House painting in Devonport
Devonport has the North Shore’s oldest concentration of timber houses: cottages and villas in the south, bungalows and state houses further north. Most are weatherboard, many carry a century of paint, and the peninsula puts plenty of them near salt water. Below is how that shapes a repaint, to read alongside our guide to weatherboard and villa painting.
What kind of houses are in Devonport?
Mostly timber, and mostly old. Council’s special character statement for Devonport and Stanley Point says most of the houses that give the area its character were built between 1870 and 1940. The North Shore Heritage review describes cottages and villas in Devonport south, and bungalows, state houses and post-war homes in north Devonport and Narrow Neck.
The same review records the first state house on the North Shore, opened in Niccol Avenue in September 1938. So a single Devonport street can hold a Victorian cottage, a 1920s bungalow and a 1940s state house, each with a different paint history and a different set of prep needs.
Weatherboards, verandahs and corrugated iron
The special character statement describes houses that are typically built with timber framing and weatherboard cladding, with timber doors and windows, gabled or hipped roofs mostly in corrugated iron, and verandahs with decorative timber detailing. There are some brick and rendered houses too. For a painter, that means lots of edges, sash windows and fretwork, and long hours of careful prep.
- Weatherboard walls with many decades of paint layers, which on houses this age are presumed to include lead.
- Verandah posts, brackets and fretwork that are cut in by brush.
- Timber sash windows that need painting without sealing them shut.
- A few brick or rendered houses that need a masonry system instead.
Devonport and Stanley Point sit in the special character areas overlay of the Auckland Unitary Plan. Separately, any house that is a scheduled historic heritage place has its own maintenance rules; Auckland Council can tell you whether yours is one.
Salt air on the Devonport peninsula
Devonport is a peninsula. Narrow Neck and Cheltenham Beach face Rangitoto and the Hauraki Gulf, and the southern shore runs from North Head round to Stanley Point, facing the city. A house on the Stanley Point shoreline and one on a back street near the village sit at very different distances from salt water, and that distance is what the building standard’s sea-spray zones turn on. How long exterior paint lasts covers the zones.
For those houses, washing salt off the walls that rain does not reach, under verandahs and eaves, does more for the paint than anything else. Expect sills and the most exposed walls to need attention sooner than the rest. Exterior house painting covers the full process.
Sources
Ask us for a painting quote
Tell us about the house and the job. We reply with questions, or a day to walk around it with you.