James Hardie Siding Replacement on Elliott Street in Longmont, CO - The Real Fix for a Painted Vinyl Mistake

The Problem

Will and Kathryn, first-time homebuyers, reached out to us to address the aging exterior of their home on Elliott Street in Longmont. Though the home is mostly painted brick, the gables and the area above the garage were finished in vinyl siding. At some point Will and Kathryn painted that vinyl themselves with an oil-based paint, not realizing vinyl siding isn't meant to take a coat of paint that way. Vinyl siding is engineered to expand and contract significantly with temperature swings, and it's manufactured with a slightly flexible, low-gloss surface specifically so paint won't bond to it well. An oil-based paint dries into a rigid film that can't move with the vinyl underneath it, so as the siding expands and contracts through Colorado's temperature swings, the paint cracks, peels, and pulls away in sheets. Also, because oil-based paint absorbs more heat than the vinyl's original light factory finish, it can cause the panels themselves to warp or buckle in direct sun. Because of this, these painted vinyl sections couldn't be repaired, only replaced. The home also had older pin-style gutters that the homeowners wanted upgraded. Pin-style gutters (also called spike-and-ferrule) are hung with long nails driven through the gutter and into the fascia board, and the nails tend to work loose over time, causing the gutters to sag or pull away from the house.

Why It Needed Replacing

Once the painted vinyl on the gables and above the garage failed, there was no way to patch it or match it with more of the same material, so the only real option was to move forward with a complete replacement in those areas. At the same time, the aging pin-style gutters were due for an upgrade. A partial repair wasn't a real option once the vinyl failed, since there was no way to patch it or blend it with new material and the gutters were uniformly aged. Replacing the gables and the area above the garage, along with the surrounding soffit, fascia, and gutters, let us treat that whole section of the home as one system instead of patching pieces of it separately.

What We Did

We removed the existing vinyl lap siding, gutters and downspouts, as well as the soffit and fascia around the entire home. We inspected the sheathing and repaired it only where it was actually needed. A HardieWrap breathable underlayment was applied with taped seams before we went forward with installing their new James Hardie fiber cement Board and Batten siding. To compliment their existing shutters, the homeowner chose the color Rich Espresso for all gables, the area above the garage, with a matching Rich Espresso frieze board. We also replaced the fascia around the entire home in James Hardie Arctic White with a double stacked fascia detail to tie in with the home’s existing white painted brick. The choice to do double stacked fascia is a small detail, but one that matters. The rakes are where wind-driven rain hits hardest and where water tends to want to run behind the fascia rather than off of it, so the extra fascia layer and the drip edge there keep that edge protected instead of leaving it as the weak point it was before. On a ranch like this one, where the gables sit low and close to eye level from the street, that extra layer of fascia also gives the rake edge a slightly heavier, more finished line where the Arctic White fascia meets the Rich Espresso frieze board and siding below it, instead of the thin edge a single layer of fascia would leave. 

All soffits on the home were replaced with James Hardie soffit in Arctic White, including upgraded 8 by 16 soffit vents. The old soffit was a ribbed, vented aluminum panel with a repeating rib pattern and a perforated vent strip running down the center. Replacing it with a Hardie soffit panel cleaned up that visually cluttered, lined-up look under the eaves. The garage door jamb had its weather stripping replaced and was wrapped in Dark Bronze trim coil to tie into the new color scheme. 

On the gutter side, we detached and reset the existing gutter locations and installed new 5 inch seamless gutters and 2 by 3 inch downspouts in Dark Bronze. The choice to replace the  gutter system  with a new one was a meaningful upgrade to the home’s exterior.  Pin gutters are one of the oldest and cheapest hanging methods: long nails, or spikes, are driven through the gutter's outer lip, through a metal sleeve called a ferrule inside the gutter, and into the fascia board. Over time, as the wood expands and contracts with temperature, those spikes work loose, letting the gutters pull away from the house, sag, or pitch incorrectly. That's why they're generally considered outdated compared to the hidden hanger system installed here, which clips inside the gutter and screws into the fascia, holding tighter over time.

Because the existing siding was already installed over OSB sheathing, the substrate work was straightforward and didn't require the kind of change order this type of project sometimes needs.

Project Details

The home is a single-story ranch located on Elliott Street in Longmont, CO with a footprint of roughly 1,403 square feet. The gable and above-garage siding replacement measured 128 square feet of siding facade with 194 square feet total once trim is included. Soffit replacement covered the entire home, totaling 374 square feet across the rakes and eaves. The fascia replacement also ran the full perimeter of the home. The gutter system totaled 112 feet of gutter across 3 sections with 42 feet of downspout across 4 downspouts. The work was completed in August 2025.

Materials Used

• James Hardie Board and Batten panel siding, Rich Espresso

• James Hardie frieze boards, fascia, and trim  (Rich Espresso & Arctic White)

• James Hardie soffit with upgraded 8 by 16 vents, Arctic White

• 5 inch seamless aluminum gutters, Dark Bronze

The Result

The project went smoothly from the preconstruction meeting,  through the final walkthrough. The homeowner was thrilled with the final result! Will left a five-star Google review for WestPro Home Exteriors, calling out the team's helpfulness and how quickly and professionally the work was completed.

Price Context

Unlike other projects we’ve discussed, this project doesn't reduce cleanly to a single per-square-foot siding rate, so an price per square foot is left out here rather than force a number that would be misleading. The siding itself only covered the gables and the area above the garage, a relatively small 128 square feet. But the same contract also included full-home soffit replacement (374 square feet across the rakes and eaves) and fascia running the entire perimeter of the home, plus the gutter and downspout system. Proportionally, this job is weighted far more toward soffit and fascia than a typical siding project would be, which is exactly the kind of job where a blended per-square-foot number stops meaning what you might assume it means. Instead, the ranges below are broken up into individual products instead of collapsed into one project-wide rate.

Homeowners considering a similar James Hardie Board and Batten siding project in Colorado, in a factory-finished ColorPlus color like Rich Espresso, should generally expect pricing in the range of $22.96–$23.31 per sq ft installed for the siding itself.

Fascia replacement, when priced separately from a siding job, generally runs $11–$14 per linear foot installed. There isn't a separate market anchor on file for soffit specifically, since it's typically priced as part of a bundled siding or fascia scope rather than standalone.

Homeowners considering a similar 5 inch seamless aluminum gutter project in Colorado should generally expect pricing in the range of $9.20–$13.55 per linear foot installed.

Pricing on a project like this varies based on how much soffit and fascia is included alongside the siding itself, sheathing condition once the old siding comes off, the home's height and roof complexity, site access, and current material and labor costs.

Pricing reflects WestPro project data and current Colorado Front Range supplier costs. For an exact price on your home, the best next step is a free, no-obligation inspection.