Remove Existing Wood Siding or Leave it On?

When you have wood siding on your house and you decided to install vinyl siding, you can bump in to the question about the removing the Existing Wood Siding or Leave it on. So let’s see how to deal with that.

When the wood siding should be removed:

you have a visible moisture problem on wood siding around the windows or on some parts of the walls you can clearly see water damage. It means the plywood behind the wood siding might be damaged by water and should be replaced
your house is more than 50 years old. In this case better to remove the wood siding before vinyl siding installation just to be able to check out the condition of the wall behind
you are extremely concerned to covering up the problem with just putting up the vinyl siding over the existing wood siding. When the wood siding is removed and there are no problems with the walls of the house, in this case at least you know for certain that there are no problems and can sleep well at night
you checked your wood siding and found some insects and bugs living under the wood siding. If you have some kind of wood eaters in your wood siding, then covering it up with vinyl siding is not gonna solve the problem
you want flatter walls for easier vinyl siding installation and straighter look of the walls

your existing wood siding is in good condition and you don’t see any reason for removal

you want better insulation. Installing vinyl siding on top of the existing wood siding adds to R-Value of the house.

You want to do it cheaper. When your budget is tight and you want to save as much money as possible, you can decide to install vinyl siding over the wood siding with possible savings of $500-$1200, depends on the size of the house.