Aspen Contracting Inc - Houma, LA

Under no circumstances should anyone in the New Orleans area use Aspen for siding work. The company simply lacks to infrastructure in the New Orleans area to support timely and high-quality installation.

We signed a contract with Aspen in March of 2022 for replacement of the siding on a small, one-story New Orleans shotgun. This contract was negotiated with the only local Aspen employee I have ever encountered, the sales agent. However, he soon abandoned the project and moved out of state. The work was not completed until February 2023.

Initial work did not begin until August 2022. Siding was delivered to my home many weeks before installation began. Because it was not laid on a level spot, the siding bent, with the result that when it was installed, many of the pieces installed were bent and did not lay properly against the house or one another. The first crew that was sent out was unsupervised by Aspen and unfamiliar with how to install the Hardie materials correctly. The work, according to Aspen employees who later reviewed the work, was “shocking” in its poor quality.

There were numerous serious errors. Lights, a mailbox, and a vent that were to be installed were not installed. Important drainage and ventilation pipes on the exterior of the house were damaged or removed without being replaced. Multiple pieces of trim were broken or cracked when being installed and left that way. The cable line was damaged when the siding was placed over the top of the line rather than the line being run through a hole cut into the siding. The windows were incorrectly trimmed. Flashing was not placed behind any of the butt joints. Pieces of siding were loose or were bowing out from the house. Pieces of siding were not correctly aligned such that their widths varied.

Aspen then sent another crew supervised by an Aspen employee from Houma. In September, this crew did some minor repairs, but it was determined that substantial aspects of the work needed to redone. However, the first crew had absconded with all of the extra materials left from the initial installation, and even more materials were required in order for the work to be completed.

Those materials were ordered. They apparently became available as early as the end of 2022 as some were delivered on December 29 and then collected back the following week, another attempt was made to deliver them before there was a crew in place to receive them, and then, when the crew finally did arrive some weeks later in late January 2023, there were no materials waiting for them.

In this case, Aspen sent a crew down from Virginia. This crew entirely replaced the siding on one of the long elevations on the house, carefully measuring and installing the siding. It looks fabulous. The high quality of that work underlined the poor quality of the work that remained uncorrected from the first substandard installation.

Examples included:
1) Sloppy installation of trim on the front gable. When this was pointed out to the final crew, they made an attempt to make the two sides symmetrical but did not address the underlying problem with the siding.
2) Multiple instances throughout the work where butt joints were not in proper alignment.
3) Multiple instances where siding was simply repeatedly filled with nails to attempt to cause it to lay more flat against the house rather than replaced with a correctly cut and lain piece of siding.
4) A wildly uneven row of siding on one side of the backdoor where across half-a-dozen planks, the width varied erratically between 4 and 5 ¼ inches. This siding did not match the siding rows on the other side of the back door.

After 11 months, three separate attempts at an installation, we expected better and did not receive it. I cannot say whether Aspen is better in an area where it has local supervisors available and better control and coordination with its vendors and subcontractors. I can say that Aspen does not have that infrastructure in place in the New Orleans area.

Ernest Cuevas and his crew did a fantastic job on my roof. It was a solid job with a great finish. The warranty is the best around by far. They worked with me and my insurance to be sure that the whole job was covered and not out of my pocket. Thanks Aspen and thanks Ernest!