I haven't priced anything out to compare, but I wanted to tell you to keep in mind ongoing maintenance. Properly installed, hardieplank will hold a paint job for far far longer than pine or cedar. Our eaves and roofline trim are pine and are in need of their 4th paint job on a 10 year old house. A paint job (properly done, with scraping sanding, and priming), only lasts about 3 years before it starts to crack and peel. Our Hardieplank is going on 3+ years now and looks like it was painted yesterday. We were told to expect at least 12-15 years out of the Hardie before it will need repainting. Considering it cost us $10K to paint the hardieplank and a couple grand every time we need the roof trim painted, be sure to keep in mind the long-term performance, and not just the upfront difference. The price difference between Hardie and pine clapboard will be more than made up after you've had to paint the pine a couple times. Good luck!

Kframe thanks for replying. I am not sure how good roofing with asphalt shingles over slate would be. You would think that slate would provide a pretty uneven surface and that plywood would be better if necessary. If we go the asphalt shingles route our roofer plans to use the boards if they are tight enough and adding to them otherwise -he did this on a side porch of our own house which was too low slope to take slate successfully (my husband had retiled in slate 20 years before not realizing it was the slope/slate combination causing water in the porch). Anyway the boards there were tight enough to take asphalt. Back to son's roof we are going up on a ladder to take photos of the slate today and submitting them to the Joe Jenkins forum to check if the slate is really shot although one side from the ground looks so. Then, if so, the issue becomes how, if at all, to vent a new asphalt roof (replacement with slate is out of the question). There is no possibility of a soffit vent which is normally associated with ridge vents to get air flowing. So perhaps better not to have anything other than the one gable vent there already although even with the board and slate and associated air gaps the area is very very hot. I would love to hear more about venting these retrofitted old roofs.

Well, it might be kind of hard to get the depth-look through painting.... You can get shakes in wood, of course, but also vinyl/plastic/composites, fiber-cement, and...metal. I've never seen a tape/glue-on addition to regular aluminum siding to give it the depth. Can you post a pic?

Yes agree with the existing colors I vote for a mid range grayish. I don't like the patch work look of 2 different colors on the same roof. I would request architectural shingles however, they will cost a little more but definitely worth it. These are good gray shades. Here is a link that might be useful: Gray shingles