glnnj - Certainteed's stained fiber-cement products come in 6 shades: mahogany, cedar, redwood, maple, slate (which is the silver grey of deeply weathered wood) and emerald (which is a deep green). Go to the page I linked to in my post above and pick any of of the stain-finished products by clicking on its name (in blue). This will lead you to a new page with a small picture of that product on the right hand side. The small picture will have will have six tiny "color squares" beside it. Click on a square and the small picture will change to that color. Click on "view larger image" to see it in a larger size. Bear in mind that the colors you see on a computer are determined by the settings on your computer so the best you can get is a general idea of the colors. You'll want to see sample in real life to get a better idea of how the colors look. That said however, I found that Certainteed was extremely helpful. I could not find a distributor in my area and contacted Certainteed directly. I was wanting their pre-painted product and they sent me a sample board with sample of every color at no charge. Also, even tho there was no distributor in my local area, Certainteed indicated they could and would deliver any product I wanted to me. They don't restrict certain products/colors to certain areas of the country. Nichiha also comes in six standard stain colors and 2 special order stain colors. Standard colors are mahogany, maple, macadamia, charcoal gray, caramel, and emerald wheat. Special Order colors are redwood and weathered grey. Below is a link to the Nichiha site. There are two tiny triangle on the bottom left and right sides of the big picture on this page. Click on them to move thru a slide show of houses built using various nichiha siding - some painted and some stained. Hope this helps. Here is a link that might be useful: nichiha

Twotogo, I noticed another installation error in the picture of the "stress" crack to the left of your window. There is no horizontal Z flashing installed above the window trim and the siding is caulked directly to the trim. If you refer to the installation instructions from any fiber cement siding manufacturer, they instruct that horizontal flashing must be installed in these areas and that the installer leave an "uncaulked" 1/4" gap where the siding meets the flashing. The flashing is to prevent the possibility of water infiltration and the gap is meant to act as an escape for any water or moisture that might get behind the siding. If the gap is caulked (with or without flashing), moisture can get trapped in these areas and cause problems down the road. The fact that I didn't see any flashing above the window indicates you will most certainly have leakage issues at some point. Short of pulling the siding above all windows and properly installing horizontal Z flashing, the only thing you can do is very closely and frequently monitor those caulked joints to minimize water infiltration. From everything I've read and seen on your siding, I have to agree that it is an installation issue. Hopefully you have Tyvek installed behind the siding to prevent rotting to your wall sheathing should you experience water infiltration. Best of luck to you

Also looking to order fiber cement siding planks. Seems like everyone goes with either CertainTeed or Hardie planks. Is Cerber a reputable brand (it seems they're manufactured by Certainteed per quote above: "Cerber currently uses Certainteed Fibre Cement board for its rustic series. Previously we had used Maxitile, but we had feedback from customers indicating less brand awareness and confidence in Maxitile and a preference for Certainteed.") My GC is letting us order as much of the material as we want ourselves vs. him ordering for us to price compare (he doesn't have time to do all that quoting back and forth), but I've not bought anything online directly and not from Build Direct. I've only made purchases from local distributors, HD/Lowe's and other local building suppliers. Is it safe to buy from Build Direct? I'm in northern CA and to cover 3000 sq ft (that's how large the house is, not the needed siding) one-story home, I've calculated that it'll take about 2340 sq ft + 10% Thank you in advance for any advice!

Kateskouros, you should contact nichia and let them know your thoughts. Maybe they will have a solution for delivery. cs6000, I cant speak for being more economical, but with pre-finished, you still have to caulk, touch up over that as well as touch up from scrapes and bruises during install. By going with pre-primed, you can caulk and prep follwed by your top coats and you're done. Pre-finished might save a little time and a lot of effort, but you get a better job by painting the pre-primed after install,imo. Another concern with pre-finished is if they run the materials off of two different lots, even though it is the same color, it can differ enough to the eye and show up after install.