We considered using cement board clapboards, but the only thing anyone in Central Oklahoma stocks is the Certainteed brand with the wood grain finish, and we prefer the Hardie brand with the smooth finish, having had favorable experience with it in Cooperstown. There were places willing to special order the smooth Hardie board, but the hitch there is that you can't just run down and pick up a couple of pieces in a pinch, and you can't return any unused pieces if they don't stock it.
We looked at a type of wood siding board that is wider and thicker, with the showing edge cut in a randomly wavy manner to look like rough hewn logs. We'd seen a few places done in that motif in central NY (except those probably were actually cut from logs) and it is an interesting look. There are some new houses just a few miles down the road from us that have accent sections done in that siding, and we did find it available locally. We thought it a bit much for a whole-house treatment, though (not to mention ex$pensive).
Since we couldn't get the Hardie smooth clapboard we really wanted and didn't want to go all the way with the rough-hewn-log-siding look, we kept looking, kept thinking.
Steve likes redwood for exterior treatments because you can get a nice finish surface and it weathers really well. We learned that Forest Lumber carries redwood when he recently built a huge, beautiful redwood deck for one of my sisters. In the course of going through Forest's stock of redwood time and again, Steve noticed they also carry redwood clapboards, so when he picked up some redwood for the exterior trim on our house, he also picked up a few pieces of the redwood clapboard to build a mock-up.
The wood grain and color in these clapboards is so pretty, just in its natural wood state, that we couldn't bear to consider covering them up with paint. Happily, redwood will tolerate weather extremely well. It will keep even better (and look prettier) if it is protected, so we got some Sherwin Williams "DeckScapes" in "Natural", which has just a hint of warm stain. It really brings the redwood to life. It's truly a stunning effect. Up in the gable we have cedar shingles, Cape Cod style. The cedar shingles are raw and untreated, so they will weather naturally.
We were able to retain a good bit of the shape of the original A-frame in this redesign, while modernizing the floorplan with the two-story dormers on each side and bumping out to vertical walls in the kitchen and bathroom and adding a second floor over the utility room. The addition of these vertical walls allowed us to add many more windows in addition to the increased usable floor space, and yet we were able to retain enough of the original character of the A-frame to be charming.
Our exterior color choices are Sherwin Williams' "Shamrock" green with "Clay Pot" red accents. These colors, along with the natural redwood clapboards and the raw cedar shingles are totally in keeping with the rustic nature of our rural estate.
I am extremely pleased with the way it's all coming about, can't wait until it's done, and will certainly post progress reports.
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