Walk the blocks around Elizabeth Park and you are looking at some of Bellingham's oldest intact housing stock — craftsman bungalows, foursquares, and cottages from the early 1900s, most of them originally clad in cedar clapboard or shingle. The Columbia neighborhood has held onto its character better than almost anywhere in the city, and re-siding a home here is as much a restoration question as a construction one.
Re-Siding a Century-Old Home Without Erasing It
The most common situation we find in Columbia is layers: original cedar under a mid-century cover-up, sometimes with a third skin over that. Each layer trapped a little more moisture against the one below, and by the time a homeowner calls us, the wall is a history lesson in deferred decisions. Our approach is to take it back to the sheathing, repair what a hundred wet winters have done to it, and rebuild the wall correctly — modern weather-resistive barrier, flashed openings, and a drainage gap behind the new cladding.
Just as important is what the finished wall looks like. These streets earn their charm from consistent reveals, wide corner boards, water tables, and window trim with real depth. We match those proportions whether the new cladding is cedar or fiber cement. Several fiber cement lines now offer smooth lap profiles that sit convincingly on a 1910s facade while holding paint two or three times longer than wood — a serious advantage in a city that gets around three feet of rain a year.