A heritage-listed sandstone Victorian in Sydney's Inner West, The brief unfolded in two stages, with one principle: change only what earns its place.
Stage One - the house, reconsidered
The first move was knowing what not to move. The bathroom stays exactly where it has always been, at the rear, preserving the original layout and sparing the home unnecessary disruption.
Instead, the old attached laundry gives way to something the family always wanted: natural light and view. A new volume, open, transparent, connected to the existing kitchen links the house to the beautiful original rear garden.
The generous roof space is retrofitted into the new master suite. A new dormer brings in light and contained in part a new ensuite. A new staircase connects the master to the middle bedroom, which becomes a study and changing room, carving out a genuine parents' retreat, private from the living spaces and bedrooms below. One level for family life. One level, now, for quiet and if you are a parent you know how important it is.
Stage Two - the garden building
At the rear, where the old garage stood, a new structure rises on exactly the same footprint.
Nothing extra claimed from the garden.
Its role is open-ended: home office today, parking if needed, a self-contained granny flat when grandparents or friends come to stay. A small ensuite with an outdoor shower serves the space. And up a ladder stair, a mezzanine sleeping loft with a view straight into the canopy of the garden's magnolia tree.
