The second picture is now , with the garage closed in ? That blue is horrible sorry .

You are on a small budget , and want to render what looks like quite a large , 2 story house , that may even have a flat attached ?

Hopefully the first pic is the now , but either way I would render or paint just the 'garage wall' downstairs , with the weirdly different bricks . If the rest of the downstairs bricks are the same , even then I would leave them as they are , but that wall that can be seen from the street with 2 different types of similar but different bricks has to have something done .

I'd do it in a beige similar to the garage doors , but then I'd paint the garage doors ( or those blue panels if that's what is there now ) , and all those grey window shutters , in a bright red . That would liven all the remaining brickwork , the roof , basically everything would look sharper .

Everything white , including those white scallopy fake awnings , both the front one and the one around the single storey part , the uprights , the upstairs ballustrades , all sharp white . That awning around the single storey I would put in an LED strip light , or several . Cheap as chips -- something under $100 for 15 metres with a power pack and dimmer . In fact , I'd probably add a time clock type thing too -- come on at sunset , off at 10pm or similar .

See , I'm more budget than you haha .

hi. LED strip lights good idea. I am not painting balustrades as they are aluminium powder coated. The second picture shows the granny flat/Office area & that is blueboard from building in garage. The shutters are going! So you would agree surfmist external rendering/painting. thanks

If you are doing the whole house , then surfmist would be great , but to me it has a slight blue tinge , and looks almost grey in some lights , a slight off-white in other lights . Nothing too wrong , except that if you leave some bricks visible , such as upstairs , you have the slightly orange tones of the bricks and the slight blue .

If doing 2 styles ( brick and render ) I'd go more a slight apricot tinge to suit the bricks . Maybe a Half Apricot White or Half Orchid White .

Large two-storey house makeover, small budget, and you are considering render? You will be up for the cost of scaffold hire for the duration of the job, as renderers shouldn't work off ladders when rendering first floors. If your budget is small, use the bricks as a starting point, don't paint, don't render and spend the small budget on things that really count. Consider giving the house a sense of entry and landscaping as a starting point. You can't do everything on a small budget so pick your battles and where a small spend can make the biggest impact.

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Best of luck,

Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls and Dr Retro Virtual Visits.

Thanks I need to cover the blueboard so have to render to cover that!