Real Cedar Siding - Maintenance?

March 21, 2015 12:06 PM

Bought / Buying my first house and the house has real cedar for siding. I can't find any definite answer to the maintenance requirements and frequency to this; only cedar shake but this is actual wood planks. Anyone have experience with maintaining real wood siding? If you ever had it professionally maintained, what was your cost and est. square footage?
posted by lpcxa0 to Home & Garden (3 answers total)

Has the siding been finished, or has it been left natural and allowed to weather? That is, is it still a reddish color, or has it been allowed to turn silver/gray? Cedar is a bit different from standard wood siding. Typical wood siding must be sealed/painted on a regular basis. Unless there's damage, cedar siding (either raw or finished) can generally be left to itself for a good long time, depending on the environment.

I found these links on a western red cedar trade assoc. website.
Finishing.
Maintenance.
Restoration.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:51 PM on March 21, 2015

We bought a house with cedar siding years ago, so I can't speak to current costs for maintenance. I can say our siding was finished and had to be stained every 5 - 6 years. The biggest problems we had with it were from hailstones, woodpeckers and carpenter bees.
posted by clarkstonian at 8:23 PM on March 21, 2015

If it hasn't been finished, periodically restaining is so much easier than scraping and prep for paint.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:37 AM on March 22, 2015