Roof Repairs & Restoration Malvern

Malvern was proclaimed a city in 1911, just as electric trams began running along Glenferrie Road and High Street. Since 2021 our Malvern jobs add up to 22 roof repairs and 10 full roof restorations, as at September 2026.

Walk any Malvern street and you'll see several building eras side by side: Victorian villas from the 1880s boom, Edwardian homes and interwar bungalows. The roofs follow the houses. Victorian homes often have slate or corrugated iron, and Edwardian and interwar homes mostly carry terracotta tile, often with decorative ridges and finials.

Terracotta, iron and Colorbond are my trade. Slate isn't, so if your roof is slate I'll say so on the spot and point you to a slate specialist. For everything else the work here is mostly careful repair: re-bedding ridge caps, matching and replacing cracked tiles, and fixing the valleys and gutters that let water in.

On Victorian, Edwardian and interwar roofs, these are the usual weak points:

• Ridge and hip caps whose old mortar has crumbled, so the caps shift and leak at the joins

• Cracked terracotta tiles, plus mismatched replacements from past repairs

• Rusted valley irons, and box gutters hidden behind parapets that overflow inside

• Loose terracotta finials and decorative ridge pieces

• Corrugated iron with rusted laps and lifting nails, often on the rear skillion

• Leaking flashings where a modern extension meets the original roof

Most of this is repair work. On a period home the aim is a fix you can't spot from the street.

Large parts of Malvern are in a Heritage Overlay. That doesn't stop you looking after your roof, but it does change what you can do without asking council first. The rules are in Clause 43.01 of the Victoria Planning Provisions, and Stonnington's heritage guidelines explain them in plain English. In short:

• Generally no permit: repairs and routine maintenance that don't change how the place looks, like swapping a cracked terracotta tile for a matching one. Recoating a roof that was already coated generally doesn't need one either, unless the overlay puts paint controls on your property.

• Permit needed: painting a surface that has never been painted, which includes coating an uncoated terracotta roof, and repairs that change the look or use different materials.

• Check first: switching old mortar pointing to modern flexible pointing, changing the roof material or colour, or anything else that shows from the street.

To see whether your home is in the overlay, type your address into VicPlan, the Victorian Government's planning map. When I quote, I'll point out which parts of the job would change the look of your roof, so you can raise them with council before any work starts. There's more in my guide to painting terracotta and concrete tiles.