A house in Niles, Michigan: white board-and-batten siding against red brick, under a dark standing-seam roof with copper gutters. The photographs below were taken on one visit and cover the front elevation, a gable and eave detail, the screened porch, the glazed doors under the covered deck, and the deck itself.
Board-and-batten is a lot of vertical edges. Every batten has two of them and each one is a place water can sit, so the caulking and the cut lines on a house like this are most of the work and all of the difference between five years and fifteen.
Exteriors in southwest Michigan
Generally, on any house on this side of the state line. Surfaces are washed and treated with TSP, everything loose is scraped back, bare wood is primed and joints are caulked before a finish coat is applied. Michigan winters find every place where that was skipped, and they find it from the ground up: the bottom edge of a board, the underside of a sill, the seam nobody sealed.
Elevations are also rarely in the same condition as each other. The side that takes the weather can be failing while the sheltered side still looks sound, and pricing them the same would be guessing twice.
What to expect if you want this
A whole exterior runs to several days and the schedule follows the weather rather than a calendar. Plants and fixtures are covered before anything is washed, and the site is left tidy at the end of each day rather than at the end of the job.
If the property is seasonal and you are not local, say so when you get in touch. We can work around an empty house, and photographs of the elevations will carry the conversation a long way before anyone has to drive out.
