I posted a question many months back about cladding an old weather board home as opposed to painting . In the end I have decided to go with painting . My wife has done much of the work and it looks really snappy . Quote for the cladding was about $20,000 . Cost of paint and associated materials about $1000 .
However , I would not want to go through all that again . Some of the cladding these days looks great . Any one been through the process of cladding and been dissapointed ? Some times I notice that after a house is clad the windows look awful .
My father in law is a bricky and reckons it all sucks . A mate of mine who is a builder reckons it sucks . Everyone I know reckons cladding sucks …
But I will say here and now .
I HATE PAINTING AND WILL NEVER PAINT ANOTHER HOUSE AGAIN
Pay a painter to do it! It will always be a better result than clad….it never looks good and does not look realistic. Might improve a fibro house but I still think there are better ways to treat fibro given the cost of clad.
my father has replaced fibro cement sheeting (asbestos) with vinyl cladding but he selected a vinyl cladding that has the color throughout the whole plastic as cheaper stuff shows up scratches on the vinyl if the surface paint or coat is scratched. I have also seen a house cladded in red ceddar cladding. Not sure on costs though.
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I agree with Marsden, if you hate painting then pay someone to do it instead! We live in a cladded house and once the darn thing heats up it seems to retain the heat.
A lot of prospective buyers may be put off by cladding as they always wonder what problem its hiding? They may think termites?
Having said that, a quick brush and a hose down (although water restrictions have stopped that!!) and she looks like new.
AmandaBS
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A builder friend of mine tells me that painters charge 35 an hour and although i have not kept an accurate account of my hours i suspect there may not be a lot in it if a lot of preparation is required……….
There was a guy on here a while back who does cladding as a business who mentioned the option of cladding may not necessarily be more expensive !!!!
I can sympathize with you there! My husband and I extended our conite PPOR about 6 years ago and when we started to remove the external walls that needed to come down we found that the conite had been installed over the top of weatherboards. After speaking to our neighbour we found out that both our house and his house were conited at the same time 20 years previously as the upkeep on the weatherboards had been let go and they had deteriorated to the point of no return.
We clad our extension in blueboard, insulated every external wall that was stripped, had a plasterer come and tape all the joins properly and painted the blueboard with a very shaggy roller and a textured paint to give a stippled effect similar to rendering. We scraped the telltale ‘conite’ bumps off the remaining conite walls with a concrete blade and painted the original walls so they all matched in together. We set the windows (old timber windows to keep in character with the rest of the house) in flush with the blueboard and before painting we ran a timber architrave around the windows and over the join. The final effect is tidy although the original weatherboards would have been preferable.
I must say that blueboard is a cement based cladding and while we were fortunate enough to be able to install insulation in every external wall of our home from either the inside or outside we also have a 1800mm verandah around most of the house now also which keeps the heat off the walls (when you live in Sunraysia you don’t need heat on your walls!!!) so I definately wouldn’t install cement based cladding in really warm or really cold areas if you couldn’t insulate.
I can appreciate tradespeoples opinions on the finish of cladding around windows etc; we also built a western red ceder home on stumps for some friends of ours on Kangaroo Island and while the new windows did have a flange for the timber to butt up against, there was still small gaps above the overlap. My husband had a work experience kid cut wedges from timber to fill the gaps and each window had a trim placed around the edge to finish it off.
I notice these days that there are alot of franchise cladding systems around. Some of these look terrible, the finish is plastic and cheap looking. But I suppose it comes back to who is doing the job. Some people take pride in the finish of their work and others get in and get out and either presume that the home owner will know no different, or they don’t know enough about what they are doing to do it correctly. I would imagine that you would still have to eventually repaint or maintain some types of cladding anyway wouldn’t you? Good luck and good on your wife for having a go!! I am also the painter in our partnership![thumbsup2]
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