the back is just the white PVC. Sides also don't matter. Apparently NuCedar has to go underneath the trim, or is mitered at corners, so you never see any sides. I read somewhere someone complaining about that, saying that is like vinyl siding and it looks worse rather than butting up against trim. .However, NuCedar has PVC pieces you clip in place on the side the trim so that it does look like the siding is butting up against the trim. I love cedar. I live on Cape Cod and cedar is the siding of choice around here. But it is high maintenance, and I do not want to maintain my siding and trim. Cedar should be washed and stained or sealed every 3 - 5 years! No way. Not doing that.

Thank you all for such great input! I had actually thought about doing a darker trim, such as a green or brown color, etc. I'm going to get some samples and try them out to see if I like any of them. We had thought we would just do white, but now that I see these other colors, there's no way I want to go with white! I do have a couple of questions though: We have gutters/downspouts on our house. We plan on getting a all new gutters in the fall, so do we paint those the same as the trim then? Also, our house has had shutters on it since it was built in the 70's. We just took them down to paint the brick. We had thought we would put shutters back up to match the trim, but should we just leave them off? I've included a few more pictures of the house that I took today. I hope they show the colors better. Of the two pictures above (how did you get the car out of the driveway?!), I really like both color schemes, but I can't decide which one I like better!! Thanks! Jo

@Sherryl, our house is on our land (farm). There is no “closing“ so there’s no way to prevent us from moving in. Our county doesn’t have a codes dept so no C.O. is needed. We have our electrical and HVAC final inspections. Our builder much prefers LP Smartside. We told him from the beginning we wanted a smooth board and batten but when it came time to order, smooth LP had a long lead time and was significantly more expensive than the woodgrain that the builder included in his bid. The builder had to order minimum quantities of it, too, as it came in bundles of 90 boards. We needed like 110 so he’d been stuck with 70 extras. Hardie was much less expensive than the price he’d bid so it saved him about $2k to do the Hardie. He never offered to give us a credit back for it, either, which DH reminded them of the other day when he was complaining that Hardie was a lot more work.

@di0spyr0s I think it was very kind of you to build a concrete home just so your cats would have the perfect viewing perches... I literally caught my backyard neighbor once bending down to get a better look up into my current bathroom window through his bushes. It was like he saw me moving around and suddenly couldn't stop himself--not like he was out there just to do that. Even so, it was creepy. I knew if people tried, they could see in, but I figured it was far enough away, what could they discern. However, after witnessing him, I promptly put up privacy window film. Makes the window look frosted. It has worked steadily for nearly 7 years. I did have to bleach one edge when it started getting mildewy. The master bathroom window of the new home is only 15 feet away from the neighbor. Many of their windows offer a view of us. This time, instead of window film, I might buy the etching cream and make the blur permanent. I'll practice on other glass first, but the videos make it look easy.