Goodbye rotten timber. Hello Linea!
Glenn and Wanda have a big project on their hands turning this humble cottage into their dream home. Stage One is underway – ripping off the rotten timber weatherboards and renovating the exterior of their home by recladding the entire house with Linea® Weatherboards. It's a big job, but one which the owners are confident will add enormous value to their home in an up and coming area.
Take a walk down Jackson Street, the main retail precinct in Petone, and it's easy to see that this is an area in transition. New cafés and interior design stores rub shoulders with second hand book shops, antique stores and a Polynesian fabric shop displaying bolts of bright Pacific prints on the footpath. It's a vibrant mix and all the signs are there that this is an area with a big future. As you would expect this has been reflected in the rapidly rising property values in the area.
A flat five minute walk from Jackson Street brings you to this small and (for now) rather ordinary weatherboard house, just a hundred metres up from the sea.
Wanda and Glenn, bought the house three years ago after a long search.
“We love Petone,” says Wanda. “It's right on the harbour, close to the city and it's got lots of character, but we just couldn't find anything here.”
When this house came up for sale, Wanda and Glenn definitely wanted it. “I've always liked flat-roofed house,” says Wanda. “And being so close to the water and the shops and cafes made up for the fact that there was obviously a lot of work involved in taking it on.”
Wanda and Glenn asked their builder, Nick Jenness of NDJ Building Services, to check it over for them.
Read our article on selecting the right builder for your project.
"As you'd expect with a house this close to the sea, it's showing its age," says Nick. "A lot of the timber weatherboards are rotten, you can just about pull them away with your hand – and the timber joinery has had it too. It was clear that the house was going to need re-cladding and new joinery at the very least.”
Knowing what they were in for, Glenn and Wanda went ahead and bought the property and are very happy with their decision.
“Since we bought, property prices have really risen in the area,” says Glenn. “That's great from our point of view because it's given us more equity to borrow against to get going with the renovations.”
To find out more about how you can take advantage of rising valuations to finance your home renovation, click here.
Stage One of the renovation:
“There was no doubt in my mind that Linea was going to be the perfect product to reclad with,” says Nick. “Wanda and Glenn were really keen on retaining the traditional weatherboard look, but you only had to take a glance at the existing timber weatherboards to see the damage that the salt air and sand does to them.
PRODUCTS USED
Linea Weatherboard by James Hardie
