Glazier Bayside & Inner South-East Melbourne

Albert Park is Victorian and Edwardian terrace housing almost throughout, most of it inside a heritage overlay, and that shapes the glazing work completely. Windows are timber double-hung sashes, single-glazed and putty-glazed, and replacement glass usually has to match what is there rather than be upgraded — obscure or textured glass in bathrooms, occasionally coloured or leadlight panels beside a front door. Salt off the bay is hard on the timber, so a broken pane frequently sits in a sash that needs attention at the same time.

Brighton runs from intact period homes to substantial contemporary rebuilds, and the glazing work splits along exactly that line. The rebuilds bring large made-to-measure mirrors, frameless showers, glass balustrades and pool fencing, all of it toughened and all of it templated on site. The period homes bring careful re-glazing of timber sashes where the replacement has to look right in a heritage streetscape. Bay salt is a constant on both — it attacks fixings and frames long before it troubles the glass.

Brighton East is quieter and more uniformly residential than Brighton itself — interwar and post-war homes, many now extensively renovated at the rear. Bathroom work is the most common call: frameless and semi-frameless shower screens templated to an opening that is rarely square, and mirrors cut to fit a specific wall. The original front-of-house windows are usually timber and still single-glazed, so re-glazing there is a matching exercise rather than an upgrade.

Malvern is large Edwardian and interwar housing with a great deal of original joinery still in place, much of it under heritage control. Windows are timber, tall, and often carry obscure or leadlight glass in bathrooms and stairwells that has to be matched rather than replaced with clear float. The sheer height of these windows is its own problem — a broken pane in a first-floor sash is an access job as much as a glazing one.

Malvern East mixes interwar homes with a substantial post-war and 1970s pocket, and the renovation rate is high. That produces both ends of the work: matching replacement glass in original timber sashes toward Gardiners Creek, and large toughened panels, shower screens and splashbacks in the rear extensions that have gone in over the last twenty years.

Mentone is interwar and post-war bayside housing with a strong run of recent unit and townhouse development along the rail line. Bathroom glazing is the most common job — shower screens made to measure for the older homes, where the hob is rarely level and the walls rarely plumb, which is precisely why an off-the-shelf screen leaks. Proximity to the bay means salt corrosion on fixings is worth allowing for when the hardware is chosen.