Coastline Restoration Co. in Palm Beach

Palm Beach is a strip in transition, and that’s what makes it interesting to work. An original 1960s fibro shack sits next to a new architect-designed home, which sits next to a brick-and-tile place from the eighties — three completely different cleaning jobs on one street. We don’t assume the suburb is uniform; we quote each house on its own surfaces.

The old fibro shacks want care. Mid-century fibre-cement sheeting can contain bonded asbestos, so we use a low-pressure soft-wash, not a high-pressure blast, and if we suspect asbestos we say so and handle it the right way. They come up clean without disturbing anything they shouldn’t.

The new builds are the careful end. Charred-timber cladding, raw and stained concrete, painted blockwork — every one of those finishes has a wrong way to clean it. We test a panel first, use the right detergent rather than the highest pressure, and treat the materials as part of the design, because they are.

Salt sits over all of it, heaviest on the ocean-front and creek-mouth blocks and easing off a street or two back. We scope the wash cycle to your actual exposure rather than charging beach-front frequency on a sheltered block. The point is to keep the salt from building into the surface — cheap insurance on a coast that’s hard on paint and metal.