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Home improvement guides
Practical, reviewed advice for planning repairs and projects, choosing the right pro and knowing what to ask before you hire.
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482 guides
- Guide
Asphalt Shingle Roofing guide
Asphalt shingles are the default roof across North America. In Australia they are a niche product, and a guide that implies otherwise is doing you no favours.
12 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Metal Roofing guide
Metal sheet is the Australian roof. It covers new housing, most re-roofing, nearly every shed, carport and verandah, and a large share of the tile houses that have been converted.
14 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Flat Roofing guide
Very few Australian houses have a genuinely flat roof, and that is the first thing worth clearing up. What people call a flat roof here is usually one of two quite different things: a low-pitch metal skillion, which is…
11 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Cedar Roofing guide
Cedar shingles and shakes are a rarity on Australian roofs, and the reasons are worth understanding before you fall in love with one.
9 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Slate Roofing guide
Slate in Australia is overwhelmingly an old-building material. It sits on nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century stock in the older parts of Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and the goldfields towns, and it…
10 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Roof Inspection guide
Most Australians first meet a roof inspection inside a pre-purchase building inspection, and that is the source of a persistent and expensive misunderstanding. The pre-purchase report is a defined product.
9 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Roof Maintenance guide
The Australian roof is the busiest surface on the house. It carries the solar array, the inverter cabling, the air conditioning, the antenna, the whirlybirds, the hot water service, the skylights and, in a great many…
9 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Skylights guide
A skylight is the cheapest daylight in a house and the most reliable way to put a hole in a working roof. Both halves of that sentence are true, which is why the job is worth taking seriously.
13 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Gutter Installation guide
Guttering is the least glamorous part of an Australian roof and the part most likely to cause damage when it is wrong.
11 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Gutter Repair guide
Gutter repair sounds like the small end of roofing, and in New South Wales it is not even a category of its own.
9 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Soffit & Fascia guide
The eave is the strip of roof that overhangs the wall, and it has two parts. The fascia is the board or metal section closing the ends of the rafters, and it is usually what the gutter is fixed to.
10 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Siding guide
Siding is an American word. In Australia the trade is external wall cladding, and on a house the everyday terms are weatherboards, fibro or fibre cement, and metal or composite cladding.
11 min read14 September 2026
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