Vertical Siding Installation on an Ames Home: How the Job Actually Goes

Is vertical siding worth the extra labor on an Ames home, and how does the installation actually work? Short answer: yes, when the look fits the house and the crew handles the details right, and no, vertical siding installation is not just horizontal panels turned sideways. It runs top to bottom, which changes how water sheds, how the wall gets furred out, and where the seams land. Get those pieces right and you get a clean board-and-batten or vertical-panel face that stands up to Iowa hail, wind, and freeze-thaw for decades. Get them wrong and you get wavy lines and leaks.

Here is how a proper vertical siding installation goes, step by step, on a Story County house.

Step 1: Decide whether vertical siding fits the house

Before anyone lifts a panel, the first stage is design. Vertical siding reads modern-farmhouse or clean-contemporary, and it draws the eye up, which makes a low ranch feel taller. Board and batten (wide boards with narrow battens covering the seams) is the most common vertical style around Ames, but flat vertical panels and reverse board and batten show up too.

A common approach: run vertical board and batten on gables, dormers, or an entry section, and keep horizontal lap on the main walls. On a typical 1,800-square-foot Ames two-story, mixing the two might cover 300 to 400 square feet in vertical and the rest in lap. That contrast is where a lot of the curb appeal comes from.

Step 2: Tear off and inspect the wall

Next the old siding comes off so the crew can read the wall. This is where a re-side earns its keep. Once the panels are down, we check the sheathing for soft spots, old water stains, and any rot behind failed caulk lines. On homes that took a hard storm, this is often where hidden damage turns up, the kind covered in our post on water behind the wall after hail.

If the sheathing is sound, great. If a section is punky, it gets cut out and replaced before anything new goes up. Vertical siding will telegraph an uneven wall faster than horizontal, so a flat, dry substrate matters more here, not less.

Step 3: Wrap, flash, and fur out the wall

Now the weather barrier goes on: house wrap lapped shingle-style so water runs down and out, with flashing at every window, door, and penetration. This is the layer that actually keeps your walls dry, and it is invisible once siding covers it, which is exactly why a siding-only crew fusses over it.

Vertical siding adds one extra stage most horizontal jobs skip. Because the panels run up and down, they need horizontal nailing support and a way for water to drain behind them. So we install furring strips or a drainage plane running horizontally across the wall. On a fiber cement board-and-batten job, that furring gives the fasteners something solid to bite and creates the air gap that lets any moisture escape. Skip it and you trap water against the sheathing.

Step 4: Set the starter and hang the panels

With the wall prepped, installation starts at a true vertical reference line, not the corner of the house, because corners on older Ames homes are rarely plumb. The crew snaps a plumb line, sets the first board dead straight, and works out from there. One board out of plumb early on multiplies across the whole wall.

Panels or boards get fastened at the spacing the manufacturer specifies, with room left for expansion. Fiber cement moves a little with temperature; quality vinyl vertical panels move more, so the fastening has to allow that travel. On a 400-square-foot gable, a two-person crew might hang the field boards in a day, then come back for battens and trim.

Step 5: Batten, trim, and seal the details

The battens (the narrow strips over the seams) go on last in the field, evenly spaced, usually 12 to 16 inches apart depending on the board width you want to show. Even spacing is the difference between a wall that looks custom and one that looks off. This is the specialist part of vertical siding installation, and it is slow, careful work.

Then come the finish details: trim at inside and outside corners, head flashing over windows, kickout flashing where a roofline dumps water toward a wall, and sealant only where sealant belongs. Good vertical siding sheds most water on its own; caulk is a backup, not the plan.

Step 6: Final walkthrough and cleanup

The last stage is inspection. We walk the wall looking down each vertical line for waviness, check that battens are plumb and evenly spaced, confirm flashing laps correctly, and magnet-sweep the yard for stray fasteners. If you want to know what your prep looks like from your side of the project, our guide on getting your home ready for a re-side walks through it.

If you are weighing a full re-side against patching what you have, the repair-versus-replacement breakdown is a good next read, and you can see how we handle both on our siding replacement and siding repair pages.

Frequently Asked Questions

Isn’t vertical siding just a trendy look that will date my house?

Board and batten has been on American farmhouses for well over a century, so it is not a passing fad. What dates a house is a cheap material or a sloppy install. Done in fiber cement with even battens and clean trim, vertical siding tends to read timeless rather than trendy.

Does vertical siding leak more than horizontal because water runs down the seams?

Only if it is installed wrong. That is exactly why the furring and drainage plane in Step 3 matter, and why the battens and flashing in Step 5 get so much attention. Properly furred and flashed, vertical siding sheds Iowa rain and snowmelt just fine.

Is vertical siding a lot more expensive to install?

It usually costs somewhat more than plain horizontal lap because of the extra furring, the plumb-line layout, and the batten labor. How much more depends on how much of the wall is vertical and the material you choose. Our line-by-line siding cost breakdown shows where the dollars go so nothing on the estimate surprises you.

Thinking about vertical siding for your Ames or Story County home? Call us for a free estimate and we will tell you honestly where it will look great and where standard lap makes more sense.