I recently told my contractor to forget about the vinyl and just repaint my asbestos siding.

I'd like to restore some of the architectural detail to my 150 year old house, but the contractor thinks it will be too difficult to do with my intact but brittle asbestos siding. He said the only way to add all the trim that I want would be to wrap the house in vinyl or some other siding. OR remove all the existing asbestos and trying to restore the original wood siding, which he said would take his crew around 3 weeks (expensive) and risky because we have no idea what condition wood is in underneath the asbestos.