Weatherboard and Cladding Repairs NSW - Get Free Quotes

What Weatherboard and Cladding Repairs Cost in NSW

Replacing individual weatherboards runs $80 to $200 a board installed, and a small section repair covering a few boards and the timber behind them lands between $500 and $1,500. Re-cladding one elevation runs $3,000 to $8,000, and a full re-clad of a small house $15,000 to $40,000. Measured by area the installed rate is $80 to $200 a square metre depending on the material. The wider trade is set out under carpentry services. Those figures cover the cladding work itself. Painting afterwards, scaffolding on a two storey wall, and any repair to the framing or sarking behind the boards are all separate lines, and on an older house the work behind the cladding frequently exceeds the cost of the boards.

The variable that decides most quotes is how far the damage extends behind what you can see. A rotted board is a symptom, and the question a good repairer asks is where the water came from, because replacing boards over wet framing simply hides the problem for a couple of years. Material matters as much as extent. Traditional hardwood and painted pine weatherboards, fibre cement planks, aluminium and vinyl cladding, and modern composite products all repair differently, and a house may carry more than one where previous work was done piecemeal. Figures on this page are indicative New South Wales rates for 2026 and assume a detached house in reasonable condition. Asbestos cladding, combustible cladding on apartment buildings, heritage properties and bushfire-prone land each carry their own requirements covered below.

What Actually Goes Wrong

Cladding failures follow a small number of patterns, and identifying which one you have tells you whether a repair or a re-clad is the sensible answer. Rot at the bottom of boards and around openings is the most common on timber. Water runs down a wall and collects wherever it is interrupted, so the lowest course, the sills beneath windows and the junctions where boards meet trim are where it starts, and the end grain at cut ends absorbs moisture far faster than the face. Splitting and cupping is a different failure and generally points at the coating rather than the timber. A board that has lost its paint film on the exposed face dries and wets repeatedly, and the movement that follows opens splits along the grain that then admit more water.

Fibre cement planks do not rot and fail in their own ways. Cracking at fixings where a nail was driven too close to the edge, delamination at cut ends that were never sealed, and impact damage are the usual presentations, and a cracked sheet is generally replaced rather than patched. Fixing failure is the quiet one that affects every material. Nails and screws corrode, work loose under thermal movement, and lose their grip in softened timber, and a wall with boards lifting at the ends often has sound boards and failed fixings. Movement in the structure behind the cladding shows up as a pattern rather than isolated damage. Cracking that runs diagonally, boards that have opened along a consistent line, or a wall that has bowed all point at something structural, and the carpentry pricing guide covers framing rates.

Fibro Cladding and Asbestos

New South Wales has one of the largest stocks of fibro-clad housing in the country, and any cladding installed before 1990 should be treated as potentially containing asbestos until testing says otherwise. Asbestos cement sheeting was used extensively as external wall cladding through the mid twentieth century, along with the cover strips over the joints and frequently the eaves lining above it. It looks like a flat or lightly textured sheet rather than a board, and a house clad in sheets with timber cover strips is a strong candidate. Intact and painted asbestos cladding is not dangerous and does not have to be removed.

The risk arises when it is disturbed, and cutting, drilling, sanding, breaking or pressure cleaning it are all activities that release fibres, which is why a repair on fibro is a different job from a repair on timber. Pressure cleaning is the error most often made by owners preparing to paint. It drives water through the sheet, releases fibres and washes contaminated slurry into the soil and stormwater, and it turns a stable material into a contamination problem across the property. A sample analysed through asbestos testing and inspection settles it in a few days. Removing more than ten square metres of non-friable asbestos requires a Class B licensed removalist and the work must be notified to SafeWork NSW beforehand.

An external wall exceeds that threshold immediately, so re-cladding a fibro house is licensed work rather than a carpentry job, with scope under asbestos removal. Encapsulation is the alternative where the sheeting is sound. Sealing and over-coating leaves the material in place and manages the risk at a fraction of removal cost, and it suits a wall in good condition that is not otherwise due for replacement. Asbestos encapsulation covers that approach.

Combustible Cladding and What the NSW Ban Covers

Combustible cladding is the subject most people have heard about and the one most often misapplied to the wrong buildings. The New South Wales ban was issued by the Commissioner for Fair Trading on 15 August 2018 under the Building Products (Safety) Act 2017, available through NSW legislation, and it remains in force indefinitely. What it bans is specific. Aluminium composite panels with a core comprising more than 30 per cent polyethylene by mass may not be used in external cladding, external walls, external insulation, facades or rendered finishes on certain building classes, principally apartment, hotel, health, assembly, office, retail, warehouse and industrial buildings above defined storey thresholds. The distinction that matters to most homeowners is that detached houses fall outside it.

A Class 1a dwelling is not within the classes the ban applies to, so a house with metal cladding is not affected by it, and the concern belongs to apartment and commercial building owners rather than to suburban homeowners. For buildings that are covered, the position is more involved than a simple prohibition. The ban applies retrospectively in the sense that it covers existing buildings, though buildings occupied before it came into force are not automatically required to strip the material, and consent authorities determine what action is needed to eliminate or minimise the risk. Fire and Rescue NSW publishes guidance on identification.

Owners corporations of affected buildings face registration obligations, potential fire safety orders from councils, and insurance and certification difficulties that go well beyond the cladding itself. Replacement materials generally need verification as non-combustible against the relevant Australian Standard, which narrows the product field considerably. The practical advice differs sharply by building type. A house owner repairing weatherboards can set this aside entirely, while an apartment owner should not commission cladding work without establishing the building's status first, and the underlying construction requirements sit with the National Construction Code published by the Australian Building Codes Board.

Termites and Timber Cladding

Timber cladding in New South Wales sits in the path of termite activity, and damage to boards is frequently the first visible sign of a problem that started somewhere else entirely. Termites need moisture and concealment, which is precisely what the cavity behind weatherboards provides. They travel up from the soil through the subfloor or behind a rendered base, and the cladding damage you eventually see may be some distance from where they entered. The signs worth knowing are mostly subtle. Boards that sound hollow when tapped, a blistered or rippled paint surface, mud tubes on piers or the base of a wall, and small amounts of fine soil-coloured material at joints all indicate activity rather than ordinary rot. Distinguishing termite damage from rot matters because the response differs completely.

Rot stops once the water source is fixed, while termites continue and spread, and replacing damaged boards without treating the colony simply supplies fresh timber. Ground contact is the condition most often responsible in older houses. Cladding finishing close to soil, garden beds built up against a wall and mulch piled against timber all provide a concealed bridge past whatever barrier exists, and correcting those levels is part of any sensible repair. Any repair uncovering suspected termite damage should pause for an inspection before the wall is closed up. It is the one opportunity to see the frame, and both termite inspection and treatment and pre-purchase pest inspection cover that step.

Cladding Materials and How Each Repairs

Matching a repair to the existing cladding is harder than it sounds, and the material determines both the method and whether an invisible result is achievable at all. Hardwood weatherboards are the traditional New South Wales option and repair well. Individual boards can be cut out and spliced in, the timber is available, and a competent carpenter can make a repair invisible once painted, though matching the profile of an older board sometimes means having it milled. Painted pine weatherboards are the most common on mid-century housing and are straightforward to replace. The boards are stocked in standard profiles, they are light to handle, and the main caution is treatment level, since untreated pine in an exposed position simply repeats the failure. Fibre cement planks are widely used in newer housing and the repair question is availability.

Profiles change over time, a discontinued plank may have no current equivalent, and the usual solution is taking material from a concealed elevation and using the closest match there instead. Aluminium and vinyl cladding from the 1970s and 1980s presents the hardest matching problem. Colours have faded unevenly, profiles are long discontinued, and a replacement panel that fits will rarely match, which pushes many of these repairs toward re-cladding a whole elevation. Rendered and textured finishes are a different trade again. Cracking, drummy sections and failed coatings are repaired by a renderer rather than a carpenter, with rates under render repairs and render and texture coating.

Inspecting Cladding and Catching Problems Early

Cladding gives plenty of warning before it fails expensively, and a walk around the house twice a year catches nearly everything while it is still a small job. Start at the bottom of each wall, because that is where water collects and where rot begins. Press firmly on the lowest boards with a thumb, and anywhere the timber gives, feels spongy or sounds dull rather than solid has taken water and is worth opening up. Look at the junctions rather than the middle of the wall. Where boards meet window and door trim, where two walls meet at a corner, and where cladding meets the roof or a deck are the points that move, open up and admit water, and they fail long before a plain run of boards does. Check the paint film on the exposed elevations.

Chalking, where a dark cloth rubbed on the surface comes away powdery, means the coating has lost its binder under ultraviolet exposure and the timber beneath is no longer protected. Look down as well as up. Soil, mulch, paving and garden beds built up against the cladding are among the most common causes of rot and termite entry, and clearing that material away is free and prevents more damage than any coating does. Note anything you find with a photograph and a date. A patch that grows between inspections tells you the cause is active, one that stays the same may be historic, and that distinction is genuinely useful to a repairer quoting the work. Wider exterior condition is covered by exterior painting.

Water Entry, Sarking and What Sits Behind the Boards

Cladding is a rain screen rather than a waterproof layer, and understanding that changes what a proper repair looks like. Wind-driven rain gets behind boards on every house, and the system is designed to manage it. Sarking behind the cladding provides a secondary barrier, a drainage cavity lets water run down and out, and flashings at openings direct it away from the structure, and a failure in any of those puts water into the frame. Older houses frequently have no sarking at all.

Pre-war and early post-war construction commonly clad directly onto the studs, which means any water passing the boards reaches the frame directly, and it is why rot in those houses is often more advanced than the external appearance suggests. Flashings at windows and doors are the single most common entry point. A sill flashing that stops short, was installed upside down, or has corroded lets water into the wall below the opening, and replacing the boards without correcting the flashing guarantees the repair fails. Ground clearance is the other recurring cause and it is easy to check.

Cladding should finish well clear of the ground and of paving, garden beds and mulch built up against the wall, since timber in contact with soil wicks moisture continuously and provides a concealed path for termites. A termite inspection settles whether activity is present. Any competent repair therefore starts with establishing where the water came from. A repairer who opens the wall, photographs what they find and explains the entry point is doing the job, and one who replaces the visible boards without that step is selling you a delay.

Lead Paint on Older Weatherboards

Paint applied before 1970 should be assumed to contain lead, and exterior weatherboards are one of the most likely places to find it in a New South Wales house. The hazard arises during preparation rather than from the intact paint film. Sanding, grinding, heat stripping and pressure cleaning all mobilise lead into dust or into the soil beneath the wall, and the contamination then persists in the garden where children play and vegetables grow. Dry power sanding is the specific practice to rule out. It generates fine dust that travels across the property and into neighbouring ones, and wet sanding, chemical stripping and careful containment with drop sheets are the accepted alternatives on a lead-painted exterior.

Soil contamination beneath the wall is the consequence owners least anticipate. Decades of weathering paint flakes accumulate in the top layer of soil along a weatherboard wall, and disturbing that ground during repairs spreads it further, with health guidance published at nsw.gov.au. For a small repair the practical approach is containment and wet methods, and for a full strip the sensible answer is a contractor experienced in lead-safe work. Lead paint testing and removal covers that work.

Bushfire-Prone Land and Cladding Requirements

A large share of New South Wales housing sits on land mapped as bushfire-prone, and cladding is one of the building elements the construction requirements address directly. Construction in these areas is governed by AS 3959, published by Standards Australia, which sets requirements rising with the Bushfire Attack Level assigned to the site. Whether your property is mapped is determined through your council's bushfire-prone land map, with guidance from the NSW Rural Fire Service. External walls carry specific requirements at higher levels, and timber weatherboards are permitted only where the species is on the approved list or the wall assembly achieves the required performance another way. Fibre cement and steel cladding are commonly specified at the upper levels for that reason.

Gaps are the detail most often missed. Embers enter through openings rather than by igniting the wall face, so the requirements address gaps around cladding, at junctions and under boards as much as the material itself, and a repair that leaves a gap undermines the assembly. The trigger for compliance is worth understanding, since a like-for-like repair to a small section generally does not bring the whole wall up to current requirements. Sizeable re-cladding can, and checking the position before scoping the work avoids an expensive discovery.

Upgrading Insulation and Sarking During a Re-Clad

Removing cladding opens up the wall cavity, and it is the only practical moment in a building's life to improve what sits inside it. Owners who treat a re-clad purely as a repair miss the opportunity entirely. Wall insulation is the largest of those gains in most older New South Wales houses. Pre-war and early post-war construction generally has none at all, and installing batts or boards while the studs are exposed costs a fraction of retrofitting through drilled holes from outside. Sarking is the second and arguably more important addition. A breathable membrane behind the cladding catches wind-driven rain and any water passing the boards, directs it down and out, and is the single element whose absence explains most rot in older walls.

Adding a drainage cavity takes that further and is now standard in new construction. Battening out over the sarking creates a ventilated gap that lets the back of the cladding dry, which extends the life of both the boards and the coating considerably. Condensation deserves consideration alongside insulation rather than after it. Insulating a wall without addressing vapour movement can trap moisture inside the cavity, so the membrane specification and the ventilation path need to work together, and ceiling and wall insulation covers the upgrade itself. The cost of all this while the wall is open is modest against the value, and the same work at any other time is either impossible or expensive. Raising it with the builder at quoting stage costs nothing and is frequently the difference between a repair and an improvement.

Licensing, Warranties and Approvals

Cladding repair is residential building work in New South Wales, so a contractor licence is required where the contract value exceeds $5,000 including labour and materials. Licences can be checked through Service NSW, and consumer protections sit with NSW Fair Trading. Small board replacements frequently sit below that threshold while a re-clad of any size exceeds it. Where the contract exceeds $20,000, home building compensation cover applies and the contractor must give you evidence of it before taking any money, a deposit included.

Statutory warranties apply to licensed residential building work regardless of what a contract says, currently six years for major defects and two years for other defects. Water penetration through an external wall generally falls into the major category, which matters if a repair fails. Development approval is not usually required for like-for-like cladding repair or replacement. Changing the material or the appearance can be a different matter, particularly on heritage items, in conservation areas and where a development consent specified the external finish. Heritage properties deserve a call before any work is scoped. Original weatherboards and their profiles are frequently part of what is listed, and replacement with a modern product can require consent and may be refused, whereas a sympathetic timber repair generally is not controversial.

Heritage Homes and Character Properties

New South Wales has a large stock of Federation, Californian bungalow and inter-war weatherboard housing, and on a listed or character property the cladding is frequently part of what makes the building significant. Original board profiles are the detail that matters most. Splayed, rusticated, bullnose and chamfered boards each read differently from the street, and a modern flat profile substituted into a heritage wall is obvious to anyone who knows the style even after painting. Having boards milled to match is more available than owners expect. Timber merchants and joinery shops across the state run custom profiles, the cost premium over stock boards is usually modest on a small repair, and it removes the matching problem entirely. Where a property is heritage listed or sits in a conservation area, consent may be required for work that would otherwise be routine.

Like-for-like repair in matching material is generally uncontroversial, while changing the profile, the material or the appearance often is not. Councils assessing this work look at visibility from the street, the integrity of the original fabric and whether what is proposed could be reversed later. An early conversation with the heritage officer usually costs nothing and saves more time than it takes. Decorative elements deserve the same attention as the boards, and fretwork, brackets, vents and window surrounds are frequently what carries the character, and a repairer who proposes removing them to speed the job up is solving the wrong problem. Coating that suits the period is covered under heritage home painting.

Repair or Re-Clad

The decision between patching and re-cladding turns on the proportion of the wall affected and on whether the cause has been resolved, not simply on the cost of each. Isolated damage in an otherwise sound wall is a repair every time. A handful of rotted boards at a window sill, an impact-damaged plank or a corroded run of fixings are all addressed locally, and re-cladding a whole elevation for those is money spent on the wrong problem. Once roughly a quarter of an elevation needs replacing, the arithmetic shifts. Access, scaffolding, preparation and painting are largely the same whether you replace ten boards or forty, so the marginal cost of doing the whole wall falls sharply. Matching is the other factor pushing toward a full elevation.

Where the existing material is discontinued or has faded beyond matching, a partial repair remains visible no matter how well it is executed, and owners frequently end up re-cladding anyway after living with the patch. Re-cladding also creates the opportunity to correct what is behind. Adding sarking to a house that never had it, installing a drainage cavity, upgrading insulation and correcting flashings are all straightforward with the boards off and expensive at any other time. Ceiling and wall insulation covers that upgrade. Where the cause of the damage is unresolved, neither option works. Fixing a gutter that overflows, a flashing that leaks or ground levels built up against the wall comes first, and cladding work before that is a temporary cosmetic exercise.

Painting, Finishing and Protecting the Repair

Cladding and its coating are a single system, and the reason most timber weatherboards fail is that the coating failed first. Weatherboard painting sets out coating rates, with wider work under exterior house painting. New boards need priming on all faces before they go up, including the back, the ends and any cut edge. Back-priming is the step most often skipped on a repair and it matters more than the face coat, because the rear of a board is where moisture arrives and never dries quickly.

End grain is the specific vulnerability on every cut. A board cut to length on site presents raw end grain that absorbs water many times faster than the face, and sealing it before installation is a few seconds of work that adds years. Recoating intervals in New South Wales are shorter than product labels suggest on exposed elevations. North and west facing walls take the most ultraviolet exposure and generally need attention before south facing ones, and a coating attended to before it fails is far cheaper than one repaired afterwards. Fascia, barge boards and soffits weather on the same cycle and are frequently repaired at the same time, since the scaffolding is already up. Those are quoted as fascia and soffit repairs, with coating under eaves, fascia and gutter painting.

Timeframes, Weather and How the Job Runs

Cladding work is weather dependent in a way interior trades are not, since the wall is open to the elements for part of the job and neither coatings nor adhesives behave well in the wet. A small board replacement runs a few hours to a day, and a section repair including making good and painting generally spans two to three days once coating times are allowed for. Re-cladding an elevation runs three to five working days and a full house two to four weeks. The stage that dictates the schedule is the period when the wall is open. A competent crew opens only what they can close the same day or protect overnight, and temporary weatherproofing is a legitimate line item rather than an afterthought.

Rain moves everything and a builder who postpones opening a wall on a poor forecast is protecting your house. Coating in particular needs dry conditions and adequate temperature, and a primer applied to damp timber fails regardless of what goes over it. Access equipment affects the program at both ends, since scaffolding is erected before work starts and struck after painting finishes. Asking whether a quoted duration includes the scaffold or only the trade work produces two quite different completion dates, and safety obligations on site are administered by SafeWork NSW.

Sydney and Regional NSW

Sydney sits at the upper end of the ranges on this page, driven by labour rates and by access constraints across the older inner suburbs where weatherboard housing concentrates. Access decides more of the cost on cladding work than on most trades, because the work happens across a whole wall rather than at a point. A single storey wall reachable from trestles is a different proposition from a two storey elevation needing scaffolding at $2,000 to $6,000 before any boards come off. Housing stock varies the work sizeable across the state.

Federation and inter-war weatherboard through the inner west and the northern beaches carries profiles no longer stocked, while post-war fibro across the western and southern suburbs brings asbestos into almost every conversation. Coastal exposure from Wollongong through Sydney and up the north coast shortens coating life and corrodes fixings, which is why stainless or heavily galvanised fixings are worth specifying within a few kilometres of the water. The Blue Mountains, the Southern Highlands and the coastal hinterland bring bushfire requirements into play far more often than the metropolitan plain, and regional centres including Newcastle, Wollongong, Orange, Bathurst and Armidale carry large stocks of older timber housing. Termite pressure is also higher in warmer coastal areas, with scope under termite treatment.

Getting the Best Value From Cladding Work

A few decisions made before any quote is requested change the total more than negotiating on rate, and most concern timing and scope rather than price. Combining the repair with painting is the largest saving available. Access equipment, preparation and site setup are shared between the two trades, and a wall repaired and then painted six months later pays for scaffolding twice. Doing a whole elevation rather than chasing damage across several walls is the second. Where more than one wall needs attention, completing one properly and returning for the next in a later season costs more than addressing both while the scaffold is up. Bringing forward other work at height captures the same benefit.

Gutters, fascia, soffits, window frames and roof edges are all reachable from the same access, and hiring it once for several tasks beats hiring it repeatedly across years. Specifying treated timber and quality fixings is a small premium that decides the lifespan. Untreated pine in an exposed position and zinc plated nails near the coast are the two substitutions that produce a repeat repair within a decade. The false economies are skipping back-priming, leaving the water source unaddressed and painting over damp timber. All three save a little at the time and guarantee the work is done again sooner than it should be. House painting costs covers the finishing stage.

What to Look Out For

Ask what the repairer expects to find behind the boards and what happens if the framing is affected. Cladding repairs uncover things, and agreeing in advance whether that triggers a variation or a pause avoids the most common dispute on this work. Insist on the cause being identified rather than just the damage repaired. A quote that replaces boards without mentioning the flashing, the gutter or the ground levels is treating the symptom, and the repair will fail on the same timeline as the original.

On any house built before 1990, establish whether the cladding is asbestos before anyone touches it, and never allow it to be pressure cleaned. Removal above ten square metres is licensed work notified to SafeWork NSW, and a repairer who raises this unprompted is worth keeping. On pre-1970 paintwork, rule out dry power sanding explicitly. Wet methods, chemical stripping and proper containment are the accepted approaches on lead-painted weatherboards, and the soil beneath the wall deserves protection during the work. Get the material specified by product and profile rather than described generically.

Matching is the hardest part of a cladding repair, and a quote naming what will be installed lets you judge whether the result will be visible from the street. Check the licence where the contract exceeds $5,000 and ask for the home building compensation certificate above $20,000. Confirm whether painting is included or separate, since a repair left unpainted deteriorates quickly. Framing repairs belong with carpentry services.

Common Mistakes That Cost Money

A handful of avoidable errors account for most of the money wasted on cladding work, and every one of them is cheaper to prevent than to correct. Replacing boards without finding the water source is the most common and the most expensive. The new timber rots on the same timeline as the old, and the second repair costs as much as the first while the framing behind deteriorates further in the meantime. Pressure cleaning before painting is the second and on a fibro house it is genuinely serious. On timber it drives water into the boards and behind them, raises the grain and leaves a substrate too wet to coat, and on asbestos cement it creates a contamination problem across the property. Skipping back-priming on replacement boards is the third and it is invisible.

A board primed only on the face absorbs moisture through the back and the end grain, cups within a season or two, and fails years before a fully primed one. Painting over damp or unsound timber is the fourth. A coating applied to wet boards blisters and peels within months, and the preparation to correct it costs more than doing it properly would have. Assuming no asbestos on a pre-1990 house is the last and the one that stops work entirely. Establishing it beforehand costs a fraction of discovering it once a wall is open and a crew is standing idle. Laboratory analysis through asbestos testing and inspection gives a definitive answer.

Getting Comparable Quotes

Cladding quotes vary more in what they assume about the wall behind than in the rate per board, so a short brief before you call makes three responses comparable. Photograph the damage and the whole elevation, and send both. A close photograph shows the failure and a wider one shows the context, including the gutter above it, the ground below and whether the damage follows a pattern. Give the age of the house and say what the cladding is if you know. Pre-1990 construction brings asbestos into the conversation and pre-1970 paintwork brings lead, and both change the method and the price.

Say how many storeys and whether there is clear access around the wall. Scaffolding is a fixed cost that should appear as its own line, and a quote that omits it on a two storey elevation has not priced the job. State whether you want painting included and whether you are prepared to consider re-cladding the elevation if the damage proves extensive. A repairer who knows that can quote both at once instead of returning. Ask for boards and materials, labour, access equipment, any framing repair allowance and painting as separate lines. That structure exposes where one quote has allowed for structural work and another has assumed sound framing.

Cladding Work on Strata and Rental Properties

Who may commission cladding work depends on the tenure of the property, and getting that wrong is expensive because external walls are rarely the individual owner's to alter. In a strata scheme the external wall is almost always common property, including the cladding, the framing behind it and the membrane. An owner with water entering through an external wall generally cannot engage a repairer directly, since the work is the owners corporation's responsibility. The correct path is reporting the defect to the strata manager or committee promptly and in writing with photographs and dates. Proceeding independently can leave the owner carrying a cost the corporation would otherwise have met, and may breach the by-laws as well.

Damage inside a lot from an external wall failure is a separate question from the wall itself. Ceiling and paint damage within the lot is frequently the owner's insurance matter while the cladding is the corporation's, and establishing that split early prevents each party waiting for the other. Townhouses and villa complexes are where this gets least understood, since the building looks like a house and is legally nothing of the sort. Checking the strata plan before commissioning anything on an external wall is worth doing. For rental properties the external fabric is the lessor's responsibility rather than the tenant's, and a tenant noticing rot, movement or water entry should report it in writing and keep the record. Repairs of this kind are not something a tenant should arrange independently.

Making the Decision

On cladding the cheapest quote is frequently the one that assumed sound framing behind the boards, so compare the assumptions before the totals. Where quotes differ widely, ask each what they think caused the damage. A repairer who identifies a failed sill flashing and prices its replacement is fixing the problem, and one quoting boards alone is quoting a shorter-lived result at a lower price. Favour the repairer who wanted to open a section before quoting firmly. Cladding conceals what matters, and a provisional figure with an agreed process for what is found is more honest than a fixed price based on the visible face.

Get the agreed scope in writing before any deposit, covering the material and profile, the extent of replacement, the treatment of framing and sarking, the flashing corrections, access equipment, painting and the asbestos or lead position. Finally, keep photographs of what was found behind the boards along with the product details. They matter at sale, they matter if the repair is ever questioned, and they tell the next tradesperson what is behind the wall. Exterior painting costs covers the finishing that follows.