Cedar Siding, Shingle & Shake Repair in Salem, OR

Cedar siding comes as bevel and channel lap boards, tongue-and-groove, board-and-batten, sawn shingles and split shakes. It is a traditional material on older houses, and one of its strengths is that it can be repaired a piece at a time: split or rotted boards replaced, woodpecker holes patched, courses of shingles rewoven. Full replacement, in cedar or another material, is the other route. Describe the siding and we will follow up about a quote.

How is cedar siding graded?

The Western Red Cedar Lumber Association (WRCLA) publishes the grade descriptions for western red cedar siding, and the grade decides how the wall looks and which face goes out. The association’s clear grades are graded for a smooth face, with the exception of Rustic, which is graded for a saw-textured face only.

Grade	What the WRCLA says about it	Face
Clear V.G. Heart	The highest grade of bevel siding: vertical grain, kiln dried, with a face of decay-resistant heartwood free of characteristics that affect appearance or performance	Smooth
Clear Heart	The highest grade for patterns other than bevel; heartwood on the exposed face, with many pieces completely clear	Smooth
A Clear	A fine appearance grade with slightly more natural characteristics than Clear Heart, in mixed grain; typically sold with a share of B grade	Smooth
Rustic	Sidewall siding for a rustic, saw-textured look	Saw-textured
Select Knotty	Knots are sound and tight; commonly specified with a share of Quality Knotty	Rough or dressed
Architect Knotty	Knotty boards made to go up resawn face out, trimmed to the stud spacing, without open or through defects	Resawn

Shingles are graded separately, under labels from the Cedar Shake and Shingle Bureau. The top label, No. 1 Blue Label, means every shingle is heartwood, clear and edge grain, for walls or roofs. A No. 2 Red Label bundle may include some flat-grain shingles and a little sapwood. Black Label, No. 3, is the bureau’s utility label, meant for budget jobs and secondary buildings, and No. 4 is sold only as the concealed under-course on double-coursed walls.

Cedar lap, shingles and shakes

• Bevel siding is resawn at an angle, so each board is thicker at one edge. The association lists plain bevel, rabbeted bevel, which is self-spacing, and wavy-edge bevel.
• Channel siding gives a rustic look, is usually supplied in unseasoned knotty grades with a saw-textured face, and can run horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
• Tongue-and-groove comes with rough or smooth faces and also runs in any direction.
• Board-and-batten is vertical: wide boards spaced apart, with narrower battens covering the joins.
• Shingles and shakes. Shingles are sawn. Handsplit shakes have split faces and sawn backs, and tapersawn shakes are sawn on both sides. For No. 1 grade shingles, Oregon’s code caps single-course exposure at 7, 8 and 10 1/2 inches for 16-, 18- and 24-inch lengths, and spaces shingles 1/8 to 1/4 inch apart and shakes 3/8 to 1/2 inch (R703.6.1).

Matching an older profile or width is the usual difficulty in a repair; some have to be milled to fit.

Finishing cedar for Salem’s wet winters

Salem’s November, December and January each average roughly six to seven inches of rain (NOAA 1991-2020 normals). The Forest Products Laboratory’s Wood Handbook says a finish’s life depends on climate and exposure, that mildew is most common “where moisture stays longest—out of the sun and where air does not move”, and that it punctures tiny holes in a coating, breaking its water barrier. The comparison further down this page sets out how long each type of finish lasts on cedar. What the sources agree on:

• Finish soon. Sunlight changes a bare wood surface quickly, before it looks any different. In research reported in the Wood Handbook, vertical-grain western redcedar left facing the sun for one week before painting started peeling after 13 years, while boards painted without that exposure were still in good condition after 20. The handbook’s advice for cedar is to finish it as soon as possible after installation, or prime it before. The WRCLA adds that most primers are not meant to face the weather for more than 90 days before the topcoat.
• Coat every side. The association recommends finishing all six sides of each board, or buying boards primed or finished at the factory. Priming the back, called back-priming, helps prevent cupping.
• Block the extractives. Cedar’s natural extractives can bleed through paint and solid stain. The WRCLA recommends a stain-blocking primer, with alkyd-oil primers usually giving the best protection, under a 100 percent acrylic latex topcoat.
• Finish dry wood, in the dry season. The association warns that coating wood above 20 percent moisture content makes a finish more likely to fail. Salem’s June-to-September dry spell is the easy window, within each product’s temperature and dew-point limits.
• Let the wall dry from behind. The Wood Handbook notes that rainscreen construction lets air dry the back of the siding. Oregon’s code already requires a drainage space of at least 1/8 inch behind siding by default (R703.1.1 of the 2023 Oregon Residential Specialty Code).

Nails and fasteners for cedar

Cedar’s natural preservatives react with unprotected metal; the WRCLA’s designer handbook says the result is black or blue-black staining. Its installation guidance allows stainless steel, hot-dipped galvanized and aluminum nails, ranks stainless first, particularly where a transparent stain will go on, and advises against electroplated or mechanically galvanized nails and against copper. Nails should be long enough to pass through the sheathing and any insulation and penetrate at least 1 1/4 inches. For shingles and shakes, Oregon’s code itself requires two stainless steel or hot-dipped galvanized nails per piece, penetrating the sheathing or furring by at least 1/2 inch and not overdriven (R703.6.3); the Cedar Shake and Shingle Bureau asks for 3/4 inch. Black or blue-black streaks spreading from nail heads point to the wrong nails.

What damages cedar siding?

• Water that does not drain away. Board ends near soil, decks and roofs, window sills, and joints behind failed caulk stay wet long enough to rot. Which siding joints to caulk, and which to leave open covers the cedar association’s caulk advice. Look below roof-to-wall corners too, where a missing kick-out flashing sends water down the wall.
• A worn-out finish that lets rain and sun reach bare wood.
• Paint that keeps peeling. The National Park Service’s Preservation Brief 10 puts most peeling to bare wood down to moisture collecting behind the paint film, and warns that repainting before the moisture is dealt with simply fails again.
• Woodpecker holes, which let rain into the wall.
• Mildew, algae and moss on shaded or sheltered walls. How to clean mildew, algae and moss off siding covers the WRCLA’s cleaning advice and why high-pressure washing does more harm than good.
• Impact from falling limbs in ice storms.

Soft wood that a screwdriver sinks into is rot, not weathering. Dry rot in siding and trim explains how to tell how far it goes.

Repairing cedar on older and historic houses

Older houses bring questions that newer ones do not:

• Historic review in Salem. The city lists replacing siding with a different type, style or material among the changes that need historic design review, and ordinary maintenance and repair, such as painting, among the work that does not. That applies to individually listed properties and to buildings in Salem’s National Register districts. The Salem page has the details.
• Historic review in Silverton. The city’s historic preservation program reviews alterations to designated landmarks and contributing historic resources. See the Silverton page.
• Repair in kind. The Park Service’s Preservation Brief 47 suggests replacing a section with matching material where damage is too large to patch, reusing sound siding when boards come off, and back-priming any new wood, with two coats of primer on exposed end grain. New replacement cedar can also bleed extractives for its first 10 to 15 years, according to Brief 10, which is one more reason for a stain-blocking primer.
• Lead paint. On a house built before 1978, a contractor who disturbs 20 square feet or more of painted exterior needs a Construction Contractors Board lead-based paint renovation license and has to work lead-safe.

Woodpecker holes in cedar

Small holes in otherwise sound boards can be patched and finished. Boards with clusters of holes, or soft wood around them, are better replaced so rain cannot get in behind. Woodpeckers, including the northern flicker and the downy, hairy and pileated woodpeckers, are on the federal list of birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (50 CFR 10.13), so the fix is repair and deterrence rather than harming the birds.

Replace cedar with cedar, or with something else?

New cedar keeps the look, and on a historic Salem property it avoids the change of material that triggers design review. Other materials can imitate it: fiber cement comes in lap boards and shingles, and vinyl comes in shake and shingle styles. Each changes the maintenance, the weight on the wall and the cost. Whichever you choose, a full siding replacement rebuilds the barrier and flashing behind the new siding.

What does cedar siding cost?

This site publishes no cedar price. No dependable published source for cedar siding costs was found, and a number without a source is not one worth printing. The figures the site does publish are whole-job averages for fiber cement and vinyl replacement and national ranges for repair and for removing old siding, all on the siding cost page; none of them is a cedar price. What a cedar quote should spell out instead: the grade and profile, whether boards arrive factory-primed, the primer and number of topcoats, the fasteners, and how rotted sheathing will be handled if it turns up.

Request a siding quote, choose cedar and wood siding, and say whether it is shingles, shakes or lap boards. We will follow up about the quote.