White Cedar Shingle Siding on Cape Cod: Install and Care

Cedar shingle siding is the wall covering Cape Cod houses were built with, and it is still the one we install most. Coast Carpentry Home Improvement installs Grade A white cedar shingle siding on Cape Cod homes from Hyannis to Falmouth to Sandwich. Done right, that means a clear-face shingle, a wall that can dry behind it, stainless or hot-dipped nails that will not streak, courses that run dead straight, and a plan for the gray it is going to turn. Done wrong, it means rust tears under every nail head and shingles cupping off the wall before the house has weathered in.

We are based at 14 Parker Rd, Unit A in Osterville, and Fagner Rodrigues, who holds the Massachusetts Construction Supervisor license every Coast job runs under, is on the siding jobs himself. The photo above is the gable end of one of our Hyannis remodels, the new white cedar still blond, a new slider and window set into it, the deck just finished. Here is what we do on a wall like that and why, from the grade and the nailing to the Old King’s Highway district and the cases where cedar is honestly the wrong call.

Why do Cape Cod houses have cedar shingles?

The practical reasons came first and the look followed. Eastern white cedar came out of the Atlantic white cedar swamps that still dot the Upper Cape, and the oils in the wood resist rot and insects without any finish. A shingle wall also handles wind the way the Cape needs it to: each shingle is a small, thick piece nailed near its top and lapped by the course above, so a nor’easter driving rain sideways hits hundreds of small overlaps instead of a few long seams.

The other reason is repair. A split or cupped shingle gets pulled and a new one slid in. The gray came last. Nobody planned for white cedar to turn silver, it just did, and over the generations it became the color people picture when they picture a Cape. That is why our guide to the best siding for New England’s climate still puts cedar shingle first for the traditional Cape.

What grade of cedar shingle belongs on a Cape Cod wall?

Shingles are graded by how clear the wood is. The top grade is clear on the face, so the part that shows below the course above has no knots and no sap pockets to open up and let water in. Lower grades allow defects higher up the shingle, on the theory that the course above covers them. On a wall, where the exposed butt is what you look at from the driveway and a knot can fall out and leave a hole, we use the top grade and nothing else. Our siding is Grade A white cedar shingles. There is no brand on it.

The other question we get is white cedar or red cedar. White cedar is the Cape tradition and the one that weathers to the silver gray people expect. Red cedar is darker, weathers toward a brown gray, and is more common on the roof than the wall around here, which is why it lives on our cedar roofing page. When a homeowner in Yarmouth Port asks us to match the house next door, the neighbor is almost always white cedar.

Why does cedar shingle siding weather to gray on the Cape?

Fresh white cedar is a pale honey color. Within the first season in the sun it starts to lose that, and the change is only skin deep. Ultraviolet light breaks down the lignin that holds the surface fibers together, weather washes the loose material away, and what is left is the gray you see. The shingle underneath is not damaged.

What surprises owners is how uneven it is. The south and west walls of a house in Falmouth get the most sun and salt and go pale silver. The north wall under a stand of oaks stays damp, picks up mildew, and goes a darker, streakier gray. The wall facing Nantucket Sound in Hyannis Port will be ahead of the wall facing the street. A bleaching oil applied after installation gives the whole house an even silver from the start. Leaving it alone costs nothing and ends up in the same place.

How do we install cedar shingle siding so it lasts in salt air?

We take the old siding off down to the sheathing rather than shingling over it, because that is the only way to find rot at the sill and old leaks around the windows. Over sound sheathing goes a water-resistive barrier, lapped so anything that gets past the cedar runs down and out. Over that goes a breathable rainscreen layer, a three-dimensional mesh or furring that holds the back of the shingle off the wall. That gap is the single biggest difference between a cedar wall that dries after a storm and one that stays wet, cups, and grows mildew from behind. Every wall we shingle gets it.

Flashing comes before shingles. Every window and door gets a sill pan and head flashing that laps into the barrier the way water runs, and new Andersen windows and doors go in with the same crew on the same day, as on the Hyannis gable in the photo. Where a roof meets a wall we run step flashing with a kick-out at the bottom so water goes into the gutter instead of behind the shingles. Then the courses go up to a story pole and snapped lines, at a 5 inch exposure on 16 inch shingles, the standard Cape exposure and well inside what the Cedar Shake and Shingle Bureau’s sidewall specifications allow.

Nails are where salt air finds a cheap job. Each shingle gets two nails, about three quarters of an inch in from each edge and an inch above the butt line of the course that will cover them, so no nail head sees weather. They are stainless steel, Type 316 on houses within sight of salt water, or hot-dipped galvanized away from it. The bright electro-galvanized nails from the home center rust in salt air and bleed a brown streak down every shingle. Shingles go on with roughly an eighth to a quarter inch gap so they can move with the seasons, and the joints in each course are offset from the course below so water never finds a straight path through.

Should the corners be woven or boarded?

Walk down Main Street in Osterville and you will see both. A woven, or laced, corner alternates which wall’s shingle overlaps at each course, so the corner reads as shingles all the way around with no trim. It is the older detail and the one that says Cape most clearly, and it takes a carpenter who can plane each corner shingle to a clean edge, course after course. A corner board is a vertical trim piece, usually painted white to match the casings, with the shingles butting into it on each side. It goes faster and it is what most newer Cape style houses were built with.

We do not have a side. We have a rule: match the house. A 1920s Cape on the bay side of Sandwich with woven corners should get woven corners back. A 1980s cape in Mashpee with corner boards should keep them, because woven corners on only the new addition would read as an addition from the street. Under either detail there is a strip of membrane wrapping the corner before a single shingle is nailed.

Should you stain cedar shingles or let them weather?

This decision sets the maintenance schedule for as long as you own the house. Natural, with no finish at all, is the traditional answer and the easiest to live with. The shingles gray, unevenly for a while and then evenly, and there is nothing to recoat. Bleaching oil is the same end result reached sooner. It is applied once after installation, pulls the whole house to a soft silver within a season, and fades out rather than peeling.

A semi-transparent stain is for the owner who loves the honey color of new cedar and wants to keep it. It soaks in and does not peel, but the color fades and has to be renewed on a cycle. A solid stain is closer to paint: full color, hides the grain, and once it is on, the house is a recoat house for good. If an owner wants a stained finish we back-prime the shingles, sealing the hidden face before they go up, so the finish is not fighting moisture from behind. Every finish on the Cape has a life, and the sun and salt on a south wall in Falmouth Heights shorten it.

What does the Old King’s Highway district say about cedar siding?

If your house sits north of Route 6A in Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, Brewster or Orleans, it is almost certainly inside the Old King’s Highway Regional Historic District. New siding on an elevation visible from a public way goes in front of the town’s historic district committee, and you need a Certificate of Appropriateness before the building permit is issued. White cedar shingles, left natural or oiled to weather gray, are exactly what the district expects to see. A like-for-like replacement in white cedar is the simplest filing there is. Changing corner details, trim widths, or going to a stained color on a house that was always gray is where the questions come from.

Hyannis has its own Main Street Waterfront Historic District with a similar review, so we check before we quote. Outside any district you still need a building permit once sheathing, flashing, or windows are part of the job, filed with the town, the Town of Barnstable Building Division for example. We pull the permits and tell owners inside the district to budget calendar time for the committee’s meeting schedule, because the shingles do not go on until the certificate is in hand.

How do you maintain cedar shingle siding on Cape Cod?

Cedar shingle siding does not need much, but what it needs is specific. Mildew and the green film that shows up on a north wall under trees come off with a garden hose, a soft brush, and a mild cleaner made for wood. A pressure washer held close enough to strip the mildew also strips the surface fibers, drives water up under the butts, and leaves a wall that looks fuzzy and gray in patches, and the only real fix for that is time.

The bottom of the wall is where cedar fails first, because it is where water lingers. The lowest course should sit well up off a patio or the ground, and we set that during installation. What an owner controls is what touches the wall: hydrangeas planted against the house, mulch mounded up to the shingles, a missing splash block under a downspout. We also walk the house once a year for the shingle that has split along the grain or cupped at the butt, and slide in a new one. The before photo on our Sandwich renovations post shows what decades of salt and neglect look like on a cedar Cape, and even that wall was mostly sound under the gray.

When is cedar shingle siding the wrong choice?

We sell a lot of cedar and we still talk some owners out of it. The clearest case is the exposed waterfront house, the one on the bluff in Hyannis Port or at the end of the road in Popponesset, where the wind comes straight off the water with nothing in front of it. Cedar will weather hard and fast on the water side there, and an owner who wants a wall that looks the same years from now as it does the day we finish is going to be unhappy. Our Barnstable siding post says the same thing: on an exposed lot we often steer toward fiber cement unless the look of cedar is the priority.

The second case is the owner who hears “it grays unevenly for a while” and winces. The third is a north elevation shaded by a dense tree line with no air movement. Cedar can go there with the rainscreen and a bleaching oil, but it will need more attention than the rest of the house, and we say so. If any of that sounds like your house, read how to choose a Cape Cod siding contractor and ask whoever you talk to whether they will tell you the same thing.

What drives the cost of cedar shingle siding on Cape Cod?

We do not publish numbers because no two walls on the Cape are the same, but the things that move the number are not a mystery. The wall itself comes first: how many square feet, and how many windows, doors, gables and dormers break it up. Grade A costs more than a lower grade, and a tighter exposure uses more shingles per square foot. Woven corners add carpenter hours over corner boards. A bleaching oil or a stain adds a step, and a solid stain adds a system you will keep paying into.

Then there is what the tear-off uncovers. Soft sheathing at the sill, rot under an old window, a wall that was never flashed, each of those is work we would rather find and fix than cover. Finally there is scope: owners re-siding a Cape often replace the windows at the same time. Our post on what drives Cape Cod siding cost goes deeper, and our siding replacement guide will tell you whether the house is at that point. For a real number, ask us for a quote and we will walk the house with you.

Frequently asked questions about cedar shingle siding on Cape Cod