Fairfield West House Cladding

BEFORE

Before
Before

The home had been partially resheeted in AC cement sheeting with the view to rendering or painting.
But after the client investigated the advantages of Palliside cladding over the othe scenarios, there was only one choice ! Palliside by a country mile!

AFTER

After
After

The work that was performed was not only restricted to installing Palliside weatherboards.
The client had already installed aluminium windows,but the problem with most aluminium windows is that they look naked and to solve the problem Peter installed 65 mm aluminium clipon architraves after the new cladding was installed and the windows flashed. Barge boards and facia boards were covered in colorbond metal flashings.
The eaves were all lined with Icon eave sheeting.
Now we have a new home at the old address with a substanial increase in market value should the clients ever wish to sell, giving them a huge return on the cost of the improvements they undertook.

House Cladding

Most houses constructed between 1950 and 1970, and even beyond were built with cheap bricks, pebbledash or concrete tile panels, all of which are unattractive to look at. House cladding is the simplest way to improve the appearance of a house while maintaining the advantage of a strong, lasting interior wall structure.

There are many ways to clad out your house, if you have just bought one of those old houses whose walls don’t exactly resonate with ‘Welcome to Our New Mansion’.

Partial or full cladding

You can improve your house by partial exterior wall cladding, where you start by painting any ugly pebbledash or brickwork. For instance, you can paint the ground storey a solid white and clad up the upper storey(s) that people can see from a distance.

If you have a small enough house or an unlimited budget, the better option is full cladding for houses, which not only improves the aesthetics appeal of the home; it also protects it from damage by moisture, winds and pests.

Cladding materials

Considering the kind of material to use for external wall cladding, you have a variety of options:

The cheapest option is using PVCu, which comes in various qualities. Higher quality PVCu is rather expensive – almost equivalent to using timber. You can find colourbond cladding in various shades, but the cheapest one is white. PVCu discolours over time however, but you can opt for the higher quality versions that come with a 20-year guarantee against discolouration.

Another option is softwood cladding, where you use lower-cost timber options like pine and spruce for external wall cladding. However, the disadvantage of these is that they need frequent maintenance – painting and preservative treatments, which over time makes it a more expensive option compared with hardwood.

A better alternative to softwood and colorbond wall cladding is hardwood timber Western red cedar, which doesn’t need staining initially or at any point in the future, but this is relatively high-cost. You can opt for larch which is relatively high quality and cheaper than cedar. You can also use Render, which is more expensive than timber, but suitable for traditional as well as contemporary style homes.

Palliside Cladding

There are many other options for cladding your home such as fibre cement cladding, but none compare to Palliside wall cladding for low cost, low effort maintenance. With it’s superior weather-resistant coating, you can be sure your renovation lasts a lifetime.

Eradicating overgrown vegetation and other ideas to increase the value of your home!

To show off your Palliside house cladding and the overall exterior renovation you have performed on your house we suggest you go to the trouble of clearing the overgrown trees and shrubs that have got out of control over the years, since they were originally planted. The following before and after photos show what can be done to increase the kerb appeal of your most important asset.

Before After

With this exterior cladding renovation Peter Bracey had to remedy the major problems on the external areas of the house as there was a limited budget.

The concrete tile roof had a full restoration, all the broken tiles were replaced the roof cleaned, a sealer/filler coat that has been engineered for the roof condition applied with a further two coats of Spectra colour roof membrane. A product guaranteed for 12 years, the longest guarantee of any roofing membrane and designed and engineered for Australia’s harsh climate, it is not paving paint as used by the backyarders that peels off after a year. The finally we top point the ridges so it really does look like a new roof.Peter Bracey goes that extra yard to achieve perfection!

The gutters were original and were full of holes they were replaced with colour bond slotted quad gutter along with new cream colorbond downpipes to match the colour of the Palliside external wall cladding.

The old rotted timber windows that could not be opened were replaced with Bracey architrave cladding windows with security locks (key to like), fly screens and laminated security glass, which also insulates, and prevents any water condensation forming on the glass during winter.
The facias and eaves could not be fitted into the budget but will be renewed at a later date!

Maximise the value of your home with quality house cladding!

Sydney house prices have risen astronomically over the last few years and many home owners are using Peter Bracey, the builder to remove inferior cladding materials, such as vinyl, colorbond, fibro, timber and aluminium from their homes and installing Australian made and engineered solid 7 mm thick Palliside Type A, UV protected exterior cladding.
Most of Peter Bracey’s client chose a complete external make over which can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to their biggest single investment and also eliminate future maintenance. The photos below are an example of one such project.

The clients idea in conjunction with the builder was to create a modern cottage look with a colour scheme that would not date!
The roof was stripped of the terracotta tiles, new battens were fixed, a 50 mm foil insulation blanket was layed and then a new gull grey colorbond roof.
The gutters, facia, barges were all renewed in gull grey to match the roof and downpipes in white, Insulated Palliside UPVC weatherboard cladding.

The old warped, cracked, powdered and faded vinyl cladding was removed along with the colorbond wall cladding on the rear extension of the house (it had extremely bad insulation value, cold in winter and hot in summer). The eaves and the ceiling of the back patio were also cladded in Icon jointed structural eave sheeting. And lastly a matching awning was fitted to the front patio.

Before After
Before After
Before After
Before After
Before After

How Does Your Home Cladding Stand Up Against Australia’s Most Trusted Brand?

If your home isn’t made from brick, there’s a good chance it’s been protected by some sort of cladding. There are numerous different types of cladding, but they all fall short when compared to the Australian brand of Palliside cladding. It’s the home cladding that outperforms and outlasts every other variety. Compare your home cladding against Palliside to see if it holds up.

Timber Cladding

If your home has timber cladding, it’s very likely to already have some sort of rot or paint peeling away. Timber clad homes often face the constant need to sand, paint, and replace worn timber boards.

How does Palliside compare? It’s not going to rot or fade with time. The colour you choose will still be the colour on the house 2 decades from now, and there’s a 25-year warranty to back that up.

Fibre Cement Cladding

It’s an old and dated look on a house to have fibre cement sheeting. It doesn’t have the resistance to heat and to vermin like other claddings do. It’s just not as supported by testing in all areas of home cladding benchmarks.

Does Palliside perform better? In nearly every test, Palliside home cladding has the strength to protect against the heat of the day and common critters that attempt to get inside the home.

Colourbond Cladding

This is a classic look that feels modern because Colourbond cladding is a relatively recent development in home cladding. Without the proper insulation, it can heat up quickly in the summer sun. It also can have gaps and minute flaws in the seals against windows and doors.

Palliside comes out in front against this cladding. It’s got insulation not just for heat but sound as well. It’s designed to give and take with the summer sun so that no warping occurs over the length of the panel. It also keeps water out through its clever design.

Palliside home cladding is the superior choice for Australian homes. No matter what your current cladding is, your home isn’t as well protected as a home cladding done with Palliside. Call the team at here to find out more about your house can have this Australian-made master material.

Dressing up your homes foundations after your Palliside cladding home restoration!

Peter Bracey is often asked what can be done to dress up the foundations below the new Palliside cladding renovation!

Here are a few suggestions of the treatments you can add to this section of your home to give it a face lift to complement the Palliside cladding:

  1. You can clean the brick foundation using diluted Muriatic acid,available at hardware stores.But read the instructions before using!
  2. You can clean the bricks ,as above and paint them in the same colour as the Palliside weatherboard cladding,or a different or complimentary colour.
  3. You can clad the bricks in sawn sandstone tiles or rough hewn sandstone tiles. A wall and floor tiler can perform this job or if you are handy you can do it your self.
  4. Brick pillars can be also be clad in sandstone tiles.

Most tile suppliers carry sandstone cladding.
Use original sandstone not a composite material as it looks fake!
When renovating remember quality is everything and your renovation will never date!
The following photos show different treatments used.

Before After

Roof restoration of 70 year old terracotta tiled roof!

Peter Bracey is a builder who specialises in a complete exterior home make overs and has done so since 1969.

When Peter clads a home he very often suggests other work that should be undertaken to improve the appearance of the house! Such as a roof restoration of the existing tile roof. This is inexpensive compared to the cost of a new roof.

The photos show the restoration process on a 70 year old terracotta tiled roof at Revesby that Peter is also cladding with Palliside weatherboards which never need painting, he is also covering the facias in colorbond facia cover, cladding the eaves in Icon jointed eave sheet, and erecting a colorbond awning to the rear of the home. All these materials a maintenance free apart from cleaning, no more painting. The house already has existing aluminium windows which Peter will flash, then cover the flashing and surround the windows with a trim to finish off the Palliside cladding.

Terracotta tiles can last for hundreds of years,but are subject to lichen growth which gives that ugly greenish look to the tiles.

The procedure for the roof restoration is as follows:

1/ Replace any broken tiles and ridge capping.
2/ Replace metal valleys that have rusted out with colour bond ones if necessary.
3/ High pressure clean the roof from the top down,so no water penetrates the roof.
4/ Apply an anti-fungicide to the roof to kill all the lichen spores and to clean the nose of the tiles.
5/ The ridges are pointed in coloured flexi-point,which unlike cement is flexible as the name suggests and will not fall out after time.

Peter will post a further update on this job when it is all finished

Sydney storm causes havoc to homes with vinyl cladding

Peter Bracey has received numerous reports of damage to thin vinyl cladding after the severe storms that hit Sydney during April. The East Coast low as it was termed was the equivalent of a category 2-3 cyclone!

Vinyl cladding is not cyclone rated and as a result the unfortunate home owners that have gone for the cheap vinyl cladding option will continue to experience damage to their homes!

Climate change, which we are experiencing in Australia with the rest of the world, will mean an increase in these violent storm cells in the years to come.
Peter has received orders from some of these home owners to remove the damaged vinyl cladding and replace the entire home with Palliside UPVC weatherboards, which is engineered and made in Australia and meets category 3 cyclone rating,as defined in the Wind Loading Code AS 1170.2! Palliside is also an A type building material which can also be fixed directly to the frame in new construction.

Peter did not have any reports of damage to Palliside cladding!

The majority of the vinyl cladding installed in Australia is manufactured overseas in Canada,USA and China and is classed as a decorative covering only. This is the reason it will not stand up to our harsh climatic conditions.

The attached photo shows how the vinyl cladding has been ripped from the gable and all that is left are the timber battens showing the nails protruding from them ,that originally were fitted through the nailing slots of the vinyl weatherboards and a tiny piece of vinyl flapping on the apex of the gable!

Source of storm photo above: Kim Hinton/Facebook

The importance of flashing aluminium windows when cladding !

Peter Bracey finds after investigation of faulty work performed by so called “builders” and cladding companies. 99% of times, leaks to existing aluminium windows are a result of either no flashing or insufficient flashing around the windows and behind the cladding.

Home owners should always ask the cladding company or builder they are considering employing to renovate their home,how he is going to flash the windows to prevent future leaks. It is a very simple process. The flashing should be fixed to the four sides of the windows and then the cladding covers the flashing and is butted up to the windows.

When using Bracey architectural windows (as you can see from the photo below), no trim is required to finish off around the window. This is because Peter Bracey’s windows have an inbuilt 65 mm architrave which forms a J-channel behind the Palliside weatherboard cladding where the flashing is fitted. It is always advisable to run a bead of silicone along the top of the window where the cladding meets, this will ensure 100% waterproof windows.

Before After

Peter now finds that a large percentage of new jobs are stripping existing vinyl and aluminium cladded renovations and giving the house a complete make over(refer to the before and after photos on the website for examples).

During the record Sydney storms in April 2015 Peter did not have any reported window leaks or any service calls of any kind from his past 1000s of clients.

So all past and future clients can be assured of “perfection nothing less! “

More and more recladding existing vinyl cladded homes!

As alluded to in the previous news post more and more of Peter Bracey’s clients are having him strip the existing vinyl cladding which they were told would “last for a life time” by the salesman. Only to find out not too many years later that thin(0.05-1.00 mm) vinyl cladding breaks down under Australia’s extreme climate.

Vinyl cladding fades, goes chalky (white powder forms on it), warps (because it is so thin), peels off the home in strong winds, becomes brittle and subject to hail damage and knocks. The foam backing becomes a haven for vermin, and mildew forms because of the condensation that forms between the foam and the original cladding. Note: that is why vinyl cladding has drain holes along the bottom, they dont work, mildew and damp wall syndrome is still a problem.

Palliside is made and engineered in Australia by an Australian company and has been used as the premium cladding for over 35 years. Most Vinyl cladding is imported!

Peter Bracey only installs Australian made materials on your home, so you know your home will look like new for years and years to come!

“Perfection nothing less!” since 1969

Below are two photos of a before and after of a vinyl cladded house that Peter stripped and renovated with Palliside and other Australian made building materials.

Before After

Damaged Vinyl