New Three Townhouse Development - Advice on External Finishes and Overall Aesthetic

Hi,

I'm just beginning work on a mid-range three townhouse development in NSW. I'm looking for people's thoughts on ground floor wall construction methods and I've attached a few elevations to help. I'm working with the builder who built my last development and he prefers to build using cladding rather than face brick. I can see the benefit here as he doesn't need to bring in trades, ultimately I want a cost effective build that is robust, low maintenance and appealing to buyers. As I see it for the ground floor I can use:

i) Hebel / Besser blockwork rendered
ii) Facebrick
iii) Common brick rendered
iv) Contemporary cladding (large CF sheet as opposed to weatherboards). Considering something like 18mm thick CF sheet which withstands buyer knock test for solidity.

My preference is contemporary cladding however would I be wrong in thinking this is any less expensive than rendered blockwork? Is face brick the most expensive?

I've attached a few early exterior shots, I'm not in love with them, too many angles going on. What are other peoples thoughts?

I'm going for clean, contemporary, modern, low maintenance. The units are one block from the beach and unit one should capture NE breezes and water glimpses. The timber cladding again I am not a fan off, would appreciate people's views on using that or an alternative.


Cheers
Dave

 

v) rendered blue board.
vi) metal cladding

Overall I think the colour scheme is very dark and I should point out that no one will warrant acrylic or sand render in a dark colour. If you want some dark feature then you can paint certain claddings - is Scyon Axon or vertical Stria. Axon is generally budget friendly as it comes in sheets and can be installed quite quickly.

For vi you could chose to wrap the dark "cubes" in the roof material, ie if the roof was colorbond Monument trimdeck you can carry that down the sides

 

Thanks Westminster, I love the look of that metal cladding, it reminds me of zinc roofs which I think look great. I was also thinking along the lines of the attached from a material selection and colour perspective. The uniformity of the expressed fixings I like. Any thoughts?

 

Certainly you could do that for some feature areas on the top floor but I would go with standard rendered blueboard on the lower if you don't want to go with rendered brick/block work

 

Agree Westminster. What about something like a James Hardie Easytex for the lower as opposed to rendered blueboard? Similar finish with less trades again.
Cladding panels – Easytex

 

That one is a newish product and I haven't seen it in the flesh yet so I'm not sure if I like it or not. I have used textured paint on Easylap before which would give a similar finish before and is a common finish which I think is why JH bought out the textured finish board that standard paint can then go on.

I tend to only use something like that on back walls etc as I don't really like seeing the joins. That is my personal preference though.