Painters in the inner west
The inner west runs from Federation semis to weatherboard workers' cottages and Californian bungalows — established homes with real character, and original timber trim worth doing properly.
What we paint in the inner west
- Federation semis and freestanding brick homes, usually with leadlight, picture rails, deep skirtings and a tiled front verandah
- Weatherboard workers' cottages through Marrickville, Enmore, Erskineville and Petersham, many of them still on their original boards
- Californian bungalows from the interwar years, plus Haberfield — Australia's first planned garden suburb, largely intact Federation housing and protected as a conservation area
- Post-war brick flats and newer infill townhouses around Ashfield, Dulwich Hill, Camperdown and Drummoyne
Suburbs we cover
- Marrickville
- Leichhardt
- Balmain
- Rozelle
- Annandale
- Stanmore
- Enmore
- Dulwich Hill
- Petersham
- Ashfield
- Summer Hill
- Camperdown
- Erskineville
- Haberfield
- Drummoyne
Suburbs we’ve written up in detail
The housing, the access and the approvals differ enough between these that each one has its own page.
Painters in Marrickville 2204
Marrickville is the suburb where weatherboard still turns up in quantity, and timber is a different exterior job to brick or render. It is also still half industrial in places, which puts warehouse-scale work next door to a workers' cottage.
Read morePainters in Balmain 2041
Balmain is a peninsula, which means two things for a repaint: harbour weather on the exposed elevations, and streets steep and narrow enough that getting gear to the back of a house is a real question rather than a formality.
Read morePainters in Leichhardt 2040
Leichhardt is mostly brick and render on wider, flatter streets than the suburbs around it — which makes it one of the more straightforward exteriors in the inner west, and shifts the interesting part of the job onto the render itself.
Read morePainters in Annandale 2038
Annandale was laid out with wide boulevards and built with more decoration than its neighbours — turrets, gables, decorative timber. It is the inner-west suburb where the detail on the front of the house is the job.
Read moreThe work we do most in the inner west
Interior Painting
The bulk of the work out here. Period rooms with picture rails, deep skirtings and generous ceilings — plenty of trim, and plenty of edges where a rushed cut-in shows.
Exterior Painting
Weatherboard, fibro and rendered brick, plus the eaves, fascias and gutters that always fail before the walls do.
Plastering & Repairs
A century of movement leaves cracked plaster, and decades of renovation leave patches that were never finished flat. Both get made good before a topcoat goes anywhere near them.
Heritage & Restoration
Federation detail worth keeping — leadlight surrounds, verandah fretwork, sash windows and panelled doors, prepared so the profile stays crisp instead of slowly filling in.
Commercial & Shopfront
The small shopfronts and studios that fill the old high streets out here — cafés, workshops and single tenancies, usually in a building the same age as the houses around it.
Feature Walls
A single wall in a bungalow's front room, scaled to the period proportions and the picture rail rather than fighting them.
What working in the inner west actually involves
- Original timber is the defining surface here — weatherboards, sash windows, fretwork and verandah posts — and it is the one that punishes shortcuts in preparation more than any other.
- Weatherboard only stays sound if the gaps and cut ends are sealed properly. Left open, the next wet winter finds them and the boards start to go from the inside.
- Rot and movement get found during prep, not before it. Where a board, sill or sash needs repair, we tell you what we've found and what it changes before we keep going.
- Semis share a wall and a façade line, so an exterior repaint on one half is visible against the other. Matching the neighbour, or deliberately not matching, is a decision worth making on purpose.
- Conservation areas cover large parts of Haberfield, Balmain, Annandale and Petersham, where street-facing colour and finish can carry conditions.
- Most homes here have a driveway, a side passage or a back yard, so access is easier than the city — but a narrow side passage still decides where gear and ladders can go.
Common questions in the inner west
What's actually involved in repainting weatherboard?
More preparation than paint. We wash the boards down, scrape and sand back anything that's failing, treat and fill bare or damaged timber, and seal the gaps and end grain where water gets in — then coat with an exterior system suited to timber. The painting is the quick part; the preparation is what decides how long the result holds up.
Can you match the colour on the other half of my semi?
Usually. The bigger question on a semi is whether you want to. A pair reads as one building from the street, so an exact match keeps that — but matching new paint to a neighbour's weathered wall means aiming at a colour that has already moved, and the join will still show. Deliberately different, in tones that sit well together, often looks more considered than a near-match that misses. We'll show you both on the wall before you decide.
What if you find rotten timber once you start?
We stop and show you. Minor damage — a soft patch, a split board end, a failed sill joint — gets repaired and filled as part of the job. If something is structurally gone, that's a carpentry job rather than a painting one, and we'll say so instead of filling over it and handing you a problem in a year's time.
We're living here with kids and a dog. How disruptive is this?
Less than most people expect, if we plan it with you. What we need from you is the practical detail: which rooms have to stay in use, where the dog will be while doors are open, whether anyone naps in the afternoon, and what has to stay reachable. We sequence around that. The honest constraints are wet trim you can't lean on and doors that need to stay open to cure — we'll tell you which rooms those are, each day, before we leave.
The other areas we cover
Inner city
Terraces, warehouse conversions and apartment blocks, on streets where access and heritage colour matter as much as the coating.
See the inner cityEastern & coastal
Rendered houses and deco apartment blocks facing the water, where salt and UV decide how long an exterior coating lasts.
See the eastern and coastal suburbsPainting a place in the inner west?
We're close by — send the details and we'll arrange a time to quote it in person.