Give your brick home an architectural makeover with Julian Brenchley
We sat down with Julian to chat about how you can unlock the full potential of your brick home by entering our façade-makeover competition.
A complete exterior home makeover
For our latest competition, one lucky winner will have Julian Brenchley re-design their dated brick home using our Hardie™ Architectural Collection. The prize includes an exclusive on-site façade consultation and a 3D render of your re-designed façade.
Julian loves working with this collection as he believes the possibilities for an exterior transformation are endless.
“You can do anything with the Hardie™ Architectural Collection,” he says. “The look is only limited by the imagination of the designer. You can choose to preserve the existing brick structure while adding a modern extension, or you can clad the entire house to achieve a harmonious design, at a fraction of the cost.”
Carving out a slice of paradise
Julian recently worked his magic on a dilapidated brick home. Bianca from Copacabana, NSW, wanted to revive, revitalise and reshape the exterior of her dated brick property.
“We love our little piece of paradise, but our home is so tired and dated,” Bianca says. “We want a modern look, but knocking down and rebuilding just isn’t an option. The design that Julian came up with has exceeded our expectations – it looks like a completely different home!
“I never could have imagined that our home could look so beautiful. Seeing it as a 3D render really challenged us to think about what we needed and how we live. We also had to think about the façade’s first impression and street appeal – how did we want to feel when we pulled up in the driveway? I would love to drive home and see that gorgeous home every day!”
For Julian, changing the façade is the ideal way to get that new-home look without complicating your day-to-day life by reworking the interior of your property.
“We all need a bit of help as we get older,” he says. “Bianca’s home was crying out for a design response that reflected the orientation and function of the house. We opened up to the northern light and capitalised on the southern view to the ocean. Once that decision was made, the ‘form’ of the facade started to take place.
“With a mid-century modern look, we used Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding and Hardie™ Axent™ Trim to create a board-and-batten look, and Hardie™ Brushed Concrete Cladding on the lower levels – the 1950s shack reimagined.”
Board-and-batten is a style close to Julian’s heart at the moment, having integrated it with this year’s House 4 design.
“It really is a traditional way to use cladding,” he says. “We took a different slant for House 4 than in previous seasons where we closed up the gap between the board and batten just to give it a more vertical – rather than a panelled – look. It adds a bit more interest and rhythm on the façade.
“There's nothing new under the sun. It's how you interpret it and what you do with it that creates a spark of interest and people want to adopt it in their own projects.”
Modernising brick homes
It should come as no surprise that professionals do things a little differently. For House 4, Julian used Hardie™ exterior cladding to completely overhaul the façade. He describes it as akin to wrapping the building in “an additional skin”.
“House 4 was a dream project from start to finish,” he says. “We used a suite of Hardie™ cladding products to turn it from an old bungalow into a really smart-looking, modern façade. The cladding goes across the existing brick, which makes the building perform exceptionally well.”
House 4 boasts the striking Board and Batten look with the combination of Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding and Hardie™ Axent™ Trim to create a modern, timeless look. This is a cladding combination that Julian replicates as it’s a tried and trusted transformation, with the cladding being pre-primed, it can be painted any colour to give a dark moody modern or light and bright coastal look.
Don’t be fooled by reality TV, homeowners can achieve a similarly stunning renovation in their own brick homes with our versatile range of Hardie™ exterior cladding solutions.
“[A project is] only limited by the imagination of the designer,” Julian says. “You can do anything with the Hardie™ Architectural Collection range of products. They lend themselves to a really traditional build, if that's your cup of tea. Or you could use them in a modern pavilion, for example, giving the weatherboard a nice crisp coat of ice-white paint and calling it coastal. You can do anything, really.”
