Siding Sighting

Back in May, we had our siding power washed because it looked a little dingy:

 But then this happened in July:

Interior repairs were done a little after Labor Day but you may remember a hint from the end of this post that there were still some exterior issues. Between September when the contractors "finished" their work and November when we made them come back to fix something we weren't happy about, the exterior looked like this. Can you see the problem? It's pretty subtle, which is why I'm posting a bigger-than-usual picture:

Can you find the problem? Does this remind you of those Highlights magazines from when you were 8?

How about now?

They used different siding than what we already had - instead of just coming down just shy of vertical, it comes out at a sharper angle and then goes to vertical. They warned us that they couldn't find identical siding "anywhere" but that they would be able to blend in the replacements. We didn't feel like they blended in well enough and we were pretty annoyed.

So after a bit of finagling with our insurance company and then some scheduling difficulties with the contractor, two months later they were back on the job, to replace all the siding in the whole cut-out area so that it matched.

 We still aren't really thrilled with the results. At least it all matches on all three sides. It doesn't match the siding anywhere else on the house, but there isn't too much and it won't typically all be in view at the same time (remaining siding is on both sides of the house plus some outside our sunroom).

It looks much better than during the two-month interim, and we think that one day we'd like to replace the whole thing with Hardie Board. The thing that made us most mad was this: We didn't actually discuss with them in advance what kind of siding they would use (besides that it had to be white), assuming they were making the closest match they could given the age of our home.  But after they were done the job (which took a whole day, surprisingly) we did a little research of our own and found Home Depot sells siding identical to ours, in shape, if not size (we didn't actually measure). It's just order-only and not in stores. When we mentioned this to the contractors, they made some kind of lame excuse about it not being in stock when they stopped there that morning to buy it. But they knew for at least a month that they would be doing the job.

Well at this point, we're done for now. I don't really want more people wandering around on our slate roof and it looks better than before. But we certainly won't be using the same people again for future repairs. They were nice enough and did an ok job, but just had no eye for detail. At least finally, four months after the tree hit our house, the repairs are done. Now we're just still wrangling with the insurance company for our final pay-out!