Heritage and Character Housing - Townsville City Council

without investigating their worth, or their potential reuse in yourplans. Be careful during planning to ensure that new kitchens orbathrooms won’t adversely affect the structure or fabric of the house.For example, if you desire a larger kitchen it may be better to relocatethe kitchen to a larger room rather than pulling down walls to enlargeexisting rooms.Painting and decoratingThe traditional timber Townsville house was generally paintedthroughout, all except the roof sheeting and the underside of theexposed floor framing. Painting preserves timber and most houseshave been repainted a number of times. Many older houses werepainted using solvent borne linseed oil paint, made with lead basedpigments. Other paints contained a red oxide base. Red lead wasused to prime bare timber and galvanised iron. Today's paints areeither oil based solvent borne (enamels) or water based latex(acrylics), with colours obtained by adding tints to a dark or lightbase, at various levels of gloss.discharges off new zinc coated roof sheeting into galvanised irongutters and downpipes.Kitchens and bathroomsThere is nothing wrong with making the kitchen and bathroom areasmore efficient and liveable, to satisfy the needs of today's lifestyle.However, don't discard original cupboards, fixtures and fittingsMany things influence a choice of colour scheme; including personaltaste, fashion, and price. There are no rules and it is not necessary topaint your house using only so called 'heritage colours'. However,trends are identifiable by looking at houses from different periods.One choice is the original colour scheme, potentially available in oldphotographs, or from matching paint scrapings against a paintmanufacturer's colour system. Even old black and white photographsenable you to distinguish dark coloured elements of the house, fromelements that were light or medium tones. It is important to get thistonal balance right.Heritage and Character Housing Information Guide 45