Exterior Storm Restoration
Hail does not stop at the roofline. We restore siding, gutters and exterior components as part of a storm insurance claim — not as standalone retail siding work.
It is worth being direct about what this page is. We are a storm and insurance restoration contractor. When we work on siding, gutters or other exterior components, it is because a storm damaged them and that damage belongs in the same claim as the roof. We are not a retail siding company and we do not take on cosmetic re-side projects that have nothing to do with a loss.
That framing matters for the homeowner too. Exterior components on the same house were struck in the same event, and treating the roof as a separate project from the siding and gutters tends to leave part of the damage undocumented. When we inspect a hail loss we walk the whole envelope, not just the roof.
As with any claim, we document damage and provide written contractor estimates. Your carrier reviews the loss and determines what is covered under your policy. Your deductible is set by that policy, and under Illinois law it cannot be waived, absorbed, discounted or rebated by a contractor.
The material on your walls determines what the damage looks like, how easy it is to see, and how an adjuster will assess it.
Vinyl is brittle in cold and flexible in heat, so the same hailstone produces different results depending on when it hit. Cold-weather hail tends to punch clean holes or produce spider-web cracking radiating from a strike point. Warmer-weather hail is more likely to leave a chalky bruise or a shallow dent that shows only in raking light. Damage concentrates on the elevation the storm drove against, and it is often clearest on the lower courses where the panel is least supported.
Aluminum is soft and dents rather than cracks. Hail leaves round depressions that are unmistakable once you look across the wall at a low angle instead of straight at it. Because aluminum holds the impression indefinitely, it is one of the most reliable surfaces on a house for reading the size and density of a hail event. It also means older damage and recent damage sit side by side, which is why dating the event matters.
Fiber cement is far harder than vinyl or aluminum, so it takes a more energetic impact to mark it. When it does fail, the pattern is different: chipping at the edges and butt joints, small conchoidal fractures where the board face is broken away, and cracking that can run through a board rather than staying local. Damage is frequently at the exposed lower edge of the plank and is easy to miss from the ground because the paint film can bridge a hairline fracture for a while.
The hardest part of a hail claim is rarely proving that a roof is worn. It is establishing that a specific storm caused the damage. Asphalt shingles are ambiguous witnesses — granule loss can come from age, foot traffic, blistering or manufacturing defects, and adjusters routinely argue exactly that.
Soft metals do not have that ambiguity. Aluminum siding, gutter faces, downspouts, vent hoods, AC fins and metal fascia all take a clean impact impression and hold it. When those surfaces show a consistent pattern of round dents concentrated on one or two elevations, and the density and size of those impressions correspond to what is on the roof, you have a coherent picture of a single directional hail event rather than accumulated wear.
This is why a thorough inspection starts on the ground with the soft metals before anyone goes up. Those surfaces establish that hail of a particular size fell on this property, which direction it came from, and which slopes and walls were exposed to it. The roof inspection is then read in that context.
If you are trying to confirm when a hail event actually occurred at your address, the National Weather Service Chicago office publishes local event summaries that are useful for cross-checking against your own records.
Siding presents a harder matching problem than roofing does. A wall is a continuous visual plane, so a replacement panel that is slightly off in profile, texture or color is obvious in a way a patched roof slope is not. And siding profiles are discontinued constantly — manufacturers retire lines, change lock designs and drop colors, and a home sided in the 1990s may be carrying a panel that no longer exists in any catalog.
Three separate things have to match: the profile geometry, so the new panel locks to the existing courses and casts the same shadow line; the surface texture; and the color, which on the existing wall has weathered for years under UV. Even a currently produced panel in the nominally correct color will usually read differently against decades-old siding.
When a match cannot be sourced, we say so and document the attempt — the manufacturer, the profile, the suppliers checked, and what the closest available option looks like against the existing wall. How the policy responds to a matching problem depends on the policy language and the carrier, and that determination is theirs, not ours. Our job is to make sure they are deciding on accurate, well-documented information.
Gutters get treated as an afterthought and they should not be. Hail dents the face and bottom of a gutter run and flattens downspouts, and while a dented gutter still carries water, the damage is both real and highly legible as evidence. Denting on the gutter face is one of the first things an adjuster looks at.
The functional problems are separate. Wind and debris pull hangers loose and shift pitch, so water pools in the run instead of draining. Impact can split seams. Downspouts crushed at the elbow back water up into the run, and a gutter that overflows against the fascia in a Chicago-area winter feeds ice damming at exactly the eave the roof is trying to protect. Gutter apron and drip edge damaged in the same event compound that.
Because gutters interact directly with the roof edge, we assess them at the same time as the roof and include them in the documentation package rather than leaving them for a second visit after the claim has already been scoped.
Roof, siding, gutters and soft metals documented together in one visit, so nothing from the storm gets left out of the record.
