Siding in Stinson Beach, CA

Why oceanfront salt drives the whole spec here

Stinson sits in open Pacific air with no bay or peninsula to soften it, so the salt load is heavier and more constant than the bayside Marin towns. That single fact rewrites the re-side. Wood lap and shingle on the older cottages near the beach swell, check, and rot from the salt-damp side; original galvanized and aluminum trim streaks rust within a season. We strip to sheathing, rebuild the drainage plane, and switch every fastener and flashing to stainless or marine-grade so the wall stops feeding the very corrosion it is meant to resist. On the sandspit and the Seadrift lots fronting the surf, the windward elevation takes punishment the leeward side never sees, so we detail each face for the exposure it actually gets rather than wrapping the whole house identically.

The Mt. Tam slope above adds a measured fire layer

Stinson is not a valley-floor town. The steep, brush-and-forest flank of Mount Tamalpais rises directly behind it, and the hillside homes climbing toward the ridge carry a real, if moderate, wildfire exposure from that wildland edge. We characterize the actual exposure for a given lot rather than applying a blanket assumption — a beach cottage on the flat sandspit faces a different calculus than a house tucked into the slope under the canopy. Where the wildland edge is close, a re-side is the moment to move to non-combustible cladding and close the ember paths at eaves and vents. The point is honest layering: salt-corrosion durability everywhere, with measured fire hardening added on the elevations that genuinely face the hill.

Beach cottage, Seadrift, and hillside — three different jobs

Stinson's housing stock is not uniform, and the re-side changes with it. The old beach cottages near the village wear narrow shingle and lap on light framing, often weathered hard by decades of salt; here the work is sensitive replacement that keeps the cottage character while ending the rot cycle. Seadrift's lower, surf-and-lagoon-fronting homes sit in the heaviest salt and wind, so corrosion detailing and wind-driven-rain flashing lead. The hillside houses toward the ridge bring steep access, canopy damp, and the Mt. Tam fire fringe into one scope. We walk the specific lot and elevation before quoting, because a sandspit cottage and a slope house in the same ZIP are genuinely different projects.

Building a wall that drains in air that never dries

Open-coast Stinson keeps surfaces wet far longer than inland Marin — fog, salt fog, and wind-driven drizzle mean a wall rarely gets a true dry stretch. That makes the drying side of the assembly as important as the corrosion side. We install cladding over a continuous, correctly lapped weather-resistive barrier with a rainscreen gap so the back of the board can breathe and release the moisture it inevitably takes on. Flashing is detailed for water pushed sideways and upward off the surf, not just running down: back-dams at window heads, kickout flashing at every roof-to-wall junction, and bottom courses held well off damp sand and soil. Seal a coastal wall tight without a drying path and you trade salt rot for trapped-moisture rot — the classic Stinson failure we are built to avoid.

Fiber Cement Siding for Stinson Beach homes

The full fiber cement siding approach — materials, weather-resistive detailing, and the manufacturer standards we install to — is covered on the main service page, then specified for Stinson Beach's conditions on this one.

Full Fiber Cement Siding details →

Our Stinson Beach process