A Modern Farmhouse in Arctic White

About This Project

On a hillside street above Lake Whatcom, this Bellingham family interviewed several siding companies for the complete remodel of their home's exterior — and told us afterward that our first consult was their favorite. The house was a classic of its era: teal lap siding, ornate white railings, sunburst garage doors. The vision was a clean modern farmhouse, and getting there meant replacing everything on the outside of the building in one coordinated project.

The full scope: a whole-home Hardie re-side, twenty-nine windows, four sliding doors, five exterior doors, and a complete repaint of the fascias and soffits — one crew, one schedule.

The Re-Side: Board and Batten Done Right

The design puts HardiePanel board-and-batten on the front-facing walls — the faces you see from the street — with 7-inch reveal HardiePlank lap wrapping the rest of the home, all in James Hardie Statement Collection "Arctic White" ColorPlus with matching HardieTrim. The factory-baked ColorPlus finish means the color is in the boards, not brushed on after.

Underneath is where the Pacific Northwest work happens: every wall stripped and inspected, rot cut out, fresh Tyvek HomeWrap with DuPont flashing tape sealing every window and door opening, and Bearskin joint flashing tucked behind every plank seam. One detail most homeowners don't know: HardiePlank seams are *not* caulked — James Hardie's installation instructions call for hidden joint flashing instead, and caulked seams are a common installer shortcut we don't take. After the siding went up, we pulled the old gutters, painted the fascias, eaves, and soffits in Sherwin-Williams SuperPaint, and finished with color-matched touch-ups.

Twenty-Nine Windows, Nine Doors, One Pass

Re-siding is the one moment when window replacement integrates perfectly — flashing laps correctly, trim goes on once, and nothing is disturbed twice. This home received twenty-nine Milgard Trinsic V300 vinyl windows and four V300 sliding doors, including the four-panel unit that opens the living space to the covered deck — every opening flex-wrapped and sealed before trim.

The doors were a true collaboration: the owners prepped the interior openings themselves, and our crew fit, leveled, fastened, and waterproofed five exterior doors — a fiberglass Therma-Tru entry we also painted in-house, and four utility and balcony doors. It's the kind of homeowner partnership we're glad to work around; as this family put it, we "received our ideas and feedback with ease."

The Finished Look

Arctic White does the quiet work here. Against the white field, everything else gets to speak — the black entry door, the black-framed garage doors, warm cedar timbers at the porch, and the crisp shadow lines of the battens. It's an exterior that reads custom-built rather than re-sided — which is exactly the point of doing siding, windows, doors, and paint as one project instead of four.