Cedral Lap - The White House

When Jason and Nikki bought a 19th century clapboard house overlooking a beautiful stretch of the Essex countryside, the property came with planning permission to knock it down and build a new home.

But keen to preserve a piece of history, the couple opted to restore the house instead, choosing Cedral facades to recreate the original clapboard look while benefiting from Cedral’s modern features.

“We wanted the same look as before, to restore the house to how it had looked originally,” says Jason. “We also wanted a property that was as maintenance free as possible.”

Which is why Cedral facades fitted the bill perfectly. Crafted for durability and long life with no need for regular repainting or maintenance, it has a minimum life expectancy of 50 years.

Using Cedral Lap in elegant C01 White, the finished look is a beautiful New England style home that sits at the top of the hill. Finding the right shade of white was important to the couple and here again, Cedral met the requirements perfectly.

“We went for Cedral C01 White because it’s more of a warmer shade, other options we looked at were too bright and cold. It’s a large area of cladding and we didn’t want it to be too blinding when the sun was on it. We also preferred the fact that Cedral offered a thicker board, it had more substance than the others we considered.”

The fact that their builder said he preferred working with Cedral because of its high quality sealed the deal. “He did an amazing job on the installation,” says Jason. “It was all quite painless and everyone who visits comments on the workmanship.”

The renovation is still ongoing and next they plan to build a garden office also using Cedral facades.

“We would definitely recommend Cedral,” the couple say. “So many people say to us they can’t believe it’s not real wood. Because we’ve cleared back a lot of the overgrowth on the property, the house is now very visible from the road and we didn’t want anything that looked fake. We wanted to have that original wood finish that suits the style of the house and its original design, and yet be as low maintenance as possible.”

And with Cedral that’s what they got. “Unless we used wood itself, we couldn’t have got any closer to the original style,” says Nikki. “Now everyone says it’s the prettiest house on the road.”