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We repair and restore the timber in Newtown’s older homes — sash windows, weatherboards, verandahs and joinery — and we do the alterations and additions that are how most new work happens in a suburb that filled up long ago. A lot of it sits inside a heritage overlay, and we check that before we quote, not after.
Newtown is hemmed in by the Barwon on two sides and Latrobe Terrace on the third. Almost nothing here is new, so almost everything we do is about keeping what is already standing right.
12 of our 28 Newtown jobs have been door and window repair — more than anything else we do here. Timber-framed windows are named in the heritage records for Newtown Hill and Newtown West as part of what makes those streets what they are. Cords, weights, parting beads, sticking sashes and rot at the sill or bottom rail are all repairable. In a contributory property, replacing a timber window with an aluminium unit is the kind of change that causes trouble later, so repair is usually the right answer and often the only approvable one.
Clarkes Hill is predominantly single-storey weatherboard, and Bareena Estate runs horizontal weatherboard alongside face brick and render. When boards rot at the base, or behind a downpipe where water has been sitting, we cut out and splice in matching profiles and deal with whatever caused it — otherwise it comes back. Verandahs, timber joinery and fretwork get the same treatment: matched to what is there, not modernised.
When we checked the council’s advertised planning list in September 2026 there were two live applications in a suburb of more than 10,000 people, one described as alterations and additions to a dwelling in a heritage overlay. That is what new work looks like here. Before a number goes on paper we check which of Newtown’s four heritage areas you are in, how the property is graded, and whether the job touches the outside. The 1940–41 Housing Commission pocket on Aberdeen Street and Churchill Avenue is the exception — it is not in the overlay.
Managing a commercial property in Newtown? The retail, tenancy and make-good side of our work is on the commercial carpentry page for Newtown.
Ordered by the work we have genuinely done in this postcode.
Our most common job in Newtown. Several trades, one team, one point of contact.
Sashes, cords, sills and bottom rails on older timber windows.
Structural and finishing work on Victorian, Edwardian and interwar homes.
Cut out, spliced in and matched to the original profile.
The ongoing list on a house that is a century or more old.
Matching original joinery where a permit or grading requires it.
Alterations and additions — the main form new work takes here.
Built to sit comfortably against an older house rather than fight it.
A call or a message. No obligation.
Whether the property sits in a heritage overlay, and whether what you want changes the outside. Better to know first than halfway through.
Itemised, in writing, with what is included and what is not. Free.
The same crew start to finish, and we come back to check the work has held.
Beyond our expectations, and it was great to work with people who could turn our ideas into something better than we imagined. Couldn’t recommend them highly enough.
Prompt, great communication and a terrific job. Have used JF Maintenance for lots of work over the years and would recommend.
Michael worked with our budget and we were so impressed by their diligence and workmanship. They did not cut corners but went the extra mile. So impressed we engaged them again at another property.
Land sales started here in 1839. The southern half, Chilwell, ran down to the Barwon and was the industrial end — ice works, a paper mill, the Albion and Union woollen mills, and in 1922 the Returned Soldiers and Sailors woollen mill, built to employ men home from the war. Newtown was its own municipality from 1858 until the early 1990s.
One building worth knowing about if you care about timber: The Heights at 140 Aphrasia Street, built in 1854, is a partially prefabricated German timber house — one of only two known surviving examples of the type in Victoria. The suburb’s stock since runs from decorative Victorian and Edwardian timber and brick on the ridge, through Federation and interwar weatherboard on the slopes, to 1940s brick veneer — which is why the work here is mostly about matching what is already there.
Highton • Belmont • South Geelong • Geelong
Highton, Belmont and South Geelong border Newtown across the Barwon. Geelong West, Manifold Heights, Herne Hill and Fyansford adjoin it by land.
Tell us what you are dealing with and we will give you a straight answer and a free estimate.