Old Growth Cedar Meets the Intracoastal
Waterfront property in Wilmington asks more of a building material than almost anywhere else in North Carolina. Salt in the air, humidity that swings hard between morning and afternoon, driving rain off the water, and full sun with nothing to break it. Most siding does not have a good answer for all four at once.
Why old growth vertical grain western red cedar
For the exterior of this home we
milled old growth vertical grain western red cedar. Vertical grain matters here: because the growth rings run perpendicular to the face, the board moves far less across its width than flat sawn stock, so it stays flatter and holds a finish longer through the wet-dry cycling a waterfront site puts it through. Old growth adds tight, consistent growth rings and a higher proportion of naturally rot-resistant heartwood. Western red cedar brings its own decay resistance and dimensional stability to begin with. Put together, it is about as durable a wood cladding as you can specify, and it looks like nothing else.
Inside: select cypress, clear pine and vertical grain hemlock
The interior is where the material list gets interesting. Select cypress paneling and
mouldings, clear pine, and vertical grain clear hemlock paneling and mouldings. Cypress is a southern wood with natural oil in it and a warm, quiet grain that suits a house on the water. Vertical grain hemlock gives you long clean runs with almost no knots — a calm ceiling and wall surface that lets the view be the thing you look at. All of it milled here in our own shop, which means the profiles match, the moisture content is right for this climate, and nothing had to be ordered from three states away and hoped for.
How it has held up
The house sits on the waterway and has taken everything the coast has given it since. That is the argument for specifying the better material at the start: on a waterfront build, the cost difference between adequate and correct disappears the first time the weather does something serious.
Building on the water in the Wilmington area? Talk to us about species selection before the siding order goes in.
