Siding installation in Gorham, ME means two kinds of houses: subdivision homes on former farmland and the Federal and Greek Revival houses around the village. We pick between new siding and a repair only after seeing what the old boards cover.
This page covers siding installation and repair in Gorham, Maine, from replacing worn siding on 1980s and 1990s subdivision houses to mending clapboards on village homes. The work runs from tear-off and sheathing fixes through housewrap and flashing to the new siding itself.
Gorham's preservation ordinance recognizes three National Register districts and names corner boards and cornices among the features that give a building its character, so on older houses we lean toward repair before replacement.
The figure to keep: across many Gorham quotes, vinyl comes to about $1,000 to $1,250 per square of wall and cedar shingles to about $2,500, averages rather than prices.
Gorham's mix of houses changes the siding plan because a 1990s subdivision home and an early 1800s South Street house need different walls. Westbrook's 2012 comprehensive plan put 37 percent of Gorham's homes at 1980 to 1999 and 20 percent before 1939.
A Gorham house usually needs work that follows its decade: newer walls get replaced, the oldest often repaired.
Gorham's subdivisions hold a deep stock of 1980s and 1990s houses, and for most, vinyl siding replacement is the sensible spend at the lowest cost per square.
We tape the housewrap, flash each window and nail the vinyl with room to slide, so a long wall rides out winter flat.
Gorham still has working farms, and USM feeds a market in rental conversions. LP SmartSide, an engineered wood lap, gives a farmhouse or a rental painted-board looks for less per square than fiber cement.
We paint each cut end and leave LP its gaps above grade and below the roof.
On a Federal or Greek Revival village house, siding repair that saves original corner boards and cornices usually beats a re-side, and the preservation ordinance lists those boards as character features.
In 2015 USM stripped the clapboards off its 1821 Art Gallery, then dropped its vinyl plans after preservationists objected. We set new clapboard at the old reveal so the mend blends in.
Most Gorham jobs mix these three kinds of work.
Gorham's Code Division posts its building permit requirements, and we confirm there whether your job needs one. In districts its historic preservation ordinance recognizes, we read it with you before a wall comes off.
We check the sheathing at a corner, a window and the bottom course, noting original trim on a village house.
Scope and price arrive in writing; no crew is booked until we both sign.
We finish each wall before stripping the next, then look the house over with you.
You choose siding installation in Gorham, ME by matching the work to the house's decade, then hiring someone who checks the wall before pricing it. A quote that skips that check is guessing.
For a 1980s or 1990s subdivision house, our pick is vinyl, or LP for painted boards; in the South Street, Gorham Campus or Gorham Historic District, it is repair first.
Ask how a quote handles old paint, since the EPA's lead-safe renovation rule covers disturbing it on pre-1978 houses. A good village-house quote also says whether the corner boards stay.
The Gorham owners who usually re-side have a 1980s or 1990s subdivision house, a rental near USM or an older village home.
Siding work in Gorham takes extra care along South Street, where a National Register district holds about 20 houses from roughly 1790 to 1840, the Baxter House museum among them.
A Gorham re-side should be scheduled between spring and fall, when paint on LP and patched clapboards can cure.
Re-siding a Gorham house costs about $1,000 to $1,250 per square in vinyl, $1,500 to $1,875 in LP SmartSide, $1,625 to $2,000 in James Hardie fiber cement and about $2,500 in cedar shingles. Each band is what many Gorham quotes average out to; your walls decide where yours lands.
| House size | Vinyl | LP SmartSide | James Hardie | Cedar shingles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small20 to 25 squares | $20,000 to $31,000 | $30,000 to $46,500 | $32,500 to $50,000 | $50,000 to $62,000 |
| Medium25 to 32 squares | $25,000 to $40,000 | $37,500 to $59,500 | $40,500 to $63,500 | $62,000 to $79,500 |
| Large32+ squares | from $32,000 | from $48,000 | from $51,500 | from $79,500 |
Gorham averages from many quotes, not a quote, per square of 100 square feet of wall: tear-off, housewrap, flashing, trim and haul-away are in; rot behind old siding is priced once seen.
What changes a Gorham siding price most after the material is the sheathing and flashing under the old siding, then a second story, hard-to-reach walls and trim.
New siding over the old makes sense in Gorham when asbestos-cement shingles or lead-painted clapboards are flat and sound, skipping tear-off and disposal. Covering a soft wall only hides the rot, so there we say no.
We don't post a repair price because it rests on what we count on site: pieces, wall height, hidden rot and the match to old clapboard. Once damage covers most of a wall, replacing that side can cost less than patching it.
Start with an estimate request; we come see the walls, then send a written proposal. Under Maine's home construction contract law, a job over $3,000 needs a signed written contract, with no more than one third down.
