Hi there! First time poster, so be gentle.

We're building a cabin and using Maxi-Tile cement board exterior siding. It has a wood grain look, and is pre-painted. It's a two-coat process: A darker base, and lighter second coat, which brings out the high spots on the plank, helping define the "wood grain". The result is an overall look very much like a stained cedar plank.

The siding is now about halfway installed, and there's no going back.

I won't go into gory details, but the sample board I approved turned out to be a slightly lighter tint than the original sample we had based our original decision on. So the siding is the slightly lighter tint. The result is that instead of an overall brownish-look to the cabin, it's more "butterscotch-looking." Almost like a natural cedar board. It's not bad, but it's not what we wanted.

We could just have the whole thing painted a solid color that we like better. But because the difference between the right and wrong tint on this cement board is so close, I'm wondering if I could lightly apply a light brushing of a thinned coat of paint, instead. The goal would be to to give the siding a slightly browner tint, without covering all the fake grain. (This would mean not priming the boards, but because they're already factory-primed and painted I don't think that would be an issue, as long as whatever I put on there bonded to the top surface of the existing paint.)

So that's my question - do you think what I'm talking about is possible, and if so, what sort of paint-esque product would we use? If it was natural wood, I'd say "semi-transparent stain," but since it's cement board, I don't know that stain would work.

Any advice is appreciated. (I have a bunch of waste pieces of siding and the whole winter to try out any suggestions :) Thanks!