Whether yours is a hundred-year-old weatherboard cottage near Glebe Road or a brick unit block in Mayfield, Corella Painting preps it properly and finishes it in two coats, from a base in Adamstown that's minutes from most of the city.
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In Newcastle the same paint can last years on one street and fail in a few seasons on the next, depending on the salt, the sun and what's underneath.
The City of Newcastle packs a lot of different houses into a small area. Close to the beaches and the harbour, timber and steel take the salt, and a north wall can lose its gloss in a few summers. Through the older suburbs, weatherboard cottages and face-brick bungalows sit inside heritage conservation areas, where the council cares about what the street sees. Further back from the water there are interwar brick houses, post-war fibro and plenty of strata blocks. We paint all of them every week, and each one starts with a different question.
A lot of Newcastle was built between the turn of the last century and the 1930s, and much of it still stands. The council's own heritage controls date the Hamilton South "Garden Suburb" to about 1913 to 1940 and the Glebe Road cottages at The Junction to 1909 to 1915. Houses that age have been painted many times. On a weatherboard cottage, that means layers of old paint that have stopped sticking to each other, boards that have split along the grain, and gaps where the putty has fallen out of the windows.
Painting straight over that only seals the problem in. The real work on an old Newcastle house is the prep: scraping back to a sound edge, sanding it smooth so the patch doesn't show through, filling, priming bare timber, and replacing the odd board that's too far gone. It's slow, it's most of the job, and it's the part a cheap quote leaves out.
Newcastle is hard on paint in two different ways. Near the beaches and the harbour, salt settles on everything, and on the side of the house facing the water it can chalk a finish within a few years. Away from the coast, the summer sun on north and west walls does the same job more slowly. A south side that never sees the sun has the opposite problem: it stays damp and grows mould, which has to be killed and washed off before any paint goes near it.
So we don't treat a house as one surface. The quote can show a different primer for the salt side, a mould wash for the south wall and extra prep on the sunniest boards, because those are the places a repaint fails first.
Our base is in Adamstown, which puts most of the city within a quarter of an hour. That matters more on a paint job than you'd think. We're on site early, we can come back to check a touch-up without charging you travel, and if a colour isn't right on the wall, the sample pot for the next one is a few minutes away, not a lost morning at your place.
Each one gets its own page: the houses, what the weather does to paint there, the council rules and the jobs we do most.
Deep navy"They taped off every window and light switch, and when they left you couldn't find a drop on the floorboards. I was nervous about such a dark colour, but they put a sample up first and the finished wall looks even better."
Kate, New Lambton · Sample review
Boards scraped back where they're flaking, gaps filled and primed, then two coats with every window trim cut in by hand. In a heritage area we check the colour scheme with you against what the street already has.
Exterior house painting in NewcastleChalky, salt-faded roofs from Stockton to Merewether, washed by hand, keyed, rust spots primed and given two coats. Gutters cleaned out while we're up there.
Roof painting in NewcastleHigh ceilings, picture rails, ornate cornices and doors with decades of paint on them. Cracks raked out and filled, edges sanded smooth, and each room finished before the next is started.
Interior house painting in NewcastleWalk-up unit blocks repainted outside and through the common stairwells, quoted to the strata manager, with notices for residents before each stage and the work timed around them.
Commercial and strata painting in NewcastleFor our jobs, a full exterior repaint of a single-storey house usually lands between $9,000 and $18,000 + GST, and a three-bedroom interior between $7,000 and $14,000 + GST. In Newcastle, the things that move it most are flaking old paint on weatherboards, salt damage near the coast and the height of the older houses. Your written quote lists every surface and every coat.
Often, but check first. The City of Newcastle's DCP names nine heritage conservation areas, and their controls are about what the street sees. Before we quote a new colour scheme in one, we look up your address on the heritage maps and check with council whether the change needs approval, so you know before any paint is bought.
We'll talk you out of it in most cases, and inside a heritage conservation area we won't start without council's view. The DCP's character statements for those areas list exposed face brick among the things to keep, and once brick is painted it has to be repainted for good. Cleaning and repointing usually does more for tired brick than paint.
It settles on every surface, chalks the paint faster and rusts any steel where the coating has broken. Near the water we wash the house before painting to get the salt off, prime bare timber and metal with a primer made for the exposure, and suggest you hose down the sheltered walls the rain never reaches a couple of times a year.
Yes. It's about twenty-two minutes from Adamstown around the harbour, so we book Stockton jobs as full days and bring everything with us. The salt off both the harbour and the ocean makes Stockton the hardest place in Newcastle for paint, and the quote says what we do about it.
Yes, it's how almost every strata job runs. We quote to the strata manager, give residents written notice before each stage, keep entries and stairs usable, and work to set hours. Colours on common property are the owners corporation's call, so we can bring colour boards to the meeting where they decide.
A few lines and a photo or two is enough. We'll ring to book a look, then leave you a written quote with every surface and every coat on it. No obligation, and no follow-up calls chasing you if you decide to wait a while longer.