Since recently residing our home (with beautiful vinyl), Brandy and I had an opportunity to learn a lot more about the good and bad of siding than we ever wanted to know. It all started out when we realized the stuff that was on our house when we bought it, which apparently was the “next big thing” about 15 years ago around the time when our house was built, was starting (or was about 5 along) to crap out, take on water, mold, and other fungi. We found out we had some variation of “masonite” siding—not so lovingly referenced by Brandy’s dad, but we’ll keep this post PG, for the most part. Long story short, the stuff was bad news, and if you were, or are a homeowner with this stuff shielding your house, chances are unless you kept a nice thick layer of paint on it, you were probably in bad siding shape as well and had reason to file a claim, in attempt to collect some money, cause eventually you were going to need to reside. We did quite a bit of research and found out there are several different companies that make a similar product, kind of like Coke and Pepsi or McDonald’s and Burger King—there are a bunch of companies that made a similar product and each of them have their own judgement by different judges against them, each with their own “rules” and regulations. The first step is, you have to identify your siding so you know if you have Coke or Pepsi. Then from there you need to contact that company for a claim form, either available as a .pdf download, or as a document the company will mail to you. The entire process takes a while, as in our circumstance, we had to submit a lot of documentation about the house that took some research: i.e. when it was built, who built it, how often painted, etc. We had to go get some “official documents” from our City Hall as well, just to make things a pain. We made quite a few phone calls to the 800 number associated with the claim to make sure we were sending the right stuff as well. All-in-all, by the time we sent our claim—with a 6×6 chunk of the bad stuff I cut off the house, had an inspector out (who was provided by the siding company, by the way—is that fair?) and the information was all processed, it took about 6 months. Anyway, if you know anyone who has masonite siding, let them know that they may be able to get reimbursed for their faulty siding. Oh, one last thing, don’t pay a company to file the claim for you, it is not that difficult, and it’s not worth 30% to have someone fill out the paperwork for you.