GoBruno, Very nice....should look great finished. Nice choice and good luck finishing up. Looks like your home is going to be beautiful from the little Im seeing.

gobruno, that looks great! Congratulations! Thanks for posting pictures. Just curious, are your installers experienced with the Nichiha? We don't have any installers that are experienced in our area, so I am not sure if I should stay away from the product. I did just request samples today though. Are those the boards (versus the individual shingles), and do they basically just go up like any other fiber cement board? Thanks again for posting the pictures. Would love to see your house from the front - full view. Thanks.

Here's a picture of the front of the house, taken from the side of the house bc you can't step anywhere in the quicksand that is the front yard. I can only take pictures on my iphone bc I have no idea how to download pictures from my camera yet. So, sorry about the quality!

beautiful! i'm so fascinated by the nichiha products. they really are stunning. and ROTFLMAO about the quicksand ...i sunk in close to my knee the other day and really was concerned i was being swallowed alive! good luck and i can't wait to see your progress. hope we both dry out soon!

Polkadots, I didn't ask whether the installers were experienced with Nichiha, probably bc I was too scared to ask! I just requested that our builder use it, and since he got a bid for installing it, I assumed that the people would know how to install it. So far, so good. I'm actually not sure if it goes on in sheets or individually bc I'm never around during the day to see them put it up. I'd imagine that it doesn't go on one shingle at a time. As an aside though, I was a tiny bit nervous bc I couldn't find a single house in our area that used the Nichiha product. Everybody uses Hardi. I just so much prefer the Nichiha shakes for the type of home we're building bc we wanted the shakes to have variations in color to mimic cedar, and not be one solid uniform color. Incidentally, the Nichiha was considerably cheaper than Hardi. Don't know why that was bc I don't think that's true in all parts of the country. Anyway, it exceeded my expectation. It is really beautiful stuff!

Thanks for the picture and information - your house looks great. Can't wait to see it all finished! Thanks again.

p-dots: it doesn't require any special education. it's siding ...and our guys said they have never worked with anything as easy to install. it doesn't bend so it doesn't break. they really love it!

gobruno - are you going to have corner boards? I tried to find a picture of your elevation in the older posts & it looks like there are corner boards.

If you aren't doing corner boards, can you tell me if they are mitering the corners or doing a "weave"? Nominally, we are doing a weave for the 90 degrees corners, but they have to miter it elsewhere.

Thanks - Jo Ann

Jo Ann, no corner boards. They are mitering the corners. I don't know what a weave is. The picture I posted above shows the mitered corners pretty well. Again, I'm not there during the day, so, I'm not sure about the process. All I know is that we had to pay extra for it! Isnt' that the story with everything? These days, I don't even ask questions bc I know it will go hand in hand with an upcharge!

Well I'm not going to complain about my mud any more. Oh, the siding looks great.

I think the proper term for "weave" is alternating butt joint. At the corner the shakes are butted together. You alternate the side of the butt with each row of shakes. Its what Stanza 30 had on her house.

The problem with doing this with Nichiha or other fiber cement is that the exposed edges are not the same color as the surface so they have to go back and apply the stain to the edges. The alternative is to miter, as you are doing & Nichiha says you must miter if its greater than 90 degrees.

We don't really know how much extra we are being charged. On the one hand, there are no materials & labor for the corner boards. OTOH, there is probably more labor involved in putting up the shakes with mitered edges or going back and staining with the weave. When we had the house bid, DH put together a packet which had the technical data from Nichiha and pictures of Stanza's house while it was being built to help show what a weave looked like and, also, the flaring over the foundation.

Your maple Nichiha is turning out so pretty. We were trying to decide between caramel & mahogany. Stanza's is mahogany, but DH started to worry that it would be too stark a contrast with white trim. When we were at our lot, last month, we leaned the samples against some tree trunks & stepped back. In situ, we decided that the mahogany was just right. Nice when we independently come to the same conclusion. (wipe brow)

Good luck & we'd love to see some more pictures - Jo Ann

Do you have a picture of your home now that it is finished? I would love to see the shakes in maple now that it is complete. Thanks

Resurrecting this thread to ask how the corners are holding up.

I'm loving this thread, although it's old. Has anyone else found Nichiha to be less expensive than Hardi?

I know this is old, but the first picture does such a great job illustrating the effect of lighting on color perception I couldn't resist making an observation.