Removing Old Deck - how to patch missing aluminum siding

Question

I want to tear off the deck and replace it with stairs down to a patio. What stops me is what to do about the "holes" it leaves in the aluminum siding. There will be small holes where the railing attaches to the wall, and a large panel missing where the floor of the deck attaches to the house.

Two questions:

1) What's the most aesthetically pleasing way to patch the holes (e.g. does someone make colored caulk or epoxy that would last a long time that I could just fill them in with?)

2) What to do about the big missing piece of aluminum where the deck attaches. I'm assuming that it's not a good idea to replace the missing aluminum with a piece of vinyl. If it's not a bad idea (to use vinyl), is there any hope of being able to find vinyl or paint vinyl to not stand out as being different from the aluminum? Obviously my goal is to not redo all the siding on the house.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I have used pop rivets to repair aluminum siding in the past. You can see the patch even after painted. In 1 case we were able to remove several panels from the back of a garage and make it look original. The back side of the garage we used smothe hardi plank to cover , it was not even close on the garage but that was an area that was totally out of view and the high visibility Areas looked like there had not been a change.

Answer 2

One option is a slight modification to another answer. You can take siding from another area of the house to fill in where the deck ledger will be removed. One possibility is from a gable area if you have one, since it doesn't look out of place in that area to substitute in a contrasting material, such as this example:

One downside to this approach is that you have a bit of work to pull down that siding and replace with something else, and the pieces you end up with won't all be very long. But it looks like a small deck, and you just need to cover the ledger area. So it could be a viable option. I had a house with a mix of vinyl and aluminum, and I just stripped it all and did it over because the two didn't look right together.