Aussie-local Painters Richmond 3121

Painting in Richmond: what we actually see on the ground

We are based at 39 Appleton Street, Richmond 3121. This is not a service area we drive out to — it is where the vans start every morning, and it means we know which streets you cannot park in, which blocks sit in a heritage overlay, and what tends to be hiding under the paint on a Richmond cottage.

Four kinds of house in one postcode

Richmond was built for people who worked in its factories, then gentrified around them, and the housing reflects both halves of that history.

• Single-fronted workers’ cottages on the flat streets. Narrow frontages, close to the footpath, frequently no side access at all.
• Double-fronted Victorian terraces, particularly up on Richmond Hill, with cast iron lacework, parapets and tessellated verandah tiles.
• Converted warehouses and factories — the old industrial buildings now holding apartments, studios and offices. Large wall areas, high ceilings, exposed brick that is usually best left alone.
• Newer apartments along Victoria Street and the Swan Street end, where balconies and common property bring owners corporation rules into the picture.

Heritage overlays

Large parts of Richmond sit in City of Yarra heritage overlays. In practice the change most likely to need a planning permit is painting brickwork that has never been painted. Richmond has a great deal of original face brick, including polychrome work in reds and creams, and painting it is effectively permanent: it traps moisture in a wall built to breathe and commits you to repainting forever. We will tell you when cleaning and repointing is the better answer.

Lead paint on anything pre-1970

A Richmond cottage built in the 1880s has had a lot of coats applied to it, and lead paint will be in there somewhere — usually window frames, sills, doors, skirting and the front fence. That changes preparation rather than product. Dry sanding a Richmond facade is unsafe, both for whoever is doing it and for the neighbours two metres away. Wet methods, containment sheeting and proper waste collection are the baseline.

Access is what changes the quote

This is the part that cannot be priced over the phone.

• No off-street parking on most streets
• Frontages often under five metres, with the footpath immediately in front
• Scaffolding over a footpath generally needs a City of Yarra permit
• Many terraces have no side gate, so rear access runs through the house with drop sheets down the hallway every day
• Party walls, so boundary work involves the neighbour whether or not they are interested
• Bluestone laneways behind some streets, which may or may not give rear access

Four shopping strips

Richmond is unusual in having four separate commercial strips — Bridge Road, Swan Street, Victoria Street and Church Street — and shopfront work on each of them runs to the same constraint: the business has to keep trading. That generally means overnight or early-morning work, with the shop reinstated before opening. Where tagging keeps returning on a side wall or roller shutter, a protective coating saves more than another repaint.

What we do in Richmond

Interior and exterior house painting, heritage and terrace work, commercial and shopfront painting, plastering and cornice repair, rendering, timber repair and roof painting. Because we handle the repair side as well as the coating, damaged render, cracked plaster and rotten weatherboards get dealt with properly rather than coated over.