Cardinal Exteriors' Two Owners Still Write Every Customer's Estimate

Cardinal Exteriors, based in Portland, Maine, is a family-owned company, and its two partners, Mike McCullum and Bob Milliken, bring more than 20 years of combined experience to siding, window, roofing and deck work across Cumberland County, according to its website.

The owners still measure the jobs

Rather than sending a sales representative to open each project, Cardinal Exteriors' website says an owner visits the property in person, takes the measurements and puts together a proposal with one set price, all before any work gets underway. The company installs siding in James Hardie fiber cement, vinyl, cedar and composite; windows for replacement sourced from Pella, Andersen, Marvin and Integrity; roofing in architectural asphalt shingle, metal and cedar; and decks built from cedar, composite, PVC or pressure-treated lumber, according to its site.

Explaining the layers customers never see

Cardinal Exteriors' website spends significant space on the construction steps behind a finished exterior rather than only describing the visible result. Its siding pages walk through sheathing, a weather-resistive barrier, a rainscreen gap for drainage, the siding itself and window flashing, and the company says skipping past those early layers to get new cladding on faster is, in its words, the most frequent reason a re-side does not hold up as long as it should. The company also says it follows federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rules for lead-safe work on homes built before 1978, which it notes describe many houses in the Greater Portland area.

A service area mapped by local conditions

The company lists its territory as all of Cumberland County, covering 38 Maine towns stretching from the Lakes Region and the Portland area down to Bath, the Kennebunks and Saco Bay. Its website describes how local conditions change each job: inland communities such as Windham, Gorham and the Sebago Lakes towns deal with heavier snow loads, while coastal places including Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth and Yarmouth contend with salt air and wind.

The company's website lists its contacts as Mike at (207) 408-5388 and Bob at (207) 252-0759, both based in Portland, Maine.

More about the company at cardinalext.com.