New weatherboards and verandah decking

So after we had our balcony replaced and it looked so nice (you can read about it here) I decided we needed to go ahead and do the whole front of the house.  That included the verandah posts and decking - basically everything except new windows as I wanted to keep the double hung sash windows.

The builders did a great job and it actually was surprisingly quick.  Old cladding came off, including the power needing to be disconnected briefly due to the old meter box on the front of the house - this was reconnected back up later on the same day when the new boards were put on.

I had a whole lot of photos of the process but unfortunately it seems when I switched to a new phone they were lost.  So instead I will have to make do with some before and after shots!

This is the finished product with the new verandah, poles, and all painted up.  

This is a during shot of me painting the weatherboards (complete with my upside down lights).

The before shots - dodgy handrail, bright blue paint (although you can't see how bad the paint job actually was!).

This before shot shows some of the rotten and dodgy verandah decking boards.  Plus when I had half stripped one window frame!

More before shots.

Before - but I still have the same pots to hang from the verandah!

We used the same Mirbau decking as the balcony and the same profile weatherboards as the upstairs. We also put on a new Colorbond roof on the verandah - which took the longest due to some stuff ups with the roofers and some fairly big variations in quotes.  In the end we could only really afford to do the small portion of the roof and gutter - so we unfortunately have a current patchwork part red and part grey roof!

After the painters we used for the upstairs part did a not particularly brilliant job and still cost a lot of money I decided that I would give painting a go.  My theory was if I was terrible then we could pay someone and not too much damage would be done.  In the end I was pretty happy with the results.  The weatherboards themselves went fine, although the trims weren't so easy (partly because we kept the old windows and even with multiple attempts at sanding and filling they remained fairly lumpy and difficult to paint). My tips for painting weatherboards can be found in this post.

End result though is very pleasing. The colour scheme is Dulux Miller Mood for the weatherboards, with Vivid White for trims and the dark grey for the decking is Ironstone - a colour that matches up to the Colorbond colour of the same name.

Finished product - deck in Ironstone, weatherboards in Miller Mood and trims in Vivid White.  Plus the same hanging pots and dodgy paint job on my cane chairs!