McWhirters Repaint & Restoration

McWhirters Repaint & Restoration, Brisbane:

Repaint & Restoration Of McWhirters Using Rope Access

McWhirters Repaint & Restoration was successfully completed by McAuliffe Painting.

On Wickham Street in Fortitude Valley stands McWhirters, a Heritage-listed former department store. McWhirters was added to the Queensland heritage register on 21 October 1992. Since then it has been redeveloped as an apartment building and a shopping centre.

The McWhirters department store was built in four different stages on land bought by James McWhirter, a Scottish businessman between 1899 and 1929. Mr McWhirter arrived in Australia in 1878 and started working as a draper. After a couple of years of profitable partnerships with multiple drapery businesses he successfully went out on his own. While the Queensland economy was recovering from the 1890s economic depression he managed to establish himself as Brisbane’s largest and most sophisticated department store. What was at the time one of the most important shopping centres of the 20th century was located at the intersection of Wickham and Brunswick Street. Today The beautiful Heritage-listed building still stands out with its impressive architecture and eye-catching exterior.

Before & After

The Project

McAuliffe Painting was honoured to be trusted to restore such a gorgeous and iconic building. To minimise the impact of the residents in the apartment building and to avoid ugly scaffolding covering up the exterior we used rope access for this project.

This was a big project stretching over a few months. As a tenant, a business or as a customer it can be quite annoying having tradespeople running around for such a long time. We are aware of that and this is something we always keep in mind during our projects. Using rope access minimise the impact of the people accessing the building by not taking up unnecessary space, not covering the view and overall not just being ugly and being in the way. It does also speed up the process so we can complete our job as quickly as possible!

The Project Included:

Repairs to all defective, damaged and chipped render areas
Treatment of all rusting areas and defective/ rusting concrete reinforcement
Painting of powder coated windows & security screens, all unpainted concrete surfaces, carpark area, lower levels below apartments, foyer / entry area
Repainting of upper level signage on Heritage area and Heritage listed front of building

So yes, we were basically responsible for the repaint of the entire exterior of both the Heritage and the apartment building!

We are also responsible for the:

Provision of all barrier fencing and overhead protection to fence off exclusions zones under drop zones during painting works
Provision of access scaffolds, EWP and rope access operators,
Provision of all relevant WPH&S signage during painting works

McWhirters Repaint & Restoration