Areas / Northcote
Painters in Northcote
Most houses here are two houses. A cottage from the 1890s facing the street, something built this decade behind it, and a join in the middle. Painting one of these means handling both halves and making them read as one home.
Old front, new back
Cottages that grew a second half
- Two houses joined in the middleThe front rooms went up in the 1890s and the back went up sometime this side of 2010. That is the ordinary Northcote house now. It means one building with two of everything: two kinds of wall, two ages of timber, two sets of profiles on the skirting. The quote has to treat them as separate work even though the owner quite reasonably thinks of it as one house.
- Lath and plaster does not want to be flatBehind the original rooms the walls are horsehair plaster over timber lath, and after a century they undulate. Skimming them dead flat is a plastering job that costs more than the painting and is almost never what anyone wants. The right answer is filling what reads as damage and leaving what reads as age, and saying which is which before starting rather than after.
- Fireplaces that were closed upNearly every one of these cottages has at least one chimney breast that was blocked off decades ago and patched over with whatever was handy. Those patches sit on a different material to the wall around them and they show through a fresh coat as a faint rectangle in raking light. They get sealed and brought level first, or they will be the one thing you see in that room forever.
- Weatherboard at the front, something else behindThe street elevation is boards, and the extension behind it is usually render, cladding or brick. Those need different preparation and different products, and they are almost always joined at a corner where both are visible at once. Getting the sheen to agree across that corner matters more than getting the colour to, because the eye forgives a slight shift in colour and never forgives one wall looking wetter than its neighbour.
- The overlay only cares about the streetIn the protected pockets here what is looked at is the front elevation: the facade, the verandah and what can be seen from the footpath. Behind the ridge line there is far more freedom. Worth knowing which half of your own house is which before deciding anything, and worth checking with the council rather than assuming, because the boundaries do not follow whole streets.
After a renovation
Painting after the builder has gone
The painter is the last trade in, which means inheriting everything the previous ones left. This is the part of a renovation that decides how the whole thing looks.
- New plaster is three coats, not twoFresh board and fresh plaster drink the first coat straight in. They take a sealer and then two finish coats, where a repaint takes two coats altogether. Skipping the sealer to save a day shows up as patchy sheen across a whole wall under afternoon light, and by then the only fix is another full coat.
- The join is where it gets judgedWhere the old house meets the new part there is a junction, and the two sides of it move at different rates through a Melbourne summer. Filled hard it cracks in a straight line by February. It wants a flexible treatment and honest expectations, and it is better to say that at quoting than to have you find it out on your own six months later.
- What the other trades left behindPlaster smears on the boards, sanding dust in every corner, silicone where paint will not stick, glue lines, screw heads not quite set. None of it is our doing, and every bit of it becomes our problem the moment we start. We walk it with you before quoting and say plainly what is preparation and what is somebody coming back to fix their own work.
- Paint before the floors go downIf the floors are still to be laid or sanded, painting first is easier, faster and cheaper, and the floor trade covers our skirting line at the end anyway. If the floors are already in they get fully covered and we work slower over them. Either way it is a decision worth making deliberately, because the order the trades run in changes the price.
- Do the old rooms in the same runA finished extension makes the original front rooms look tired the day you move back in, even when nothing is wrong with them. Doing both halves together costs far less than coming back for the front in a year, because the setup, the covering and the travel are the expensive part rather than the paint.
- The profiles will never match, and that is fineThe architraves and skirtings in the old half are Victorian and the new ones are modern, and no amount of paint makes those the same shape. What paint can do is stop them arguing: the same colour and the same sheen on both, so the eye reads a house that grew rather than two houses stapled together.
What we can do here
Painting services in Northcote
The same range we bring to any Melbourne home, whether the job is one room or the whole house inside and out. In Northcote most of it lands inside: new board at the back, hundred year old plaster at the front, and getting the two to sit together.
Who we work with
Whose job is it
A homeowner, a builder, a business owner and someone with a period house worry about completely different things. Pick the one that fits and you will get the answers written for you.
Residential
Homeowners
- You stay in the house while we work
- Covers down before anything starts
- One fixed price, not an hourly rate
Trade
Builders
- We hold the date we gave you
- Sequenced around the trades behind us
- Priced in a day or two
Commercial
Commercial
- Staged or overnight, you keep trading
- Access and hours agreed up front
- Shops, offices, schools, warehouses
Heritage
Heritage
- Ornate plaster cut in by hand
- Old surfaces sanded, not covered
- Council checked before colour
Just finished a renovation in Northcote?
Tell us the address and what you are planning. We will come and look, tell you honestly what needs doing first, then give you one fixed price.
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Tell us about your project and we'll get back to you, usually within a day, with a fixed, no-surprises quote.
+61 415 751 399
Elitemasterpainting@hotmail.com
Melbourne wide, from the bayside suburbs to the outer east. Happy to travel further for larger projects.
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