- Service
- Second-storey addition
- Added
- 96 m²
- Duration
- 16 weeks
- Completed
- [YEAR]
The brief
What the owners were trying to solve.
A family of five in a three-bedroom 1940s cottage with one bathroom. They wanted three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, an opened-up living area downstairs, and to not move out — there was no rental in the area that took the dog and kept the kids at the same school.
The house also had to still look like the house. Ashgrove has a character overlay, and an addition that read as a box dropped on a cottage was never going to get through.
What we built
- Full re-stump and structural upgrade. The existing stumps could not carry a second floor. Re-stumped and re-levelled before anything went up.
- Timber-framed second storey. Three bedrooms and a bathroom, framed and roofed in a nine-day weather window.
- Ground-floor reconfiguration. Two load-bearing walls removed and replaced with a flush beam to open kitchen, dining and living.
- Roof and exterior matched. New roof to the whole house in a matching profile, with weatherboard and trim details copied from the original.
Gallery
Ashgrove Second Storey.
The part that was not straightforward
The bit that decided the program.
Taking the roof off a house someone is sleeping in is the whole problem. We staged it so the family lived downstairs at the rear with a functioning kitchen and bathroom the entire time, and sealed the stair opening with a temporary fire-rated partition.
The roof came off on a Monday with a nine-day forecast window, and the new frame was up and sarked in seven. We had temporary accommodation booked and paid for as a contingency in case the weather turned — it was not needed, but the family knew from week one that it existed. That is the difference between a plan and a hope.
“We stayed in the house with three kids and a dog for four months. It was not fun, but it was never chaotic — we always knew what was happening the following week.”
Service used
Renovations & Extensions
More work
Related projects.
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