We finally bit the bullet and clad the front of our house. We have already done the side verandah part last year as an experiment and will now do the whole house. This took only one weekend so we should have done this months ago! It just seems more daunting that it is. The weekend was a beautiful Autumn day with blue skies and warmish weather at about 13 degrees. We can't paint below 10 so it was probably our last chance before Katoomba's winter sets in.
We have used marine grade ply (exterior grade) with a stain called 'Snow Gum'. Then painted the top half with a colour called Twisted Lime. We will keep the black around the window edges but probably evenutally change the dark (forest green) green around the windows. That's been the only colour we have found doesn't work.
We are pretty happy with the whole look. At the very least it looks so much better than the white dirty fibro that was there!