An old brick retaining wall was letting down a fully renovated home about to go to market. We replaced it with a modular wall front fence and integrated aluminium gate in four days — and the property sold after its first inspection.
The brief
The owner was preparing to sell. Inside, the house had been extensively renovated and presented beautifully. Outside, the property was still fronted by the original brick retaining wall running around the boundary — cracked, dated, and completely at odds with the renovation behind it. It was the first thing anyone saw, and it was pulling down the impression of the whole property.
Their first thought was to rebuild in brick. We advised against it for two reasons. A new brick wall would still read as a traditional brick wall against a contemporary renovation, and brickwork is slow — footings, laying, curing, rendering. With an inspection date approaching, time mattered as much as the finish.
Why we recommended a modular wall
A modular wall system solved both problems at once. It installs in a fraction of the time of brickwork, because the panels slot between posts rather than being laid course by course. The finished result reads as a smooth rendered wall with clean feature posts — the contemporary look the renovation called for, without the render, the drying time or the cracking that comes later.
It is also durable. The system handles weather, does not rot or corrode, and needs essentially no maintenance — which matters when you are handing a property to a new owner. And critically for this job, modular walls accept gate hardware cleanly, so the entry could be integrated rather than bolted on as an afterthought.
What we built
The run did two jobs at once. Along the sections where the ground stepped down, the wall functions as a genuine retaining wall, holding the levels behind it. Along the flatter sections it works purely as a front boundary fence. Same system, same finish, so the whole frontage reads as one continuous wall rather than a patchwork of different treatments.
We integrated an aluminium gate into the frontage, matched to the wall so the entry sits within the design instead of interrupting it.
Project details
- Location
- Lane Cove North, Sydney
- Scope
- Modular wall retaining wall, front boundary fence and aluminium gate
- Finish
- Dulux Weathershield
- Duration
- 4 days on site
- Replaced
- Original brick retaining wall
The result
The wall went up in four days. The frontage now matches the standard of the renovation behind it, and the property sold following its first inspection.
For a pre-sale job, that is the whole point. Money spent on the outside of a property only makes sense if it changes how buyers respond when they arrive — and here it did, on a timeline that fit the sale campaign.
“Sam and Bani were excellent to deal with from my initial enquiry until the job was completed. Sam and his team worked incredibly hard on the landscaping, fencing and screen builds within a very tight timeline that I gave them. We have received some wonderful comments on our garden. I would definitely recommend.”
— Mandi Balbi · Google reviewThinking about your own frontage?
Whether it is a failing retaining wall, a dated front fence or a property you are preparing for sale, we will look at the site and tell you honestly what is worth doing.