Specialist Painters for Perth’s Heritage and Character Homes

Painting a heritage home is a different job to painting a modern one. The materials behave differently and they fail differently. The products that perform well on new render will actively damage hundred year old limestone.

Perth City Painters have been restoring character homes across the metropolitan area since 2010, with particular experience in the period residences of Fremantle, Subiaco, Mount Lawley, Nedlands and Claremont. That covers limestone and lime rendered walls, ornamental timber and fretwork, decorative plasterwork and the lead paint that comes with anything built before the seventies.

The aim on a heritage repaint is not to make the house look new. It is to protect what is already there and let the original detail show properly.

Every project is fully insured and backed by our 10 year workmanship guarantee.

Why Heritage Restoration Is Different

Standard painting fails on older homes because it treats aged materials as though they behave like new ones. They do not.

A heritage property brings problems a modern house does not have. Lead paint in anything built before the seventies. Rising damp through walls that were never built with a damp course. Lime render and limestone that need to breathe rather than be sealed. Timber that has weathered and checked over a century of Perth summers.

Painting over any of that hides it for a season. The moisture is still moving through the wall, the timber is still going and the new coating comes off with the old one.

We assess the substrate first and identify where it is failing, which on a heritage home usually means drummy render, oxidised or rotting timber, efflorescence where salts are migrating out through the masonry and previous repairs done in the wrong material.

These problems get dealt with before any coating goes on.

Our Heritage Restoration Process

We work to a process that respects the original materials while giving the house modern protection against the Western Australian climate.

1. Gentle Surface Decontamination

The foundation of a lasting finish on an old home is a clean, stable substrate but heritage surfaces will not tolerate the pressure you would use on modern render.

We use controlled low pressure cleaning to lift decades of dirt and salt crust without damaging the building. On a wall that has been repainted five or six times over its life, getting back to a clean surface is what determines whether the next coat holds.

2. Traditional Render and Plaster Repair

Heritage homes in Mount Lawley and Subiaco often have intricate plasterwork and lime based renders that move differently to modern materials and need to stay breathable.

We repair cracks and damaged sections using breathable lime and mineral based systems rather than rigid modern fillers or sealed membranes. A repair that cannot breathe traps moisture behind it and pushes the problem further into the wall, which is how a cosmetic crack becomes a render failure.

Ornamental plasterwork and mouldings are repaired to match the original profile rather than filled flat.

3. Ornamental Timber and Eave Restoration

Timber eaves, fretwork, brackets and window frames on heritage homes commonly suffer from dry rot and UV degradation.

We sand flaky timber back to a sound surface and treat it with specialty wood primers formulated to penetrate the grain rather than sit on top of it. UV resistant topcoats then go over.

Where fretwork or detailing has deteriorated beyond repair, we can arrange replacement milled to match the original profile.

Limestone and Lime Mortar Care

Fremantle heritage is built on limestone, and it is the material most commonly damaged by the wrong paint.

Standard modern acrylic paint seals the surface. Limestone is a porous stone that needs to breathe. Moisture gets trapped inside the wall and as it tries to escape it pushes the face of the stone off in flakes and crumbles. The process is called spalling or limestone rot and once it starts the damage is permanent. You cannot put the face of the stone back.

We use mineral based breathable coating systems designed to let water vapour move out of the limestone while still giving the wall a weather resistant shield. The stone stays protected and it stays able to dry.

Original lime mortar joints are identified and protected as part of the same process. Cement is harder than the stone around it so the moisture and the salt find their way out through the limestone instead of the joint, and the stone takes the damage.

Avoiding heavy non permeable membranes is what prevents the hydrostatic pressure that causes surface failure and it matters most in coastal Fremantle where the salt load is highest.

Lead Paint Management and Heritage Safety

If your home was built before 1970, it very likely contains layers of lead paint under whatever is on the surface now. Australia only reduced lead in domestic paint from 1965 and did not bring it to current levels until 1997, so anything from a heritage era home almost certainly has it somewhere.

Sanding lead paint without controls releases fine dust that settles in ceiling spaces, garden soil and carpet and it is a genuine health risk. It is the part of a heritage repaint homeowners are right to ask about.

We use industrial HEPA filtered vacuum sanding systems that capture lead particles at the point of friction, so the dust is contained rather than distributed through your house and garden. On surfaces where sanding is not appropriate we use wet scraping, which keeps the flakes bonded and heavy enough to collect for safe disposal rather than becoming airborne.

Waste is bagged and disposed of according to the requirements for lead contaminated material, and we follow the guidance set out in the Australian Standard for the management of lead paint in residential buildings.

Ready to Restore Your Heritage Home?

The first step is a full on site assessment. We look at the render, the stonework, the mortar joints, the timber detailing and the paint layers already on the building, then tell you what the house actually needs.

Heritage work is quoted differently to a standard repaint because the preparation varies so much between properties. Every quote is fixed price and itemised so you can see exactly what each stage costs and why it is there.

Quotes are free and there is no obligation to proceed.