Interiors are the enjoyable end of owning a home, and it’s where most of the money and nearly all of the attention tends to go, although none of it counts for much once water finds its way through the ceiling in July. A place two streets back from the estuary is in a slow, permanent argument with salt and weather, and your decorating only holds up while you’re winning that argument.
People underestimate what the air does around here, since the afternoon sea breeze that makes summer here bearable is also carrying salt kilometres inland, day after day, settling into hinges, window tracks, garage springs, balustrades and the fins of your air conditioning unit, where it sits until something washes it away. Rinsing the exposed elevations with fresh water three or four times a year is the cheapest job on the list for anyone in Halls Head, Silver Sands or the canal estates, and almost nobody bothers, largely because it feels like housework for a building rather than a real job.
Paintwork is usually where neglect surfaces first, and it’s the most expensive to correct. Exterior coatings that might give you a decade further inland will often want redoing in five to seven years this close to the water, and the western and northern walls always go first because they take both the afternoon sun and the weather off the ocean. The preparation underneath matters a great deal more than whatever brand is on the tin, because paint laid over salt-contaminated render lifts and blisters inside a couple of summers regardless of what it cost.
Gutters are the other job that gets postponed until it becomes a ceiling repair says John of johnjamesguttercleaning.com.au. Those peppermints and Norfolk Island pines that give the older streets their character also drop enough leaf litter to hold moisture and salt hard against the metal, so when the first decent northwest front comes through in June the water spills back into the fascia and eaves rather than running away down the pipe. Clearing them in autumn and again after the summer drop is enough for most Mandurah houses, and it’s worth having someone look at the ridge capping and the roof fixings while they’re up there anyway.
The rest of the list is unglamorous and reasonably short: a termite inspection every year, which really isn’t optional in this state; an air conditioning service, because corrosion takes out condensers around here well before the compressor fails; a careful wash of the limestone and paving, ideally by someone who understands that high pressure and soft stone don’t mix; and treatment for the orange bore water staining that turns up on every second wall in this town. If you’re on the canals, add the jetty and the retaining wall, though you’ll know that already.
Set the maintenance money aside before the furniture money, rather than after, and what you’ve spent on the decorating will still be worth looking at in ten years.
