Stanwood Re-Side — Failing 1990s LP Out, 5-in James Hardie Lap In
Stanwood grew fast in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and a lot of houses from those years got the same cladding: first-generation LP lap siding. Thirty-plus years of north Snohomish weather later, this one was done — chalky faces, swollen course edges, soft boards down low, and sheathing starting to go behind them. We stripped the failing LP off the house and its three-car garage and rebuilt the walls properly: repaired sheathing, Benjamin Obdyke HydroGap drainable housewrap, new James Hardie lap at a 5-in reveal matched to the house, new cedar trim, and a Sherwin-Williams Duration paint system in warm white with black trim.
The siding that gave 1990s LP its reputation
The lap on this house was LP’s wood-composite product from the early 1990s — the era that ended in one of the construction industry’s best-known class-action settlements. The failure pattern is always the same, and this house had all of it: board edges that drink water and mushroom, a surface gone chalky and streaked no matter how recently it was painted, and the lowest courses — closest to splash-back and planting beds — going soft first. By the time an owner calls us it is never a paint problem, and paint was never going to fix this one.
Tear-off told the rest of the story. Where the swollen boards had been holding moisture against the wall, sections of sheathing had started to rot, so we cut those back to sound wood and sheeted them in new — the same discipline we bring to structural dry-rot repairs. The house stayed papered off and dry while the walls were open.
Dried in with HydroGap — drainage before cladding
Every wall we rebuild gets a real water management layer before any siding goes near it. Here that is Benjamin Obdyke HydroGap, a drainable housewrap with thousands of built-in spacers that hold a gap behind the cladding, so any water that ever gets past the siding runs down and out instead of sitting against the sheathing. On a house that just spent three decades trapping moisture behind failing boards, that drainage path is the single biggest upgrade in the whole assembly.
The details got the same treatment: penetrations like the gas meter and exterior outlets were re-mounted on primed cedar blocks sealed into the wrap — not caulked holes punched through the new siding.
New HardiePlank at a 5-in reveal — matched to the house
The new cladding is James Hardie lap siding — HZ10 fiber cement in the Cedarmill texture, hung at a 5-in reveal chosen to match the existing course lines of the home. That matching matters here: the main house kept its original look, so the re-sided walls and the three-car garage had to land on the same lines, the same shadow depth, the same grain. Fiber cement holds those lines for decades — it does not absorb water at the edges, feed rot into the wall, or depend on a perfect paint film the way the old wood-composite did.
New cedar trim — black against warm white
All the trim on this project is new cedar: window surrounds, corner boards, and the garage-door casings, primed on site and finished in black. The scheme is not an invention — the house always wore black-framed windows against light walls — but crisp new cedar edges are what make the elevation read sharp again. Cedar takes paint beautifully, stays stable through wet winters, and gives every opening a clean, deep shadow line against the lap.
The three-car garage got the same wall
Detached buildings usually get the leftovers — and then read as an afterthought from the driveway. Here the three-car garage got the full assembly in the same mobilization: tear-off, HydroGap, 5-in Hardie lap, and new cedar casings squared around all three door openings. The original doors went back into service inside those black casings, the barn sconces went back up, and the building now matches the house instead of dating it.
Finished in Sherwin-Williams Duration
The topcoat is Sherwin-Williams Duration — a high-build 100% acrylic exterior system — over the factory-primed Hardie and primed cedar. Field-painting instead of ordering factory color is a deliberate choice on a matching job like this: the body color could be tuned to the house rather than picked from a chart, and the siding, trim, and touch-ups all live in one paint system going forward. We walk through that trade-off on our ColorPlus vs primed-and-painted Hardie guide.
The takeaway
This is what the fix for failing 1990s LP actually looks like: not another paint job, but a wall rebuilt from the sheathing out — repaired substrate, a drainable wrap, fiber cement that cannot swell, cedar trim that frames it, and a paint system chosen to match what stayed. The house reads original from the street. It just is not hiding anything anymore.
If your Stanwood-area home is wearing this era of siding, that is exactly the work we do as a Stanwood siding contractor — and the assessment is free.
Common questions about this project
How do I know if 1990s LP siding is failing?
Look at the bottom edge of each course: the first signs are edges that swell and mushroom, a chalky washed-out surface, and dark streaks under windows and at butt joints. Press near the lowest courses — failing boards feel soft. On this Stanwood home the lowest courses had absorbed enough water that sections of sheathing behind them had to be replaced too.
Is today’s LP SmartSide the same product as 1990s LP siding?
No. The siding that failed here was from LP’s Inner-Seal era of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the product at the center of one of the industry’s best-known class-action settlements. Modern LP SmartSide is a substantially different engineered-wood product that performs well when installed and maintained correctly. On this house the owners chose fiber cement instead, so the walls no longer depend on perfect paint to keep water out.
Can new siding be matched to the parts of a house that are not replaced?
Yes — that is exactly what the 5-inch reveal was chosen for here. The new HardiePlank courses line up with the home’s existing siding lines, the new cedar trim repeats the original black-on-white scheme, and field-painting with Sherwin-Williams Duration means the color could be matched precisely instead of picked from a factory chart.
What goes on the wall before the new siding?
After tear-off we replaced the sections of sheathing the old siding had let get wet, then dried the house in with Benjamin Obdyke HydroGap — a drainable housewrap with built-in spacers that give any water behind the cladding a path down and out. Penetrations like the gas meter got primed cedar mounting blocks sealed into the wrap instead of caulked holes in the siding.
Do you replace siding in Stanwood and the rest of north Snohomish County?
Yes. GP General Corp is based in Everett and works throughout north Snohomish County — Stanwood, Arlington, Lake Stevens, Granite Falls, and up the corridor to Mt. Vernon and Anacortes. Tear-off re-sides like this one, storm and rot repairs, and full exterior repaints are all everyday work for us.
Got 1990s LP on your house?
If your siding is chalking, swelling at the edges, or growing dark streaks under the windows, it is not a paint problem. We’ll walk your walls, probe what’s soft, and write you an honest, free assessment — replace what failed, keep what hasn’t.
Request a written assessment