James Hardie Siding — Centennial, CO
James Hardie Siding in Centennial
Replacing the failed hardboard, T-111 and cedar on Centennial’s 1970s–90s subdivisions with HZ5 fiber cement and ColorPlus finishes — HOA submittal prepared, by an Elite Preferred contractor since 2011 — a James Hardie siding company serving Centennial and the south metro.
Who installs James Hardie siding in Centennial, CO?
Northern Lights Exteriors has been a James Hardie Elite Preferred contractor continuously since 2011 and a President’s Club member, working Colorado’s Front Range since 2001.
Centennial incorporated in 2001 but its neighborhoods are decades older, and that dates the siding: homes built from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s are wearing hardboard, T-111 or cedar that is now at the end of its life. LP Inner-Seal hardboard (1985–1995) failed outright and drew a $375 million class-action settlement.
We replace it in HZ5 fiber cement with factory-baked ColorPlus finishes, and we prepare the HOA architectural submittal at no charge. Rated 4.9 out of 5 from 552 verified reviews.
What Is Actually on Your Walls
Centennial incorporated in 2001, which makes it one of Colorado’s youngest municipalities wrapped around some of its oldest suburban housing — Southglenn, Willow Creek, Foxridge, Homestead and Piney Creek were built decades before the city existed. That gap between the city’s age and its housing’s age is the whole siding story here, because it dates the material precisely.
If your Centennial home went up between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, the original cladding is almost certainly one of four things, and all four are now at or past the end of their service life:
Hardboard — the big one
Pressed-wood lap siding, sold under several names. It is the material that brought a wave of siding replacement to subdivisions of exactly this vintage, and it is what we replace most often in Centennial. More on it below, because the history matters.
T-111 sheet panel
4×8 grooved plywood panels, usually on gables, garage walls and whole rear elevations. Delaminates at the bottom edge first, then swells at the fasteners and at every unflashed horizontal joint.
Cedar bevel and cedar shingle
The premium option when these homes were built. At forty-plus years it is checked, cupped and soft at the lower courses, and it holds paint for a shorter interval every cycle until repainting stops being worth it.
Masonry veneer with siding above
Brick or stone on the lower wall with cladding above it — the standard Front Range composition. The masonry is usually fine. What sits above it rarely is.
None of this is a defect peculiar to your house. A Centennial subdivision was built in one go, which means the whole street is on the same clock — and it is why replacement arrives in waves here rather than one house at a time.
If Your Siding Is 1985–1995 Hardboard
This deserves its own section because it is the single most common thing we are called about in Centennial, and because most homeowners have been given a garbled version of it.
LP Inner-Seal hardboard siding was manufactured from 1985 to 1995 and failed in service: the lower lap edge fractured, took on water and swelled as the adhesive degraded, and cracking, discoloration and fungal growth followed. Louisiana-Pacific funded a $375 million class-action settlement over it. If your house dates from that window and the boards are swelling along their bottom edges, splitting at the lap, or growing something, that is the failure mode — not neglect, and not your painter’s fault.
Two things follow, and the second one matters more than people expect.
First, paint will not fix it. Once the lap edge has fractured and the board has taken on water, coating it traps the moisture rather than excluding it. Repainting a failed hardboard wall buys a season or two and costs money that would have gone toward the replacement you are going to do anyway.
Second, and to be fair to the manufacturer — and to be fair to the manufacturer, today’s LP SmartSide is not that product. It is a later engineered-wood line built on treated strands with resins, waxes and zinc borate, and it carries a 50-year limited warranty against Inner-Seal’s 25. A homeowner burned once by hardboard reasonably assumes all engineered wood is the same thing. It is not. We install LP SmartSide today and we would not if it behaved like its predecessor. That is worth saying plainly, because the reflex after a hardboard failure is to rule out an entire category of material, and that reflex costs homeowners a genuinely good option.
What we actually recommend depends on the wall, and we will say so at the estimate rather than arriving with one answer.
Why Fiber Cement Wins Most of These Walls
Choosing a James Hardie siding installer in Centennial mostly comes down to whether they know what failed on your street and why. Hardie board siding in Centennial is what we install most, and the reasons are specific to a Front Range subdivision rather than generic.
| What it does | Why it matters on a Centennial street | The honest trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| It does not absorb and swell | Cement, sand and cellulose fiber. The failure mode that took out the hardboard on your street is not available to it, which is the entire point for a homeowner who has already lived through one siding failure. | Heavier and slower to hang than engineered wood, and that shows up in the labor line. It is not the cheapest way to re-side a house. |
| HZ5 is built for freeze-thaw | James Hardie makes a regional formulation and Colorado is HZ5, engineered for freeze-thaw cycling rather than humid coastal conditions. The Front Range runs a lot of those cycles in a year. | None, beyond making sure the contractor is actually specifying HZ5. Ask. |
| ColorPlus is baked on, not rolled on | Factory-applied finish rather than paint applied to a wall in the weather. On a house whose last two paint cycles came earlier than promised, this is usually the line item that sells itself. | Fewer colors than a paint deck, and touch-up is a specific process rather than a leftover can in the garage. |
| Profiles that match the street | Cedarmill lap reads as a wood wall at normal viewing distance; board and batten covers the gables and vertical sections these elevations use; shingle profiles suit the accents. Your HOA is comparing against the neighbors, and this is what clears that bar. | Choosing one profile for the whole house is the common mistake. These elevations were designed with two or three. |
As a James Hardie siding contractor in Centennial, the credential worth checking is continuity: James Hardie has recognized Northern Lights Exteriors as an Elite Preferred contractor continuously since 2011 and as a President’s Club member, their highest contractor distinction nationwide. The practical value of that is narrower than the badge suggests and more useful: the crew is trained on this product’s actual specification — clearances above roofing and grade, fastener pattern, flashing behind the butt joints — and every one of those details is invisible the moment the next board goes on.
Product detail: James Hardie fiber cement, board and batten, Artisan, Woodtone finishes. Other materials, including stone veneer and metal, are on our Centennial siding page.
Getting It Past the HOA
Most of Centennial is covenant-controlled, and on a re-side the architectural committee is a real step rather than a formality. It is also the step that most often delays a project, almost always for avoidable reasons.
- Submit the actual product, not a color name. Committees approve submittals; “gray lap siding” is not one. We put together the manufacturer, product line, profile, ColorPlus color and trim scheme in a package the committee can approve rather than ask questions about.
- Know whether your covenant restricts material or only appearance. Many Centennial covenants predate fiber cement entirely, so they speak to color and texture rather than to product. That usually works in your favor and it is worth reading before you assume a refusal.
- Watch the meeting calendar. A committee that meets monthly can add six weeks to a project that was otherwise ready. We ask for the schedule at the estimate and work backwards from it.
- Neighbors first, sometimes. On streets where several houses are replacing siding in the same season — which happens constantly here — a shared submittal is smoother than three competing ones.
We prepare the packet as part of the job. It is not an extra and we do not charge for it.
The System Behind the Work
On a fiber cement installation the things that decide whether the wall lasts thirty years — the water-resistive barrier, the flashing, the clearances, the fastener pattern — are all buried behind the finished surface within days of being done.
Two things make that possible, and they are the reason to choose us over a cheaper quote.
First, experience and scope. We have been working on Colorado’s Front Range since 2001, and we hold a Class C general contractor license (Colorado license #C120350) rather than a single-trade license. That is not a technicality: it means roofing, siding, windows, decks and outdoor living can run under one contract, with one project manager accountable for the flashings where those trades meet — which is precisely where multi-contractor projects leak, literally and figuratively. James Hardie has recognized us as an Elite Preferred contractor continuously since 2011, and as a President’s Club member — their highest contractor distinction nationwide. Our rating is 4.9 out of 5 from 552 verified reviews.
Second, a proprietary on-demand client portal we built ourselves. Most of what people hate about a remodel is not the construction. It is not knowing — who to call, whether the permit went in, when material arrives, what has been paid, whether it passed inspection. We built a system to remove exactly that, and as far as we know no other exterior contractor in this market offers it:
Every conversation in one place
Messages, decisions and change requests are logged against your project rather than scattered across texts, voicemails and three different crew members’ phones.
Contracts and scope, always retrievable
Your signed contract and itemized scope live in the portal, so you can easily get a refresh on what was agreed — on your own, any time.
Permit status you can see
Where the permit is in the process, and when inspections are scheduled — without having to phone anyone to find out.
Delivery and install schedules
When material lands and when each trade starts, so you can plan around the work instead of waiting for a truck to appear.
Before, during and final photography
Documented condition before we start, progress images through production, and final photography — including the parts of the building you will never see again once it is closed up.
Payments tracked per trade
What is paid and what is outstanding, broken out by trade rather than as one running balance you have to reconcile yourself.
Inspection records
Each inspection and its result, recorded against the project and available when you sell the house and someone asks.
Access is an individual, custom URL issued to you — and you get it when we start talking, at the lead and project meeting, not after you sign something. That is deliberate: you can see how we run a project before you commit to one. It then stays available after the work is finished, which matters more than it sounds, because the documentation, images and inspection records are exactly what a buyer’s agent, an appraiser or an insurer asks for years later.
Get a James Hardie Estimate in Centennial
We measure the elevations, identify what is actually on the walls, and put the product line, profile and ColorPlus selection in writing along with the HOA submittal. Sheathing repair found once the old cladding is off is priced at a stated rate agreed up front rather than buried in an allowance.
Request Your Free Estimate → 📞 (303) 776-5263
Prefer email? Reach us at office@nlexteriors.com. Ask about financing options when we walk the property.
Nearby Cities We Also Serve
If you are just outside Centennial or weighing up more than one property, we also install replacement windows in:
James Hardie Siding in Centennial — Frequently Asked Questions
Is my Centennial home’s siding the LP Inner-Seal that was recalled?
It may well be, if the house was built between about 1985 and 1995 — which covers a great deal of Centennial. LP Inner-Seal hardboard was made in that window and failed in service: the lower lap edge fractured, absorbed water and swelled as the adhesive broke down, with cracking, discoloration and fungal growth following. Louisiana-Pacific funded a $375 million class-action settlement. The settlement itself closed long ago, so this is now a replacement question rather than a claim, but knowing what you have tells you why paint has stopped working.
Can I just paint over failing hardboard siding?
You can, and it buys a season or two. It does not fix anything, because once the lap edge has fractured and the board has taken on water, a coating traps that moisture instead of excluding it. The money goes into a wall you are going to replace anyway. If your painter has told you the same thing, they are right.
Is LP SmartSide the same product that failed?
No, and it is worth being fair to the manufacturer about this. LP SmartSide is a later engineered-wood line built on treated wood strands with resins, waxes and zinc borate, and it carries a 50-year limited warranty where Inner-Seal carried 25. We install it. The reflex after a hardboard failure is to rule out engineered wood entirely, and that reflex costs homeowners a good option — though on most Centennial walls we still end up recommending fiber cement, for the reasons on this page.
What does James Hardie siding cost in Centennial?
It depends on the elevations, the profile mix, how much trim there is, and what the sheathing looks like once the old cladding is off — and on a 1980s house with failed hardboard, some repair is likely. We measure, name the product line and profile, and state the repair rate up front so a discovery costs you a known number rather than an argument. What we will not do is quote a per-square-foot range over the phone, which prices a product rather than your house.
Will my HOA approve fiber cement siding?
Usually, and more easily than people expect. Many Centennial covenants predate fiber cement, so they govern color and texture rather than naming products — and Cedarmill texture in a ColorPlus color reads as the wood wall the covenant was written about. What delays approval is submitting a color name instead of a package. We assemble the manufacturer, line, profile, color and trim scheme as a proper submittal, at no charge, and we work backwards from your committee’s meeting calendar.
Do you replace T-111 panel siding too?
Yes, and it often comes off the same house as the hardboard — T-111 was commonly used on gables, garage walls and rear elevations of homes that had lap siding elsewhere. It delaminates from the bottom edge and swells at the fasteners and unflashed horizontal joints. Replacing it in board and batten or a panel profile usually keeps the elevation looking the way it was designed.
Are you a certified James Hardie contractor?
James Hardie has recognized us as an Elite Preferred contractor continuously since 2011 and as a President’s Club member, which is their highest contractor distinction nationwide. The word doing the work there is continuously — these programs are easy to enter and easy to fall out of. Practically, it means the crew is trained on this product’s real specification and the finish warranty sits on an installation the manufacturer recognizes.
