Visitors to the Sammamish City Hall will have noticed the place got a bit of a facelift recently, utilizing the expertise of local company Fishtail Construction.

Though the cedar finish is a feature of the distinctive building, it also has the propensity to cause some maintenance issues.

According to Fishtail’s Raymond Rowland, the cedar’s oil stain had leached out of the wood and was not allowing the cedar to weather.

Rowland’s company was brought in to improve and protect the finish, work that they carried out during a spree of good weather in April.

“We used an environmentally friendly brightener on all the horizontal cedar siding, and finished the prep by sanding the siding, to remove the damaged outer layer of wood and water stains,” he said. “To protect the siding we hand applied two coats of Sikkens Log and Siding finish; which is an oil finish that penetrates into the wood and then builds up a film coating which has UV protection properties.”

Fishtail also did a bit of work improving the picnic shelters down on the commons, using the same applications.

“The beauty of this product is that in two or three years all we will have to do to maintain the finished look is wash the cedar down with a garden hose, remove the dirt, and then apply a maintenance coating,” Rowland said.