Siding Contractor in the York Neighborhood, Bellingham

Re-Siding Bellingham's Oldest Neighborhood

York is where Bellingham's housing history starts. The narrow streets between downtown and Whatcom Creek hold workers cottages, Victorians and early craftsman homes dating back to the 1890s, many still wearing lapped cedar that has been painted twenty times over a century and change. Working on these walls is different from working anywhere else in the city, because what looks like a siding job is often part restoration, part forensic carpentry, and part negotiation with a building that predates every modern code.

Alpine Exteriors takes on York projects with the respect they demand. In 25 years of business we have opened up enough century-old walls to know what to expect: true-dimension lumber framing, no sheathing paper of any kind, knob-and-tube penetrations, and hidden water damage wherever a porch roof or bay window ties into the main wall. We plan for those discoveries up front instead of hitting you with surprise change orders mid-project.

Keeping the Period Look, Fixing the Performance

The character of a York facade lives in its details: the reveal width of the original bevel siding, the corner boards and water table, the frieze under the eaves, the shingle patterns in the gables. Our approach preserves those proportions while quietly modernizing everything behind them.

• Documented profiles before demolition, so new siding reproduces the original reveals and trim dimensions instead of approximating them
• A drainable weather barrier and rainscreen hidden behind the finish, giving a 130-year-old wall its first real drying path
• Cedar or smooth fiber cement, the latter increasingly popular here because it holds paint through wet Bellingham winters far longer
• Careful containment and disposal of old painted material, handled with the precautions homes of this age call for

Where budgets are tight, we phase honestly: the weather-beaten south and west elevations first, the protected sides later. A staged re-side done right beats a whole-house job done cheap, and on streets this visible, done right matters to more than just you.

Neighbors Can Vouch for Us

We have finished more than 2,000 exterior projects around northwest Washington, and the older-home work is what our crews take the most pride in. Every installation is backed by a 25-year workmanship warranty, which for a York house means the flashing, integration and carpentry judgment calls are guaranteed by the people who made them.

If your paint is failing in sheets, your sills are going punky, or you can see daylight through a corner board, have us out for a free on-site estimate. We will probe the suspect areas, explain what is original and worth saving versus what is past rescue, and put the whole scope in writing. Old houses reward owners who fix them properly, and York has been proving that for over a century.