Siding in the Lettered Streets.
The Lettered Streets sit just north of downtown, where the avenues are named by letter and the houses date to the late 1800s and early 1900s. It's one of Bellingham's oldest and densest neighborhoods, full of original wood-sided homes packed close together, sometimes just a few feet apart. That density shapes the whole job: there isn't much room to stage scaffolding or drop old siding, so a tear-off here takes more planning and a tidier site than a house with a big yard.
The siding itself is usually original bevel lap that's a century old, and matching that look matters in a neighborhood with this much character. We mill or source lap siding to match the original exposure, replace the rotted boards and the soft sheathing behind them (century-old walls almost always have some), and redo the flashing at the windows and sills. Where a full re-side makes sense, new wood or fiber cement on a rainscreen gives these old walls a way to dry. We keep the tight-access work clean and the historic look intact.
What we see on Lettered Streets homes.
Common home styles
Late-1800s to early-1900s homes, including Victorian-influenced and early Craftsman houses, densely set with original bevel lap wood siding.
Popular projects
Tight-access tear-offs and re-sides, historic-matching lap siding, rot repair on century-old walls and sheathing, and trim restoration on close-set older homes.
Climate & siding considerations
Century-old walls in the Lettered Streets have taken generations of our wet climate. We fix the rot, match the historic lap, and put full re-sides on a rainscreen so the next century of moisture can drain.