"Matt M" writes:
We are in the process of selling our home, which has T1-11 siding.

Good.


The house inspector suggested that the siding needed to be caulked,
and our buyer requested it. The siding and paint job looks very
good (it's a new home), but we agreed to do it anyway.

I assume this is the buyer's house inspector and that you have some
contract to purchase, someone is holding some earnest money of the
buyer's in escrow, that they've exercised their right to inspect
clause, you've been informed of the inspection findings, and the two
parties have come to an agreement on repairs resulting from the
inspection findings, and that part of that agreement says you'd take
care of the caulking issue?

So, we asked a siding contractor to caulk our house. After the job
was done, we realized he used white caulking instead of clear
caulking, so now we have to repaint thw house because it looks so
bad.

Not so fast.

Who/what says you have to repaint the house now? Surely not because
you as a seller think it looks bad.

Do you have a Realtor? A real estate attorney? Look at the terms of
your contract and subsequent written agreements on the repairs from
the buyers. Assuming the inspection clause isn't a free for all in
terms of negotiation, your realtor or attorney should go back and
fight with the buyer's agent to say "Look, the inspection terms say
that safety and functionality issues are legitimate discussion points,
the inspection indicated defects in the sealing of the home's siding,
and that functionality issue has been addressed. The seller has, as
agreed had the home professionally caulked. Here's the receipt and
proof of the work being completed. They've held up their end of hte
bargain." And if necessary, crack out "If your client wanted the job
done exactly as they wished, perhaps a cash settlement offer for the
repairs would have been a better choice to represent your buyers. Are
you willing to risk your client's earnest money for your error in
advice?"

Our contractor says we should have had the foresight to request
clear caulking if that's what we wanted. In my opinion, that's why
I hired a "professional"... to make those professional decisions for
me.

That stinks. And I can see both sides. Sadly though, what you see
here is not terribly surprising. I've found that just because someone
does something for a living doesn't necessarily mean they're worth a
**** at what they do. Nearly half of all individuals in a given
trade are, by definition, below average. :-)

Odds are, most of these folks are likely gonna use whatever they have
on the truck unless you specify otherwise.

So, my question is this:

Does this sound like standard practice/procedure, to use white
caulking unless otherwise stated by the customer (he says it is)?
Has anyone else run into similar problems?

FWIW, my siding isn't caulked (at least not visibly)--the windows and
edges are surrounded by J-Channel (Builders seem to be cheaping out
these days and running siding right up the daned window frames though
and caulking this seam). My home's alumuminum caps are caulked in
white with windows in white vinyl on the outside, wrapped in white
alumimum and my soffits are white.

I would expect that reasonable practice would be to match the color of
the trim or that of the siding or to use clear. But all the same,
getting a contractor at this point to not only redo the job because
you failed to specify that you wanted clear caulk is going to be a
hell of a fight. Cus not only will they need ot recaulk, they need to
dig out all the crap they've just recently laid down. You're in for
an uphill battle there I'm afraid. Imagine if you were the siding guy
and had a customer complaining about a color choice after the fact?


More importantly though, has the buyer of your home weighed in on
their thoughts or threaten to bail over this? I wouldn't volunteer
your thoughts that anything looks bad. If the buyer complains about
it, you can feel free to pass on the contractor's explanation to them
because it's actually not an unreasonable defense against having to
redo the entire job. And your buyer's frankly were silly to leave the
repair up to the seller's discretion rather than bargaining for a
credit at closing for them to address the defect.

If you scrutinize the contract to purchase, and whatever (hopefully
written?) agreement you've arrived upon regarding repair items,
you'll probably find that by having caulk of any sort put on puts you
in the clear. If they said "we want this inspection finding fixed"
and you have the joint professionally caulked, then you may be done.
Keep in mind that in its current state, if the licensed inspector were
to reinspect the property, with the new caulk in place, they couldn't
legitimately write it up anymore--because the functionality and safety
issue has been addressed. Inspectors don't have checkboxes for
"doesn't look right."

Basically, it comes down to whatever agreements you have in writing.
In short, this may not be your problem to solve at this point.

Be sure to post how it all turns out!


Best Regards,
--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/