Exterior painting · Process
Weatherboard painting in Brisbane: how to prepare and paint a timber home
A weatherboard repaint is mostly decided before the first top coat goes on. How we prepare and paint timber homes in Brisbane, old boards and new.
Most of the houses we paint in Brisbane's inner east are clad in timber weatherboards. Some are Queenslanders carrying a century of paint. Some are new builds with weatherboards on the upper level and render below. Plenty are both: an old house with a new extension, where the two have to finish as one house.
Weatherboard painting looks simple from the street. Up close, every board has a lap that holds water, an end that soaks it up, and a bottom edge where old paint lets go first. Whether a repaint lasts is mostly decided before the first top coat goes on.
This guide covers how we prepare and paint weatherboards, using houses we've done in New Farm, Bulimba and East Brisbane. It covers what changes between old and new boards, how many coats a weatherboard house needs, which sheen to use, and when it's time to repaint.
Why paint fails on weatherboards
Paint on a weatherboard house rarely fails across the middle of a board. It fails at the edges:
- The lower edge of each board, where it laps over the one below and water sits.
- The ends of boards at corners, window frames and joins, where end grain drinks water like a straw.
- The bottom rows, closest to the ground, garden beds and sprinklers.
- North and west walls, which take the most Brisbane sun.
Timber swells and shrinks with heat and moisture. Paint that's still flexible moves with it. Old paint that has gone hard cracks along the grain, water gets in behind it, and it starts to lift. Once it lifts, the timber underneath greys, softens and eventually rots.
That's why most of the work in weatherboard painting is preparation, and why we treat exterior house painting in Brisbane as a prep job first and a painting job second.
Old boards and new boards need different prep
Original boards on a character home
Boards on a Queenslander or older weatherboard home carry layer after layer of paint. Their edges have softened and rounded over the decades. Where the paint has failed, there's a step between the old coats and the bare timber.
Preparing them means:
- washing off mould, dirt and chalky residue
- scraping back to a sound edge
- sanding those edges down so the step doesn't show through the new coats
- priming every patch of bare timber
- cutting out and replacing soft boards and sills before any paint goes on
On a home built before 1970, there may also be lead paint under the later coats. That changes how the old paint comes off: no dry sanding, no heat gun, and containment around the house. At Mark Street in New Farm, the original lead-based coatings were stripped off the weatherboards before any painting started. We cover the method in what it costs to paint a house in Brisbane.
New boards on an extension or new build
New weatherboards are crisp, square and either bare or factory primed. The prep is lighter, but it's still there: cut ends sealed, nail holes filled, joins and gaps around windows caulked.
At Lower Bowen Terrace, a New Farm new build, the weatherboards and timber windows had a primer/undercoat, then two coats of exterior acrylic, with the windows finished in enamel.
Where old and new meet
Raises, build-ins and extensions are everywhere in Brisbane, and they're where weatherboard painting gets hard. Old boards are soft-edged and built up with coats. New boards are sharp and bare. The same colour reads differently on each until both are prepared to a similar profile.
We've done this on Harrison Street in Bulimba, a heritage-listed home with a raise, build-in and extension, and on Didsbury Street in East Brisbane. At Balmoral Terrace, also in East Brisbane, it was a large timber Queenslander and its new architectural extension. The weatherboards, the timber joinery and the traditional windows had to finish the same across the original house and the new work.
Done well, you can't see where the old house stops. Done badly, the extension looks painted and the house looks patched.
How we paint a weatherboard house, step by step
- Look at every side. Paint condition, soft timber, and how the house is built. On a pre-1970 home, we test for lead.
- Wash. Mould, dust and chalk off, then the timber dries out before anything else happens.
- Scrape and sand. Back to sound paint, with the edges sanded down. Lead-safe methods where the test is positive.
- Repair. Soft boards, sills and stops are cut out and replaced.
- Prime bare timber. Including board ends and every repair. Primer seals the grain and gives the next coats something to hold.
- Fill and caulk. Nail holes, joins and the gaps around windows and corner stops.
- Undercoat. It evens out the surface and the colour underneath.
- Two top coats. Exterior acrylic on the boards, enamel or gloss on windows and trims.
Steps 1 to 6 take longer than steps 7 and 8 on almost every older house we paint.
How many coats does a weatherboard house need?
It depends on what's underneath.
- Sound paint, similar colour. Spot prime any bare timber, then two top coats
- New boards. Primer/undercoat, then two top coats
- Stripped back to bare timber. Four coats
- Dark colour going light. Add a coat
At Mark Street, where the old lead coatings came off and the timber was back to bare, we applied a four-coat exterior system: [a primer to seal the stripped timber, an undercoat, then two top coats]. The original timber windows were restored as part of the same job.
The most common shortcut on a cheap weatherboard quote is one top coat instead of two. It looks fine on handover. It shows within a few summers, usually on the north and west walls first.
Which paint and sheen for weatherboards
Paint. A premium exterior acrylic made for timber. Acrylic stays flexible as the boards move, which is the whole game on a weatherboard house. That said, the brand matters less than the prep under it. The best paint on the shelf won't hold onto flaking coats.
Sheen. Low sheen suits weatherboards. Old boards have dips, dents and repairs, and a glossier finish lights up every one when the sun hits the wall side-on. Windows, doors and fascias take more weather and handling, so they suit a harder gloss or enamel.
Colour. Dark colours absorb more heat. On a west-facing weatherboard wall that means more movement in the timber and more stress on the paint. If you want a dark exterior, ask your painter about paints made to reflect heat, and expect the west side to need attention first.
Weatherboards next to render, fibre cement and natural timber
Few Brisbane houses are weatherboard all over. Mark Street had weatherboards, fibre cement cladding and Tyrolean render outside, plus a rear timber staircase finished in a clear oil rather than paint. Lower Bowen Terrace had weatherboards and timber windows alongside rendered façades, VJ lining boards and natural timber.
Each of those surfaces needs its own system:
- Weatherboards: primer, undercoat, exterior acrylic.
- Fibre cement: sealer suited to cement sheet, then exterior acrylic.
- Render: sealer, then two coats of low-sheen exterior acrylic.
- Natural timber: clear penetrating oil, no paint.
Where two surfaces meet, the line between them is cut in by hand. On a house with four or five claddings, those junctions are a big share of the time on site, and a big share of what makes the finished house look right.
Signs your weatherboards need repainting
- A chalky film comes off on your hand when you wipe the wall.
- Fine cracks run along the grain of the boards.
- Paint is lifting along the lower edges of the boards.
- Grey, bare timber shows at board ends and corners.
- Bottom boards or sills feel soft when you press them.
- Mould comes back within weeks of washing.
Expect seven to ten years from a timber exterior in Brisbane, with the north and west walls going first. Repainting while most of the paint is still sound keeps the prep down. Wait until the timber is bare and the job becomes scraping, priming and carpentry before any painting starts.
Getting your weatherboards painted
Good weatherboard painting is mostly preparation: sound edges, primed timber, repaired boards, and a coat count that matches what's underneath. Ask any painter to spell that out in the quote.
If you'd like us to look at your house, we'll walk every side, check the boards and the timber underneath, test for lead where it's needed, and give you a written quote that names the prep, the coats and the products. Book a quote
