Cracks on the joins after a few years in a lot of cases. Insulation properties are like most FC cladding. The wall insulation batts do the work with a bit of assistance from the cladding. Insulate the walls no matter where you live or what material is on the outside or inside. Insulation is the answer to an efficient home. Its a prerequisite anyway with energy efficiency legislation, quite cheap as well. James Hardie/Scyon are good products. Not cheap or really quick but nothing good ever is. Hebel panels are a good alternative to brick but really the thermal mass is better on the inside of a house not the outside. So reverse brick veneer or Hebel internal walls with FC cladding outside and bulk insulation to wall cavity's.

I realise this is an old post . I am wanting to do the same thing and weathered boards are not thin enough. I was also told by the distributer weathered don't guarantee if you stain them dark. What did you use in the end?

I think if you replace front door and glass panels as well as the old fashioned lights with something more contemporary it will make a huge improvement. I'd also remove the ironwork and as you cannot re-glaze place some pots and plants on the sides of the large windows to draw the eye away from all the green cross pieces on the windows. Eventually paint the gutters fascia in a light grey/green.

@ minebathroom and @ Luke Buckle, our electrician has informed us that we don't have to put solar panels on our house roof if we don't want to for aesthetics or if for example the roof was old as you mentioned Luke. Panels can be placed on a shed or garage roof anywhere on your property if you are rural like us for example, as the power can be directed into the grid from anywhere the solar panels live and that doesn't have to be on the house roof. We would love to go solar but agree with all your other points @minebathroom, too expensive and expected lifespan and feed in tarrifs are very ordinary but then there's also the back up service too, will the company still be around in one year let alone 10 years. When our electrician got his solar, he got such a fantastic tarrif rate which was offered at the very start of the solar revolution, he was recieving a cheque or refund of something like $500 a quarter but the rates are so low now, there is certainly no chance of recouping some of the instalation costs, although I wouldn't be so fused about that if I thought I would get say 20+ years out of the system before it begun to possibly fail in some way. Things do have to get allot more reliable if nothing else!!