of the same inspection.
There is also a matching question worth raising. If hail damaged one elevation and that siding color is no longer manufactured, many policies address whether the carrier owes for a reasonable match. It varies by policy and it is worth asking about rather than assuming the answer is no. Full detail on insurance claim assistance.
When both need work, doing them at the same time saves real money and real headaches.
One mobilization instead of two. One dumpster. One set of scaffolding or ladders. Drip edge, flashing, and the roof to wall transition detailed correctly in one pass rather than two contractors each assuming the other handled it.
That last part matters more than the cost. The roof to wall intersection is a common leak point, and it is exactly the detail that gets missed when a roofer and a siding company work the same house four months apart and neither owns the transition.
Use Amber Dowd or Natasha Groves, both general trust and quality reviews.
Sometimes. Vinyl colors get discontinued and fade with age, so an exact match is not always possible on older siding. We will show you the closest option before installing anything and talk through whether replacing a full elevation makes more sense.
If it came from a covered event like hail or wind, generally yes. Age, fading, and normal wear are not covered. Siding is frequently left off a storm claim, so it needs to be documented at the adjuster inspection.
Vinyl costs less and never needs painting. Fiber cement lasts longer, resists impact better, and looks better, but costs more and needs repainting every ten to fifteen years. We will price both so you can compare real numbers for your house.
A typical single family home runs three to five days depending on size, the material, and how much trim or rot repair is needed underneath.
Yes. We replace rotted sheathing, trim, soffit, and fascia rather than covering it up. Covering rot is how a siding job turns into a structural repair three years later.
Yes, and we recommend it when both need work. One mobilization, one dumpster, and the roof to wall transition gets detailed properly by one crew.
Roof Commander installs full replacement roofing systems across Franklin, Brentwood, Nashville, and the rest of Middle Tennessee. We have been doing it since 2001, we are GAF certified and Owens Corning Preferred, and most residential replacements we do are finished in a single day.
Learn about Roof Replacement in Franklin, TNA roof leak does not wait for a convenient time. Roof Commander repairs leaks, storm damage, failed flashing, and missing shingles across Franklin, Brentwood, Nashville, and Middle Tennessee, and on urgent leaks we frequently get out the same day you call.
Learn about Roof Repair in Franklin, TNThis page is about the damage and the repair. For how the claim itself works, from filing through the final check, see insurance claim assistance.
Learn about Storm Damage Restoration in Franklin, TNThis page is about the claim process. For what hail and wind actually do to a roof and how we restore it, see storm damage restoration.
Learn about Roof Insurance Claim Assistance in Franklin, TNRoof Commander inspects roofs across Franklin, Brentwood, Nashville, and Middle Tennessee at no charge. That includes storm damage inspections, pre purchase inspections on a home you are buying, and annual checkups on a roof you want to keep an eye on.
Learn about Free Roof Inspections in Franklin, TNPart of our roof repair service. If water is coming in right now, call (615) 218-6872 rather than reading further.
Learn about Emergency Roof Repair in Franklin, TNPart of our roof replacement service. Compare against asphalt shingle before you decide.
Learn about Metal Roofing in Franklin, TNPart of our roof replacement service. Compare against metal roofing before you decide.
Learn about Asphalt Shingle Roofing in Franklin, TNGutters are the least glamorous part of a house and one of the most consequential. Their job is to take every gallon that lands on your roof and put it somewhere that is not against your foundation.
Learn about Gutter Installation and Repair in Franklin, TNRoof Commander handles interior and exterior painting across Franklin, Brentwood, Nashville, and Middle Tennessee. A lot of this work comes at the end of a restoration job, when a storm put water through a ceiling or hail took the finish off the trim, and the homeowner would rather not hire a separate painter to close out the project.
Learn about Interior and Exterior Painting in Franklin, TNRoof Commander is a general contractor, not only a roofing company. Chad and Grover Warren are third generation contractors, and the family business has covered construction, remodeling, framing, drywall, flooring, concrete, stucco, and plastering going back decades.
Learn about Home Renovations and Remodeling in Franklin, TNShingles are not rated for low pitch, and installing them there is one of the most common roofing mistakes we find in Middle Tennessee. If you have a porch roof, an addition, or a section over a garage that keeps leaking no matter how many times somebody patches it, this is almost certainly why.
Learn about Flat and Low Slope Roofing in Franklin, TNSoffit is the panel that closes off the underside of your roof overhang, the part you see when you stand under the eave and look straight up. Most homeowners in Franklin never think about it until it starts sagging, a squirrel gets behind it, or a painter points out that the wood has gone soft.
Learn about Soffit Repair and Replacement in Franklin, TNFascia is the vertical board that runs along the edge of your roof, capping the ends of the rafters. It is the board your gutters hang on.
Learn about Fascia Board Repair and Replacement in Franklin, TN