'Prestonia Mansion', Brunswick Melbourne, Heritage Tower and Facade Restoration.

Prestonia Mansion is a local
Melbourne landmark with architectural and historical significance. It's a fine example of an
Italianate house, constructed of locally-made bricks. Historically, it has
associations with a number of prominent Brunswick business people, in
particular the 'Brunswick Brickworks' owner James Stroud, for whom the house was built in 1890.

The lovely owners of this project, Doctors' Jonathon and Georgina, came our way
having exhausted all searches to find suitably qualified Heritage Restoration tradesmen in Melbourne. They had
previously undertaken extensive internal renovations to their magnificent home, and were eager to focus on conservation works to its facade.

The tower had experienced extensive water
damage and wear and tear on its western, eastern and southern face, causing damaged render and paintwork in the walls and stairwell. Abode Restoration
began the project by mending the base of the floor at the top of the tower, removing the old
silicone and reinstating it with flashing.

Next, we fully dismantled the balustrade at the top of the tower and re-built the parapet. The old worn and painted wrought iron lacework and balustrade which was removed, was sandblasted and undertook welding repairs, followed by re-painting.

We fixed cracks in the string courses and sills, and re-ran the entire top cornice, which involved removing drummy render,
repairing the cracks and running the rendered moulds in-situ. We repaired the lintels across each window and treated the arched steel lintels.

The damaged windows were repaired, a whole sash window replaced on the north elevation and sashes replaced on the west and east. The windows were repainted.

Finally, we re-pointed the brickwork in the tower with colored lime
mortar to match the existing mortar.

The project began in December 2014 and was completed at the end of March 2015. The clients were so happy with the facade restoration works undertaken, that they asked us back later in the year to undertake restoration and re-pointing repairs to their chimneys.

Client satisfaction quotes from email correspondence-
Upon dismantling of scaffold- 'The completed works do look very impressive' and 'The rendering does look fantastic, and it looks like it will last another hundred years'.

It sure does and we are confident it will!

Soma Giovannini

Business Development Manager

Creative Director

soma@aboderestoration.com.au

0405 847 147