Every page here answers the question you arrived with. Where the honest answer is that you can fix it yourself in ten minutes, we say so — and there is no phone number on that page.

Start with what is wrong

Nine parts of the building envelope. Colour groups them by system — roof and drainage, walls and openings, ground and structure, fire and safety.

Or start with when your house was built

A house doesn’t fail at random. It fails according to what it was built out of, and construction practice changed sharply every few decades.

Two houses on the same street with the same weather will fail in completely different ways if one went up in 1962 and the other in 2004. Knowing your era tells you which problems to look for first, and which quotes are describing work your house does not need.

What it costs

Prices move with region, access, and how much has to come off before the new work goes on. Where a job has a genuine do-it-yourself version, we say so rather than quoting a number for it.

Climate does the rest

Era tells you what your house is made of. Climate tells you how fast it gives out.

Full sun and no tree cover push shingles to their rated life early and crack pipe boots years before the roof itself is finished. Humidity and heavy tree cover keep north-facing slopes damp long after rain, and fill valleys and gutter runs with debris. Freeze and thaw cycles open concrete and masonry. Expansive clay soils lift and drop slabs with every wet and dry season. Coastal salt air eats fasteners and flashing that would last decades inland.

Where it matters, the pages here say which conditions drive a given failure, so you can tell whether a problem applies to your house or belongs to somebody else’s.

Before you hire anyone

Written by Jaylan Jones. I Like To Exterior Services earns a referral fee when a call connects to a contractor. See our business-model disclosure.