Siding Contractor in Thomaston, ME
Kenneth Cox Construction is the siding contractor in Thomaston, ME that will tell you when your peeling paint is not a paint problem at all, and we have been giving that answer here since 1988.
- 38 years in business, since 1988
- Over 250 projects completed
- Affordable work, two-year written warranty
If your Thomaston paint peels again a year after it went on, the wall is telling you something the paint cannot fix. Water vapor from showers, cooking and laundry travels through a tight old house, condenses on the cold back of your siding and pushes the coating off from behind.
Main Street's Federal and Greek Revival houses were built long before anyone thought about vapor barriers or wall ventilation. Salt air off the St. George River and hard freeze-thaw cycles make it worse. Kenneth Cox Construction has been sorting out that problem on MidCoast houses since 1988.
Ken looks at the wall himself, explains what he finds and prices the job on the spot. Exterior changes in the historic district draw a closer look from town, so the work is planned with that in mind. Every job carries a written two-year warranty on workmanship.
Why Thomaston Residents Hire Us for Their New Siding
Kenneth Cox Construction has been in business since 1988, and a good share of that time has been spent on houses built long before anyone thought about vapor.
BBB accreditation and a written two-year warranty on workmanship sit behind every job we take on. Ken is the one who diagnoses the job and the one who stands behind it.
Get a siding estimate for your Thomaston home
Tell us what is on the house now and what you want on it. Takes about a minute.
What other contractor services do we offer in Thomaston?
Which towns around Thomaston do we serve?
Where is our shop?
Directions from Thomaston, ME to our shop in Searsmont
128 New England RoadSearsmont, ME 04973
What Siding Services Do We Offer in Thomaston?
We match the scope to the condition of each wall, then document the layers that will disappear beneath the finished exterior. In Thomaston, we use the inspection to decide whether one elevation, the trim and openings, or the whole exterior belongs in the first phase.
- fiber-cement siding installation and replacement
- engineered-wood siding installation and replacement
- wood and cedar siding installation and replacement
- exterior trim replacement
- continuous exterior insulation during re-siding
- single-elevation and whole-house siding replacement
Once failures cross several elevations or the old product is brittle throughout, piecemeal repairs stop being the economical choice. The final recommendation for a Thomaston house follows the exposure and the condition found at tear-off, not whichever sample carries the largest price tag.
What is our siding process in Thomaston?
Get your free quote
Ken looks inside as well as out, checks where your bathrooms and range vent to, and explains what is actually lifting the paint.
We bring your project to life
Moisture sources get vented properly, the wall assembly is rebuilt to dry outward, and new material is primed on all faces before it goes up.
Enjoy your new space
The finish stays where you put it, and the repaint cycle stops resetting every three years.
Why are we the best siding contractor in Thomaston, ME?
We are the best siding contractor in Thomaston, ME because we find out why the paint keeps failing before we sell you more of it. Thomaston has one of the finest streetscapes of Federal and Greek Revival houses in Maine, and a lot of them have been painted, stripped and painted again with the same result each time.
The usual cause is water vapor. Showers, cooking and drying laundry produce a great deal of it, and in a tight old house with no proper ventilation that moisture heads for the coldest surface it can reach, which is the back of your siding.
Once it condenses there, it pushes outward through the wood and lifts whatever is on the face. New paint on that wall is money spent on a symptom.
On Main Street houses, the failure usually starts inside the wall. Moisture pushing outward will lift a coating off good wood no matter how carefully it was applied.
Ken diagnoses the job and prices it himself, and our work carries a 2-year workmanship warranty from a BBB accredited company.
We help owners of the grand Main Street houses in Thomaston and owners of the modest capes and ranches behind them, because the problem turns up in both. It is about how a house is used rather than how it was built.
Most people call after a second repaint has failed, which is the point where somebody starts wondering whether the painter was really the problem.
What actually fixes a vapor problem is finding where the moisture is produced and giving it a way out. That usually means venting the bathrooms and the kitchen range properly to the exterior rather than into a soffit or an attic.
Then we handle the wall itself: back-priming new material, giving the assembly a drainage plane, and letting the wall dry outward instead of trapping it under another coat.
We work the Main Street houses, the streets behind them, and out toward Cushing, Warren and South Thomaston where the housing is younger and the lots are larger.
Anything on the tidal river brings shoreland requirements, and the historic streetscape means visible changes on Main Street deserve a conversation with the town before ordering.
Thomaston work should be done between late spring and early fall, and paint or finish work needs settled conditions with reasonable overnight temperatures to cure properly.
The ventilation side of the job can be done any time of year, and doing it a season ahead is a good way to have the wall dry before new material goes on.
This housing stock traps moisture because of age first. These houses were built with no vapor control at all and worked well when they leaked air freely and had open fires drawing constantly.
Tightening is the second. Storm windows, insulation and modern weatherproofing all reduced the leakage that used to carry moisture away, without adding a replacement for it.
Damp ground is the third. High water table near the river keeps cellar humidity up, and that moisture ends up in the walls above it.
Ask what they think is causing your paint failure before you ask what they charge. A contractor who goes straight to scraping and coating has not looked at the problem.
Then ask whether their scope includes ventilation. Fixing the wall without fixing the source is a repair with a known expiry date.
Diagnosis is inexpensive and it changes everything that follows, since a ventilation correction plus a modest amount of siding work is a far smaller job than a full exterior.
We quote the moisture work and the exterior separately so you can see how much of your problem is genuinely a siding problem.
What do Thomaston homeowners ask about siding?
My painter blamed the previous painter. Who is right?
When a painter blames the previous painter, usually neither is right. Repeated failure across a whole elevation points at moisture from inside rather than at preparation.
Does venting a bathroom really affect my siding?
Venting a bathroom really does affect your siding, and it can be the whole story. A fan that discharges into an attic or a soffit puts that water straight back into the building, and properly rated ventilation sends it outside instead.
Will historic review limit what I can use?
Historic review can limit what you use on Main Street, where visible material changes deserve checking first. We raise it with Thomaston Code Enforcement before anything is ordered.
Is insulating the walls going to make it worse?
Insulating the walls is not going to make it worse if the assembly is designed to dry and the moisture sources are fixed. Done in the wrong order it certainly can, which is why air sealing guidance matters here.
What happens when you call us about Thomaston?
What happens when you call us about a Thomaston house is that we look inside before we look outside. If yours has been repainted twice in ten years and is failing again, another coat is not the answer.
Ken will work out what is really happening and tell you at no charge. Call 207-386-9235.