Is it cedar weatherboards , or cedar shingles ?

In the 1970's , my parents bought a two storied beach house that was clad in cedar shingles -- well , the slightly inward sloping upstairs and I assume the roof was . It had wooden framed windows ( I assume cedar too ) . It was around 5 years old when we bought it , and it aged really nicely in the 10 years or so we had it -- they went a wonderful reddysilverygreybrown haha .

There is no way in hell I would paint those . From memory , the downstairs was white ( I think roughish rendered over concrete blocks ) and these days you might do that in a surfmist or cream or even charcoal , but leave the cedar au naturel IMO .

Not that it overly matters , but I just looked on Google Maps Street View , and our old beach place looks like the cedar shingles are still original -- theres none that look modern or replaced , they appear to have all aged evenly , and getting close on 50 years !

A couple of interesting things to me though -- it has been split into 3 flats -- well , there are 3 slots of the letterbox ( No idea how the doors , kitchens , plumbing , etc work , pretty sure it only had an entrance and a back door , both at ground level , and one stairs , when we had it ) -- and it was officially 3 bedrooms , and only 2 showers , 2 toilets from memory , although there was a 3 door garage downstairs and we'd have up to 20 people in total -- those camp beds and the like spread on the floor , cars and boats parked outside when busy . The garage has been converted into one flat , cars park in front and to the left side now , but I'd say its now 3 relatively compact places .

And I was wrong about the roof -- it is a flat silver on Google Maps ( so almost certainly galvanised iron ) , with several skylight windows . I remember the skylights -- I always assumed the roof was cedar though .

always depends on location but if the block of land, location and price are suitable anything is fixable and much easier than an old double brick house.. would love to see some photos

My sister had a cedar house it was stained black with red roof. Looked great imo. And needed little maintenance. New owners painted it white and changed roof to green. Now it looks like an old farmhouse. Not sure what they were thinking and it needs another coat of paint.
Insulation depends on what’s in the walls.

Thanks Kate. Interior walls are gyprock. It’s been let go (elderly resident).