I Like To Exterior Services

What fails on a house, why it fails, and what it should cost

What this site is

I Like To Exterior Services

Almost every page you will find about exterior repair was written by someone who sells exterior repair. That is the gap this site exists to fill.

We publish what actually fails on a house, why it fails, what it should cost to put right — and, on a good number of pages, that you should not be paying anyone for it at all. We are not a contractor. Nobody here will ever be on your roof. That is precisely what makes the advice worth reading.

The idea the whole site is built on

A house does not 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, in the same weather, will fail in completely different ways if one went up in 1962 and the other in 2004.

Before 1940 Plank decking with gaps between the boards, layered roofs, galvanized flashing that corroded through decades ago.
1940 to 1980 Three-tab shingle rated around twenty years, and ventilation that was barely considered.
1980 to 2000 First-cycle architectural shingle, now at or past its rated life.
Since 2000 Builder-grade packages where the springs, rollers and opener all give out within a season of each other.

Knowing which of those you own tells you which problems to look for first and — just as usefully — which quotes are describing work your house does not need. Era decides the failure mode. Climate only sets the speed.

The rule we hold ourselves to

Where a job is genuinely something you can do yourself, the page says so and there is no phone number on it. We are paid by referral, so every one of those pages costs us money. That is the point. It is the only arrangement under which the rest of the advice means anything.

Cracked pipe boots, debris packed in a gutter run, photo eyes knocked out of alignment, a downspout that needs extending four feet — those pages end with instructions, not a call to action. Our page on identifying hail damage has eight answers and seven of them carry no phone number.

How to use it

Where storm work fits in

Storm damage gets more attention here than anything else, because it is where homeowners lose the most money. The damage is genuinely hard to see from the ground, the people who arrive first are the ones who chase weather for a living, and the decision about whether to file a claim at all is worth more than any repair advice we could give you. A claim you barely recover on still goes on your record.

How the numbers are worked out

Cost ranges come from published industry pricing and contractor quotes rather than invention. Prices move with region, with access, and with how much has to come off before new work goes on — so we publish ranges and say what pushes a quote to the top or bottom of one. Where sources disagree meaningfully, we would rather show the spread than pick the flattering end of it, and where a figure could not be verified we leave it out entirely.

What we are not

We are not licensed contractors, engineers, or insurance adjusters, and nothing here replaces an inspection by someone qualified who has actually seen your house. Building codes are set locally — confirm requirements and permits with your own jurisdiction before work starts. Anything involving spring tension, gas appliances, or structural framing is worth a professional, and we say so on those pages rather than talking you into a ladder.

We also do not rank contractors or publish reviews of individual companies, for reasons set out on the disclosure page. And this site does not operate a general enquiry desk — the service lines connect you to contractors who do the work, not to us.

Who writes it

Jaylan Jones.

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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.