Exterior walls in Antrim County take a beating that siding brochures rarely show. Lake-effect bands off Lake Michigan drop heavy, wet snow from late fall into spring, the county building department designs for a 60 pound per square foot ground snow load across most townships, and temperatures cross the freezing line dozens of times each season. Every one of those swings works water into laps, nail holes and trim joints, then freezes it in place. The cladding is only part of the story. What sits behind it, and whether the wall can drain and dry, decides whether a siding job lasts 15 years or 40.

That shift in thinking is why choosing a Mancelona siding contractor matters as much as choosing a color. Royalty Construction LLC promises no gimmicks and no unwanted sales pitches, works with many of today’s top brands, and treats windows and siding as one connected job on homes and commercial buildings alike, which counts for a lot because the joint between the two is where most wall leaks begin. Homeowners weighing a reside can reach the team through the contact form on its website and talk through material options well before spring schedules fill up.

What Sits Behind the Panels

A few decades ago, siding often went straight over bare sheathing, a single layer of 15 pound felt, or even the old siding it was replacing. When housewrap arrived, crews frequently stapled it up in loose sheets with untapered seams and torn corners, treating it as a formality. Today the water-resistive barrier is the real defense, and the cladding is closer to a sunscreen. The Michigan Residential Code, which Antrim County still enforces on its 2015 edition, requires a water-resistive barrier behind exterior cladding, and better installers now tape every seam, lap each course shingle style so water always runs over the layer below, and wrap it into window openings rather than cutting it flush. Some newer builds skip separate wrap entirely in favor of sheathing panels with an integrated barrier and taped joints. The Building America Solution Center’s guide to drainage planes behind wall cladding lays out how that continuous layer should connect with flashing at every opening.

Tight Walls Compared With Walls That Breathe

The older habit was to fasten cladding tight against the wall, where water drawn in by capillary action had nowhere to go. The newer approach leaves a small gap, called a rainscreen, between the barrier and the siding. That gap can be as simple as a crinkled or dimpled housewrap, quarter inch plastic spacer strips, or a drainage mat, or as substantial as three eighths to three quarter inch furring strips behind fiber cement and wood products. Vented starter strips and insect screen at the bottom let air in and water out.

This matters more in northern Michigan than in milder regions. Through a long heating season, warm indoor air carries moisture outward, and it meets sheathing that stays cold for months. A wall with a drainage gap dries out in April and May, while a wall without one can stay damp until midsummer. Vinyl hangs loosely and drains somewhat on its own, but lap profiles in fiber cement and engineered wood gain the most from a true air space.

Caulk Then, Flashing Now

Older jobs leaned on caulk around windows, doors and J-channel, and caulk is exactly what freeze and thaw cycles destroy first. Within a few winters, beads crack and pull away, and water follows the gap. Current practice relies on layered flashing instead of sealant alone: sloped sill pans under windows, self-adhered flashing tape lapped in the correct order, metal drip caps over window heads and trim, and kickout flashing wherever a roof edge meets a sidewall. That last detail is easy to skip and costly to omit here, because meltwater from ice dams and sliding snow runs straight down the wall at those intersections. Caulk still has a role, but as a finishing touch rather than the primary seal.

Materials That Changed Underneath the Look

Thin aluminum dented under hail and chalked in the sun, and builder grade vinyl from the 1980s and 1990s was lighter and more likely to crack when struck in January. Premium vinyl today is noticeably thicker, and insulated vinyl adds a contoured foam backer that stiffens panels and resists impact. Fiber cement and engineered wood now arrive with factory finishes that outlast field painting, and darker colors that once warped in summer sun are now made with heat reflective pigments.

Cold weather installation has changed too. Vinyl needs wider expansion gaps at trim when it goes up below 40°F, roughly three eighths of an inch instead of the usual quarter inch, so a late fall job installed with summer spacing can buckle the following July. Sealants and some flashing tapes also carry minimum application temperatures that crews working in November have to respect.

Clearance at the Snow Line

Older installations often ran siding right down to grade, onto deck surfaces, or tight against lower roofs. Manufacturers of fiber cement and engineered wood now typically call for about six inches of clearance above soil and one to two inches above roofs and decks. In Mancelona, plowed and drifted snow can sit against the bottom courses from December to March, so many homeowners now add a taller trim band, a stone or composite water table, or a more impact resistant material along that lowest section of wall.

Permits and Paperwork

Residing used to be treated as cosmetic work with no inspection at all. In Mancelona, building permits run through the Antrim County Construction Code Department in Bellaire, and the code requires a permit for work that alters or repairs a regulated building. Whether a particular reside needs one depends on scope, such as replacing damaged sheathing or changing window openings at the same time, so it is worth confirming with the county before tear-off starts. An inspected job also leaves a record that helps when the home is sold.

The thread running through all of these changes is a different assumption about water. Older methods assumed siding would keep water out entirely. Current methods assume some water will always get behind the cladding and give it a planned way back out. On many older homes around Antrim County, the outer panels still look acceptable while the sheathing behind them has quietly softened, and that only becomes visible once the old siding comes off and the wall can be rebuilt the newer way.