A Commercial Exterior, Rebuilt and Modernized

About This Project

Utopia Management's office building on Bellingham's Meridian corridor had two problems at once. A vehicle had struck the right side of the building, leaving damaged columns under a tarp. And the entry — a row of open wooden slats over the walkway — had aged into the kind of feature a property manager notices every time they pull into the lot.

The building houses working offices with clients coming and going all day. Closing was not an option, so the whole project was planned around staying open: staging inside marked perimeters, the walkway kept usable, and the tenants told what was happening and when.

First things first, though. The building predates 1978, which means the law requires a lead test before anyone touches a piece of siding. Our certified renovator pulled and ran that test before demolition started — it came back negative, and the job proceeded on a documented footing instead of an assumption.

A Commercial Re-Side, Detailed for a Property Line

The building was stripped and re-clad in James Hardie HardiePlank in Cedarmill texture at a 7-inch reveal, trimmed in 3.5-inch HardieTrim with Bearskin joint flashing behind every seam — no caulked plank seams, which James Hardie's instructions specifically call for and which many installers get wrong.

Two details made this a commercial job rather than a big house. The back wall sits close enough to the neighboring building that code calls for a fire-resistive assembly, so that elevation went up over DensGlass fire-rated exterior sheathing. And every exterior light and wall protrusion got a custom Hardie block, flashed with metal z-flashing — the unglamorous detail that keeps water out of a wall for decades.

The damaged right-side columns were demolished and rebuilt into the new wall — no structural engineer required for that scope, which kept both the schedule and the cost down. Siding Vault pulled the City of Bellingham re-side permit on the owner's behalf.

The Concrete Nobody Knew Was There

Then the tear-off turned up a surprise. Behind the original T1-11 on the front wall was CMU — solid concrete block. Not on the plans, not in the building's file, and news to the owners themselves. A little research explained it: the building had started life as a bank, and the concrete was original to that build. The old night-depository slot still set into the front wall — the one you can see wrapped in fresh trim in the photos above — is the last visible piece of that history.

It also created a real problem. Fiber cement cannot be nailed to concrete. Standard siding fasteners are too long and have nothing to bite; a shortcut here would have meant siding hanging on inadequate holding strength for the life of the building.

The fix was to build the wall the way that concrete demands: a rain-screen assembly. Self-adhered peel-and-stick weather barrier over the block, pressure-treated 1x4 furring strips anchored with pre-drilled concrete fasteners, venting at the terminations, and specialty hybrid nail-screw fasteners chosen for holding strength in that assembly. Every anchor point drilled individually — slow, deliberate work.

The upside is that the front wall ended up better than the rest of the building. A rain screen gives the cladding a vented drainage cavity behind it, so any water that gets past the face has somewhere to go and air to dry it. We expedited the special-order materials so the schedule held, and priced the change close to our cost rather than let the discovery stall the job.

The Overhang: From Slats to a Solid Modern Canopy

The entry overhang was the transformation everyone sees first. Rather than demolish and rebuild it — a structural job with engineering, permits, and a much bigger bill — the existing wooden posts and beams were sheeted in OSB and clad in HardiePanel, with commercial corner and seam flashing instead of residential wood trim.

The result reads as a single solid canopy with clean industrial seams: the modern look the building wanted, achieved without touching its structure. The entry itself is wrapped in Woodtone RusticSeries pre-finished HardiePlank — the same fiber cement, factory-finished in a wood texture that holds up in commercial use with almost no maintenance.

Boxing in the overhang would have sealed away all four of the building's exterior lights, leaving the entry dark. We caught it while reviewing the permit set, drew up a revised lighting plan — enclose three, relocate the fourth beside the front door — and had our licensed electrician handle the work so the schedule never paused.

Delivered Primed, Finished by the Owner

The building went back together in primed HardiePlank, ready for the owner's own painters to carry the color — the arrangement the property manager wanted from the start. What the photos show is that finished result: a dark, contemporary exterior with the trim and flashing lines laid out underneath it.