A woodturner by trade, Paul carried out much of the building himself, and decided that composite monolithic cladding was the way to go for a house that was built to last.

“I built foundations strong enough for an air-raid shelter, and had a good dry boric treated frame in place,” Paul says. “When I applied the cladding, I was very methodical about the joins, I rebated them and taped them, etc... I even cut a U-shape in the sheets of composite for each window to reduce the number of joins. I was pretty proud of the job we did.”

The house looked great when it was finished, but Paul and Sharon soon noticed small cracks emerging at the joins, that compromised the weather-tightness of the house.

“This was probably in response to the normal contractions and expansions of the frame. The monolithic cladding doesn’t really cope with these slight movements.”

The Cosgroves dealt with the cracks, and didn’t give them too much extra thought.

“Then the leaky home issue came up, and we decided to have our place checked,” Paul says. “One little spot was found, but otherwise we were told there was nothing to worry about. And we weren’t planning to sell, so there was no pressure on us to re-clad.”

After further thought, Paul and Sharon decided that even if the house was not leaking, they would feel more comfortable about the long term outlook for their house if they re-clad.

“We didn’t want another composite product, so we looked at various options and found Jenkin A-lign.”

Paul did most of the re-clad himself and found A-lign, with its pre-cut elements and long boards, easy to use. For perfectionist Paul, these were not the only benefits.

“The undercoat applied in manufacturing created a very good surface for painting.  It was just first-class.”

In addition to the A-lign cladding, Paul and Sharon used a schist-styled cladding as a design highlight on their chimney, and at the entrance to the house.

The completed look won plenty of appreciative comments from their friends.“Of course friends will tell you your house looks great,” Paul says. “But we knew they really meant it when we started getting calls from friends of friends saying ‘we’ve heard your house looks really good, do you mind if we come around and have a look?’”

Paul and Sharon are very relieved to have the re-clad completed. “And we’re just wrapt with the way it looks.”