Honestly, I'd be much more comfortable buying an 11 year old house over a brand new one. I have heard and experienced too many horror stories regarding shoddy construction of new houses - unless you really bone up on good building practices and are there supervising every day, you really have no idea if your new house is built well or not. My sister-in-law just spent $400K on a new Pulte townhome (a big tract builder around here). In one year, she has had about 5 separate plumbing leaks, a basement leak, several leaks at the windows, her kitchen floor has heaved and had to be torn up and replaced twice, and her heating bills are running over $500/mo because the houses weren't insulated correctly and the HVAC was sized wrong. And everyone in her development is having similar problems. They just don't build new homes well anymore. Even "slightly old" houses can have really bad problems. We bought a 3 year old house that was custom-designed and built with very high end materials (cedar roof, 4-side stucco siding). We ended up having to spend upwards of $140K fixing it because it leaked like a sieve. We are now in litigation with the builder trying to recover our repair costs, but have spent over $10K in lawyer fees with no end in sight. I will never ever buy a brand new house again - in fact, I've sworn that any house I buy will be at least 80 years old, LOL! But by the time a house is 10 or 11 years old, any serious problems will probably have shown up - our house had been leaking from day 1 but it took until the house was 6 years old before we discovered it, since all the leaks and damage were confined to the insides of the walls for the first several years. I'll link to our saga for anyone who's interested. Here is a link that might be useful: Our house...

One more vote for cedar shingles. Especially in your area. We are remodeling our house and we chose Maibec solid stain cedar shingles. Because the shingles are 2 coat pre-stained all sides they have a pretty good warranty on the finish. I think 15 years before they may need to be restained. Of course they may need to be washed every few years to look their best but so does vinyl. I've seen too many vinyl houses dirty and mildew. It isn't a good look on any house. I also like knowing I can change the color in 15yr if I desire. Stain and Solid stain products have improved greatly. As far as cost my GC explained it like this... cedar shingles cost less per square for materials but labor is more to install. Really nice looking cedar impression vinyl is more expensive per square but cheaper and faster to install. Our GC does 90% cedar. His work is amazing. When you are standing up close to a house with cedar siding it is a warm and inviting feeling, there's no comparison. We are also doing all our trim with Azek which is a white (man made) molded wood product that does not absorb moisture will not rot or warp and because we are keeping it white it doesn't ever need to be painted which does keep the maitenance down. Although, if you wanted to paint it a different color I would use one of the new 20yr paints from BM or SW and that should last the same as the siding before you may want to freshen it up. As far as siding guys in your area, I would ask neighbors for recomendations, ask your local builders supply or call a cedar shake manufacturer like Maibec maybe they have a list of people they supply to and then they can give you names of local people. I hope you choose cedar.

hi motherof3, i wandered over from the pool forum. we just put in a pool instead of remodeling our house! do you want to know why----because of all the issues that you are dealing with! we live in a 1950's ranch and we need more room. we will not move because we love our neighborhood and we have almost an acre in the middle of our city. we had our house feng shuied a few years ago. we then built a garage with an apartment next to our house. our plans are to enclose the garage attached to our house and remodel, while living in the building next to it. you can have a feng shui expert look at your house plans before you remodel. my feng shui lady told me that we had a great house, but the energy was starting to fade because it needed updating. she looked at our new plans and made a few minor suggestions. the architect we chose did not have a handle on costs, so we had to go back to the drawing board. at the same time, our gc made it clear that we did not need an architect. after we finished the garage with apartment, we thought that we would easily move on to the house remdodel. we loved our gc, but looked at other contractors because he was so slow!! he did great work, but it took him a looong time! all the bids were to high, so we had the architect redraw the plans. we are getting closer, but decided to wait it out a few months longer until the economy settles down. for a major remodel, i would still consult with an architect, but for a minor remodel (not a lot of adding on or wall moving), i would find a good gc or even a gc who can design to. in the meantime we float around in the pool and dream of the day we can get our house remodel done! good luck and sorry if i rambled to much!

At the risk of getting lambasted again by all the anti Pella people on here, my choice would not be either one of Jeld-Wen or Bonneville. I prefer Pella hands down the service in this area for Jeld-Wen and Bonneville in this area is non existent.The quality of the windows is fair at best, and depending on series being used Pella can be comparable in price. Lead time on the Pella is running about 3 weeks. Just my ever so humble opinion. I know there will be those who come out of the woodwork to slam Pella, but I have been installing them for many years and never had a major problem, when a problem does arise such as a broken balance or a stress crack, I have never had a problem in getting service out to take care of it