Reclaimed Siding

The exterior finish palette for my house is black/graphite aluminum windows, gray barnboard, and oxidized (i.e., rusted) cold-rolled steel. This house, by CLB Architects, basically has the same palette, except that I believe this siding is virgin cedar treated with Lifetime wood treatment.

Palette of black windows, vertical weathered siding, and oxidized cold-rolled steel.

I hope to achieve more of a gray weathered look on the vertical siding, probably by using reclaimed barnboard. This house, although it is mostly faced in stone, has some nice gray barnboard as well.

John Dodge Compound (CLB Architects) with some gray reclaimed barnboard.

Here is the cost breakdown for various siding options including both materials and installation labor:

Stucco (3 $/sq-ft)
Cold-rolled steel panels (4 $/sq-ft)
Virgin douglas fir (5 $/sq-ft)
Virgin western red cedar (6 $/sq-ft)
“Coverboard” barnboard – deliberately pre-weathered pine/fir (7 $/sq-ft)
Reclaimed barnboard ($8/sq-ft)
Reclaimed cedar picklewood ($9/sq-ft)
Reclaimed redwood picklewood ($12/sq-ft)
Stone (20-25 $/sq-ft)

If you want gray barnboard, the dilemma is whether or not to pay almost double to have your material “pre-weathered” by a 50-year-old barn or to just put up virgin douglas fir and let nature do the weathering over the next decade or so. I admit that paying double for reclaimed material is a pretty wacky post-modern kind of indulgence. We humans are strange creatures.

Trestlewood is an excellent supplier of reclaimed materials in the Rocky Mountain West. I spent an hour or so with the owner Bob Cannon at their facility in Blackfoot, Idaho. They have a useful display of siding options. Here are my photos.

This is coverboard, so named because it might be from boards used to cover lumber in an outdoor lumber yard. However, most of it is just pine or fir laid out to weather in the sun.

This is the gray vertical barnboard I think I'll use.

Really, really nice planed cypress picklewood. Picklewood is made from the staves from vats used in pickle processing plants.

This is skip-planed redwood picklewood. I love this stuff. Too bad it is horrifyingly expensive. See how the marks from the steel bands around the pickle vats give a kind of shingle look to the horizontal siding.