Timber Cladding Fitting Services VIC 2026 - Get Quotes

Profiles and Getting the Match Right

The profile is the shape milled into the board, and on a Victorian house it is the detail that decides whether new work disappears into the wall or announces itself from the footpath. Bullnose, rusticated, chamferboard, splayed bevelback, shiplap, tongue and groove and board and batten all appear across the state, and the older the house the more likely the profile is something no timber yard stocks today. A carpenter who measures the existing board and orders the nearest modern equivalent will produce a wall where the shadow lines change halfway along an elevation. Getting the profile right before ordering is the single most valuable half hour on the job. The broader cladding services guide for Victoria puts timber alongside the other wall systems found here.

Matching a period profile usually means custom milling, and the economics of that surprise people in a useful way. A mill charges a setup fee to grind a cutter to the required shape, commonly $380 to $1,400 depending on complexity, and that fee is charged once regardless of how many metres are run. Replacing eight boards therefore costs far less than eight times the price of replacing one. Where a house needs a handful of boards now and more within a few years, running the extra length in the same order and storing it under cover is usually the cheaper path. The weatherboard replacement page covers single board work in more detail. Victorian housing gives some broad clues about which profile to expect, although the only reliable method is to take a board off and measure it.

Nineteenth century and Federation era cottages across Fitzroy, Carlton, Northcote, Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine commonly carry bullnose or rusticated boards with deep shadow lines. Interwar and post war houses across Preston, Coburg, Reservoir and the bayside suburbs more often carry splayed bevelback or chamferboard with a shallower profile. Contemporary work uses shiplap, board and batten and wide flat profiles, often expressed vertically instead of horizontally. Mixing eras on one elevation reads as a mistake even when the workmanship is good.

Where a house has already been patched with the wrong profile at some point, a reclad is the chance to bring the whole elevation back to one shape. Orientation matters as much as shape on modern work. A horizontal lapped board sheds water by geometry because each board overlaps the one below, while vertical boarding relies entirely on the joint detail and the cavity behind it to keep water out. Vertical shiplap and board and batten look excellent on contemporary Victorian additions, but they need a properly drained cavity and careful head and base detailing, and nailing them straight to a wrapped frame will not do. Any carpenter proposing vertical boards should be describing the cavity in the same sentence. Board width and coverage affect both the look and the price in ways worth understanding before choosing.

A wider board covers more wall per metre run, so labour per square metre drops, but wider boards also move more across their width with changes in moisture and show cupping more readily. Narrower boards in the 130 to 180 millimetre range are the traditional Victorian sizes and are more forgiving. They also mean more courses and therefore more labour, which is part of why a period wall costs more to clad than a contemporary one of the same area. When a period look is wanted, the width is part of the period as much as the profile is, and a 230 millimetre board on a Victorian cottage looks wrong even when the shape is right.

Choosing the Species

Treated radiata pine is the most widely used cladding timber in Victoria and it deserves its place. It is straight, dimensionally predictable, available in long lengths, takes paint better than most hardwoods and usually arrives pre-primed on all four faces. The treatment level matters, and cladding should carry a preservative treatment rated for above ground exterior use, not an internal grade. Its weakness is that the paint film carries the whole burden of protection, so a maintained pine wall lasts decades and a neglected one deteriorates faster than hardwood would.

For most painted Victorian houses it is the sensible default. Victorian ash and messmate are the local hardwoods most often used for period profiles, and they mill beautifully into the deep shapes that older houses need. They are denser and heavier than pine, they hold a fixing well and they suit the look of a nineteenth century cottage in a way that pine never quite does. The complications are tannin, which will bleed through a light paint or an unprepared surface and stain the wall, and movement if boards are fitted at the wrong moisture content. Both are manageable with a stain blocking primer and proper acclimatisation, and neither is manageable after the fact. Blackbutt and spotted gum sit at the durable end of the Australian hardwoods and come up most often where bushfire requirements or exposure drive the choice.

They are rated well for durability above ground and they are among the species that appear in the bushfire provisions as suitable for certain ratings, which makes them relevant through the Dandenongs, the Yarra Valley and the Macedon Ranges. The trade offs are cost, weight and hardness, since every fixing needs pre-drilling and the labour rate reflects it. On the right house they are an excellent wall and on the wrong one they are an expensive way to buy something pine would have done. Where the boards will be painted instead of oiled, much of what you pay for in a premium hardwood disappears under the coating. Western red cedar has been the premium choice for oiled and stained walls in Victoria for decades, particularly on architect designed work through the inner north, the bayside suburbs and the hills.

It is light, remarkably stable, naturally durable and it takes an oil finish better than almost anything else. Its weaknesses are a soft face that marks easily and a strong reaction with the wrong metals, since cedar will stain black around any fixing that is not stainless. It also greys quickly if left uncoated, which some owners want and others discover with dismay after the first winter. Cypress is an underused option that suits some Victorian jobs very well. It is naturally durable without treatment, it has a genuine reputation for termite resistance, and it carries a distinctive knotty character that works on rural and hills properties. The limitations are availability in long clear lengths and the knots themselves, which are a feature to some owners and a defect to others.

Where a rural Victorian property wants a durable timber wall with minimal chemical treatment, it is worth pricing alongside the hardwoods. Hardboard weatherboard sits alongside the solid timbers and belongs in any comparison. Weathertex is pressed timber fibre made in New South Wales, lighter on the arms than fibre cement, free of silica dust when cut, and available in profiles that sit comfortably on both period and mid century houses. Sealed cut ends and a sound paint film carry it, exactly as they carry solid timber.

Thermally modified timbers are the other alternative worth asking about, since the heat treatment improves stability and durability without chemical preservatives. Both are fitted much like solid boards, with the manufacturer's fixing rules taking precedence. Where a manufacturer's instruction differs from general carpentry practice, following the instruction is what keeps the product warranty intact. Whichever species is chosen, the moisture content on delivery decides how the wall behaves in its first year.

Boards delivered wet and fixed immediately will shrink in place, opening joints and pulling at fixings, while boards delivered dry into a damp winter will take up moisture and swell. The practical answer is to have the boards on site, stacked flat and under cover with air around them, for a period before fixing so they equilibrate to local conditions. Carpenters who build that into the program are the ones whose walls still look right in five years. It costs nothing but a few days.

The Wall Behind the Boards

Timber cladding is one layer of a system, and in Victoria the layers behind it matter more than they do in a warm climate. Through a Victorian winter, indoor vapour is driven outward into the wall for months at a time, and any cold surface it reaches on the way becomes a condensing plane with no path to dry. The condensation provisions in the National Construction Code exist for that reason, and Victoria falls into climate zones 6, 7 and 8 at the cooler end of the national range. The practical requirement is a vapour permeable pliable membrane complying with AS/NZS 4200.1, not an old style impermeable sarking, installed with laps running the right way and openings taped and flashed. A drained and ventilated cavity is the upgrade that matters most for timber specifically.

Battens stand the boards clear of the frame, leaving an air gap that is open at the bottom and vented at the top, so water getting behind a board drains away while moving air dries the back of it. Timber that can dry from both faces lasts dramatically longer than timber trapped against a membrane, and cupping and paint failure both reduce. Allow about 20 millimetres of added wall depth for battens, and settle the reveals, trims and eave junctions on a drawing before ordering. The exterior wall cladding page covers those build ups. Insulation belongs in the conversation whenever the frame is open. Batts in the R2.0 to R2.7 band suit a conventional 90 millimetre pine stud, though older rough sawn hardwood framing and narrower 70 millimetre studs change what will fit.

In a Melbourne or Ballarat winter the comfort difference is substantial and the frame will not be this accessible again. The wall and ceiling insulation page covers products and installation practice, and the insulation and the membrane need specifying together, since one without the other rarely performs. Ground clearance at the base of the wall is the detail most commonly lost on older Victorian houses. Boards should finish well clear of soil, paving and garden beds, both so the timber is not wicking moisture and so a termite inspection zone stays visible on a timber framed building.

Decades of landscaping have buried that clearance on a great many properties, and correcting it during a cladding job is inexpensive. AS 3660 sets out termite management approaches, and a termite inspection is sensible on any timber framed house across Melbourne's east, the Dandenong foothills, Geelong and the regional centres. On an existing house, what comes off before the new boards go on needs thinking about first. Anything clad or painted before 1990 should be presumed to contain asbestos until tested, and removal is governed by the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017, with oversight from WorkSafe Victoria. Paint applied before the 1970s may contain significant lead, and dry sanding it spreads lead dust through the garden soil, which the Department of Health publishes guidance on managing. A laboratory sample arranged through an asbestos testing and inspection service settles the first question permanently for a few hundred dollars.

Windows and junctions are where the whole assembly is tested. With the wall open, each opening should be flashed and taped into the membrane so water is directed out instead of behind the boards, and head flashings above windows need to be there in their own right, not implied by a board lap. Older Victorian timber windows were frequently installed with no head flashing at all, which is why so many walls are damp below a sill. If the frames are tired, window repairs during the cladding work costs far less than disturbing new boards later. The same logic applies to replacing old single glazed units with double glazed windows, since the reveals are already open and the trims have to be refitted either way.

Fixing and Fasteners

Fastener choice is where a timber wall is quietly won or lost, and it is the item most often left out of a quote. Hot dip galvanised fixings are the general minimum for exterior timber cladding across inland Victoria, and stainless steel is the standard within the salt affected band along the bay, the Bellarine, the Surf Coast and the Peninsula. Using an ordinary bright or electroplated nail outside is not a saving, because rust streaks will appear down the face within two winters and cannot be removed without stripping the paint. On cedar and on hardwoods with high tannin, stainless is effectively compulsory anywhere, because those timbers react with steel and stain black around every fixing.

The fixing pattern matters as much as the metal. On lapped profiles such as bevelback and rusticated boards, each board should be fixed on a single line so the board can move across its width without splitting, and nailing through both the board and the one beneath it pins the wall and produces splits along the elevation the first summer. Fixings need to reach the studs and not just the sheathing, they need adequate edge distance so they do not split the end of a board, and hardwoods need pre-drilling. These are ordinary rules that a competent cladding carpenter follows without being asked and that a general handyman may not know. Back priming and sealing cut ends are the two habits that most reliably predict how long a wall lasts. Every face of a board, including the back and both ends, should be sealed before it goes on the wall, because end grain absorbs moisture many times faster than the face does.

Pre-primed boards arrive sealed on their factory surfaces but every cut on site creates fresh end grain that needs a coat of primer before the board is fixed. Twenty minutes with a primer tin at the cutting station is what stands between boards that last and boards that swell and rot at their ends. This is the single most skipped step on Victorian timber walls. It takes almost no time when it is built into the routine and it is impossible to add once a board is fixed in place. Joints, corners and stops need a plan drawn before anybody starts cutting.

End joints between boards should fall on a stud and be staggered across the elevation instead of lining up, corner treatment can be mitred, corner boxed or run into a stop mould depending on the period and the look, and every one of those details either sheds water or collects it. At the point boards butt into a window or door frame, a small gap sealed with a flexible sealant handles movement better than a tight fit that will pinch. Asking to see how a carpenter intends to handle the corners tells you a lot about the rest of the work. On a period house the corner treatment is also a strong visual cue, since a boxed corner reads quite differently from a mitre even at a distance.

Expansion allowance runs through all of it and Victoria asks for more of it than a mild coastal climate does. Ballarat, Daylesford, Trentham and the higher country run hard frosts in winter and hot February afternoons, so a board spans a wide moisture and temperature range every year. Gaps that looked generous in October close in July. Carpenters who work regularly in those districts leave more room at ends and junctions, and they say so when asked, which is a reasonable question to put to anyone travelling up from Melbourne for a job in the highlands.

How the Fitting Runs

A timber cladding job follows a predictable order, and knowing it makes it easy to see what a quote has left out. Access is set up, the existing wall is stripped where relevant, the frame is inspected and repaired, bracing is checked, the membrane is installed with flashings at every opening, battens go on if a cavity is specified, boards are fitted from the bottom up with a starter strip or packer setting the first course, trims and corners follow, and the finish system goes on last. Licensed trades disconnect the services before the strip out and reconnect them once the boards are on. Each of those stages should appear in the quote even where some are priced as allowances. Setting out the first course is the step that governs everything above it.

The bottom board establishes the line for the whole elevation, so a course set out by eye instead of by level produces a wall where the boards run visibly out of parallel with the eaves by the top. Good practice is to set the courses out on a story rod so the board lines land sensibly at window heads and sills instead of cutting awkwardly across them. It costs an hour at the start and it is the difference between a wall that looks considered and one that looks assembled. On a house where the eaves line is not level, which is common on older Victorian cottages that have moved on their stumps, the set out has to decide whether the boards follow the eaves or the horizon, and that judgement is worth making deliberately at set out. Access drives more of the cost than most owners expect. Two storey work above head height calls for scaffold, as do plenty of single storey houses carrying tall gables or a fall across the site, at $900 to $4,500 covering the elevation and the hire period.

Working at height is regulated by WorkSafe Victoria, and a two storey job quoted without scaffold has either omitted it or is planning to work off ladders. Coordinating the scaffold so fascia, gutters, upper windows and painting all happen within one hire is a genuine saving. On narrow inner suburban blocks, boundary access is worth discussing with the neighbours before the scaffold arrives. Weather governs the program through a Victorian winter. Open no more wall in a day than can be closed in and sealed before dark, since a frame left bare when a southwesterly change arrives will soak the insulation and the linings behind it.

Good carpenters work elevation by elevation for that reason. Timber also should not be fitted soaking wet or coated in conditions outside the paint manufacturer's temperature range, which rules out some winter mornings in the highlands entirely. A program that acknowledges all of this is a program written by someone who has worked here. Many owners prefer to schedule cladding work between spring and early autumn for that reason, although a well managed winter job is perfectly achievable. Waste and offcuts are heavier with timber than with sheet materials, and the strip out on an older house fills a skip quickly. Skip bin hire and any council permit for a skip standing on the road should be sorted before the job starts.

If the old boards are sound hardwood, a reclaimed timber yard will sometimes take them, which offsets a little of the cost and keeps good material in use. Anything containing asbestos leaves through the removalist's own licensed waste stream, entirely apart from the site skip. Whether the job is a full wall or a handful of boards changes the trade but not the method. A full elevation is usually a builder's job once the contract passes the statutory threshold, while a few boards can be handled by a carpenter directly and is covered on the cladding repairs page. Where the whole house is coming off, the sequencing, the frame repairs and the wrap upgrade are all covered on the house recladding page. The fitting rules on this page apply identically in each case.

Finishing and Maintenance

Paint is what protects a timber wall, and on painted cladding the coating system is doing more work than the board is. The standard approach is a quality exterior acrylic over a suitable primer, with Dulux Weathershield, Wattyl Solagard and Taubmans All Weather among the systems used most often across Victoria. Pre-primed boards still need two finish coats after fixing, and hardwoods need a stain blocking primer so tannin does not bleed through a pale colour. Preparation and coating systems are set out on the weatherboard painting page, while heritage home painting covers the period colour schemes that suit overlay areas. Oils and stains are the alternative and they suit a different intention. Cedar, thermally modified timbers and some hardwoods look best oiled, where the grain stays visible and the surface develops character instead of a uniform film.

Oil finishes need reapplication more often than paint, commonly every one to three years depending on exposure, but the maintenance is simple because there is no film to strip. Owners who want the silvered grey look can leave many species uncoated, provided the design accepts that weathering is uneven and that some staining will occur below fixings and junctions. Colour choice has practical consequences on timber that owners rarely hear about. Very dark colours absorb considerably more heat, which raises surface temperature and increases movement in the board, and on a north or west facing Victorian elevation that is a real load. Some paint manufacturers publish limits on the heat reflectance of colours suitable for timber substrates, so checking that a chosen colour is approved for the product is worth doing before committing.

Lighter colours are less demanding on the timber and on the coating. Heritage colour schemes tend to sit in that lighter range anyway, which is one of the quiet advantages of a period palette. Maintenance on a timber wall is straightforward and ignoring it is what creates every large repair bill. An annual wash removes the mould and grime that build up on shaded southern elevations, an inspection each spring catches failing paint at cut ends and around fixings before water gets in, and touching up a few boards costs almost nothing compared with letting a whole elevation go.

The repaint cycle is generally around ten years on a painted wall, and the walls that fail are the ones where it stretched to eighteen. That single number explains most of the rotten weatherboard in Victoria. Putting the next repaint in the calendar the day the current one finishes is a small habit that saves a great deal of money later. Gutters and downpipes deserve a mention in any timber cladding discussion because they cause so much of the damage. A gutter overflowing in a downpour sheets water down the wall below for the length of the storm, which is not an exposure any board was designed for, and a split downpipe at the back of a house can soak a wall for years unnoticed. Clearing gutters before winter is the best value maintenance available to a Victorian owner, and where the gutters themselves are failing, gutter replacement during a cladding job uses access that has already been paid for.

Permits, Heritage and Bushfire

Any domestic building job above $10,000 in Victoria needs a major domestic building contract and a registered builder, with registration administered by the Building and Plumbing Commission since it took on the Victorian Building Authority's functions in July 2025. A full elevation or a whole house of cladding passes that comfortably, while replacing a few boards generally does not and can be handled directly by a carpenter. The register is public and shows the class of registration as well. Above $16,000 the builder must hold domestic building insurance and give you the certificate before taking any money, and the deposit is limited to 5% below $20,000 or 10% from $20,000 up. Whether a building permit is needed is a question for a registered building surveyor, not the carpenter.

The Building Act 1993 and the Building Regulations 2018, both on the Victorian Legislation site, commonly exempt like for like replacement. A permit is usually needed once the material changes, once structural work is involved, in a bushfire prone area, or where fire separation is affected. A permit has to be in hand before work starts, and the surveyor then carries out the mandatory inspections. The final certificate is a document worth having at resale. Heritage and neighbourhood character overlays are where timber cladding runs into planning most often, and Victoria applies them widely. Councils across the inner suburbs, Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Geelong, Maldon and many country towns control the material, the profile and sometimes the colour of street facing elevations.

Replacing timber with timber in a matching profile is usually straightforward, while changing from timber to another material on a controlled elevation generally needs a planning permit. Run the address through the free VicPlan report on the Planning Victoria site to see what applies to the address, then ask the council planning counter what it means for the elevation you want to change. Bushfire attack level is the constraint that most often rules timber out, and it covers a large part of Victoria. A great many Victorian properties sit in designated bushfire prone areas, taking in the hills to Melbourne's east, the ranges to its north and west, the forest country toward the southwest coast and much of the urban fringe, and work in them is assessed under AS 3959 from BAL-LOW up to BAL-FZ.

Timber is permitted at the lower ratings, and at higher ratings only certain species recognised for bushfire resisting timber remain available before non combustible materials become necessary. The Country Fire Authority sets out how a rating is assigned. The standard also controls gaps and sealing, so joints and the base of the wall form part of the assessment. The usual consumer protections apply. Materials and workmanship carry guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law, Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes guidance for building consumers, statutory warranties are written into every domestic building contract by the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, and the Building Act generally allows building actions to be brought within 10 years. Disputes go to the builder in writing first, then to Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria for conciliation, and reach the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal only when that does not resolve them.

Costs in Detail

A measure and profile matching visit runs $180 to $450 and is worth paying for on any older house where the boards need to match. The carpenter takes a board off, measures the profile accurately, identifies the species and confirms what can be sourced or needs milling. Quotes produced from that information can be compared to each other, while quotes produced from a photograph cannot. On a heritage house it also avoids ordering a thousand dollars of the wrong board. Treated pine boards supplied and installed run $105 to $155 a square metre, hardwoods $140 to $205, and western red cedar $170 to $290, all excluding the finish. Hardboard products generally sit between pine and hardwood.

Custom profile milling brings a one off setup charge of $380 to $1,400 for the order, and the board itself then runs at a higher rate per metre than a stock profile. Single board replacement fitted and primed runs $120 to $320 each, with the wide spread driven almost entirely by whether the profile is off the rack or needs milling. The wall behind the boards carries its own rates and they are the best value items on the page. A vapour permeable membrane upgrade adds $9 to $22 a square metre, a batten cavity system adds $18 to $45, and wall insulation adds $18 to $45 while the frame is open. Reflashing existing windows into the new membrane runs $180 to $650 per opening.

Framing repairs are the item nobody can price precisely in advance, and bottom plate and stud repairs commonly run $65 to $180 a lineal metre, which is why a contingency rate belongs in the contract instead of arriving as a surprise on the invoice. Finishing costs vary with the system. A quality two coat exterior paint system on unpainted boards runs $35 to $75 a square metre, while oil finishes on cedar or hardwood typically run $22 to $55 a square metre per application and need reapplying more often. Preparation on an older painted wall costs more than the paint does, particularly where lead paint controls apply and wet sanding or vacuum assisted sanding is required. Scaffold at $900 to $4,500 is usually shared across the cladding and the painting when the work is coordinated. Putting the rates together gives a sense of scale.

Deduct the openings and most single storey Victorian houses come in somewhere between 130 and 200 square metres of external wall, which puts a full timber reclad in painted pine with a membrane upgrade in the mid twenties to low forties of thousands. Hardwood or cedar on a batten cavity runs considerably higher again. A single gable end or a rear addition is a much smaller number. Building surveyor fees where a permit is required typically add $1,200 to $3,500.

Planning permits in overlay areas carry separate council fees and can add several weeks before a start date, which is worth building into any timeline. Regional pricing does not simply follow metropolitan rates. A Melbourne carpenter heading to Gippsland, the Wimmera or the northeast bills travel and sometimes a night's accommodation, while Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong and Shepparton trades price keenly and book out further ahead. Long lengths of cladding are awkward to deliver to remote sites and delivery charges reflect that. With travel and delivery itemised on each quote, the regional figures become far easier to compare.

What to Look Out For

Be cautious of a quote that does not name the fixings. Hot dip galvanised or stainless steel, the fixing pattern on lapped boards, pre-drilling on hardwoods and edge distances are all things a competent cladding carpenter specifies as a matter of course, and their absence usually means the wall will be nailed with whatever is in the gun. Rust streaks and black staining around fixings appear within two winters and cannot be fixed without stripping back. It is the cheapest thing on the job to get right and among the most expensive to correct. Watch for boards being fitted without back priming or without cut ends sealed.

This is the most commonly skipped step on Victorian timber walls and it is invisible once the paint is on, which is precisely why it gets skipped. Look at the cutting station and see whether there is a primer tin beside it. A carpenter who seals every cut as they go is telling you something useful about the rest of their work. It is a habit more than a task, and the ones who have it rarely need reminding.

Be careful with profile matching on period houses. A carpenter who says the modern equivalent will be close enough is proposing a wall where the shadow lines change partway along an elevation, which is obvious from the street and impossible to undo without replacing the boards again. Custom milling costs a setup fee once, and on anything more than a few boards it is usually the cheaper answer overall. Where the profile is unusual, get a sample length milled before the full order is run. Holding it against an existing board settles the question in a few seconds. Look closely at what happens at the base of the wall and around openings.

Boards running down into soil, paving or garden beds will wick moisture and, on a timber framed house, hide the termite inspection zone entirely. Windows without head flashings, junctions sealed with a smear of silicone instead of a flashing, and end joints that do not land on a stud are all signs of a wall that will leak. These are the details a careful building inspector checks first and a rushed carpenter skips. Finally, be wary of anyone proposing to dry sand old paintwork on a house painted before the 1970s, or to remove pre-1990 sheet cladding without testing it.

Lead dust and asbestos are both entirely avoidable hazards with ordinary controls that add very little to a quote. How a contractor responds to those questions tells you plainly what standard the rest of the job would be done to. A builder asking for a deposit above the legal limits, or before providing the insurance certificate on work over $16,000, is another clear signal to stop. Those limits are not negotiable and a registered builder knows it.

How to Get Comparable Quotes

Start by telling every contractor the same things. The build date, the existing profile and species if known, the elevations involved, the approximate area, whether there are overlays or a bushfire rating, what finish you want and whether you want the membrane and insulation upgraded while the wall is open. Contractors who know all of that quote the same job, and contractors given a vague brief quote whatever they usually do. Disclosure early is the cheapest advantage an owner has in this process.

Then put the same written questions to everyone. Registration number and insurance where the work passes the threshold, the species and grade proposed, whether the profile is stock or milled, fixing type and pattern, back priming and cut end sealing, the membrane product, batten or direct fix, insulation, flashing method at openings, the finish system and number of coats, access, waste, framing contingency rate, program and warranty. Identical questions produce answers you can lay side by side, which is the only way three prices tell you anything. Compare the methods before the totals when the quotes arrive. A quote that undercuts the others by roughly the value of the membrane, the battens and the framing allowance has priced a lesser wall, not offered a better deal.

Price those back in and the two figures usually meet. If they do not, ask the lower priced contractor to set the difference out in writing, since it may be a real efficiency in their supply or crew and it may be something left out. The written answer tells you which one you are dealing with. Keep the record once the job is finished. Note the species, grade and supplier, the profile and any milling drawing, the fixing type, the membrane product, the insulation R-value, the finish system and colour codes, and photographs of the frame, membrane and flashings taken before the boards went on. At sale time an inspector can be satisfied from those photographs without lifting a board, and a milling drawing on file makes the next repair straightforward years later.

Owners who keep that file find every subsequent quote easier to get. It also reassures a buyer's inspector on an older property, where the usual question is simply what sits behind the boards and when it was last touched. A timber wall fitted properly and maintained on a sensible cycle will outlast most of the materials competing with it, and Victoria is full of hundred year old proof of that. What decides the outcome is not the species or the price per metre but the fixings, the sealed ends, the membrane behind and the discipline of the repaint cycle.

Those decisions are all made before and during the fitting, which is the argument for spending the time on them while the wall is open. Nothing about a timber wall is difficult to look after, but everything about it is difficult to fix once neglected. Owners who treat the wall as a system instead of a surface, and who spend a little on inspection each spring, rarely face a large bill on it at all. A walk around with a ladder each September is the whole maintenance program on most houses.