01
Weatherboards
Timber moves, and eighty-year-old boards have been moving for eighty years. They cup, they split at the nail line, and the gaps between them open and close with the season.
The failures are predictable. Nail heads rust and bleed a brown stain through two coats of white unless they are spot-primed with a stain-blocking primer first. Gaps want a flexible sealant rather than a rigid filler, because a rigid filler simply cracks again at the next hot week. Replacement boards get primed on all six faces before they go up, including the ends and the back — a board primed only on the face draws moisture from behind and lifts within a couple of years.
Anything painted before the late seventies may carry lead. We test rather than assume, and where it is present it is contained and disposed of properly, not dry-sanded into the garden bed.
02
Windows, sills and sashes
Sills fail before anything else on a house. They are horizontal, they sit under glass that sheds water onto them, and they are usually the last thing anybody looks at.
Double-hung sashes need cutting to the glass by hand. There is no masking method that does not either stop short of the glass or pull the glazing putty out when the tape comes off. Where putty has gone chalky or dropped away it wants replacing and curing before paint, not painting over in the hope it holds.
End grain gets sealed. On a sill, on a sash bottom rail, on anywhere a cut has been made — that is where water enters timber, and it is the difference between a window that lasts and one that rots quietly under a good-looking finish.
03
Gutters, fascias and eaves
The roofline is where most exterior quotes get vague, because it is the awkward part. Fascias sit behind the gutter, so a proper job means either working from above or lifting gutters where access demands it. A fascia painted only on the face you can see from the ground is half a fascia.
Steel gutters and downpipes need rust treated rather than coated. Rust under paint keeps going; it just does it out of sight until the paint blisters and you find out how long it has been going on.
Eaves are the most neglected surface on any house. They are shaded, they hold moisture, and they grow mould and lichen that has to be treated with a proper fungicidal wash rather than pressure-blasted off and painted over. Wash the spores away and they return within a season.
04
Render, brick and cladding
Rendered walls crack, and the question is always whether the crack is cosmetic or structural. Hairline crazing takes a flexible membrane system. A crack you can get a fingernail into is a different conversation, and we will have that conversation before quoting rather than filling it and hoping.
On brick, the honest advice is usually not to. Painting brick is close to irreversible — once coated, it needs recoating every seven to ten years forever, and stripping it back later is expensive and rarely complete. There are good reasons to do it, and we will paint brick where the case is real, but we would rather talk you out of it than take the job and leave you with a permanent commitment you did not understand you were making.
05
Decks, fences, garages and outbuildings
The parts that make a house look finished or unfinished from the street, and the parts most often left off a quote to bring the number down.
We price them separately and clearly, so you can choose to leave the back fence for next year rather than discover on the last day that it was never included.
