Hi Sandra, Being in a marine environment either option you go with will require a bit of maintenance over time the salt air is pretty unforgiving. If you do decide to go with render make sure you go with an acrylic render it will last alot longer and avoid cracking much better than if you go with a traditional cement render only. Generally the cement render is applied and then the acrylic render is applied over the top this makes the cement render a lot stronger and more flexible. You can tint the acrylic render to the colour you wish so if you want you don't even have to paint it. Although some people still apply a bonding agent and paint it regardless. Good luck with your project I hope it turns out great.

The best way to 'hide' something that you don't like is to draw the eye elsewhere. The screens etc that have been recommended with vines over them are not a good idea. I would suggest 3 trees within the lawn area and not in a perfect triangle. One could be placed in front of the problem area. Eventually you could make a garden bed of decent sized proportion, that would have all trees within and underplant the trees with the same low plant throughout - like a good native grass like plant. The use of the 1 plant will make the area look even bigger and will provide unity to the design.

I really loved this brick when we found it and I still do, but I do have some comments about it. Unfortunately my design brief for a "fireplace hearth" in my farmhouse for my firebox turned out much bigger than expected, but that's another story. As far as the San Selma smoked cloudy silver brick is concerned the brick layer didn't like it much. It was a bit crumbly for him. There are even a couple of cracks already inside the brick hearth. We will have to be careful when securing our mantle piece to it. I don't know that I would do a whole house in this brick. As far as the look of the brick I love it. Its earthy, and suited my farmhouse profile inside and out. It does matter what colour the grout it. It really matters. I wasn't too happy with the grout choice by the bricklayer and should have taken more care to think about it. It's darker than I wanted. Take the time to work out what grout looks best. The same as you would pick a paint colour. We also struggled to choose a colorbond roof colour for where the outside of the brick was seen. We chose Windspray. Doesn't match perfectly as windspray is more yellow/green undertones....(something we are learning as we go along) but it's only a small area seen and hopefully we will find a paint to blend it all together.

Design inherently involves weighing up options against priorities within certain limitations/conditions/contexts. Structural integrity for the building needs to be addressed/managed either way and there are appropriate regulations/processes in place to ensure this occurs in order to achieve building approval ......the question here is more what do you want it to look like - ie do you want internal brickwork or plasterboard? You can manage termite risk or fire risk in various ways/methods.....best you balance/work through all this with the design professional you are working with or discuss some of the pro's & cons & cost differences of certain specification one way or the other with a local builder if you can