THE EDIT
Issue 04 | October 2026
Adding to what came before.
There’s something special about an old home that has been allowed to remain an old home.
The original stonework, timber floors, ceiling details, fireplaces and doors are often the very things that make us fall in love with a character home in the first place. But these homes were designed for a very different way of living, and creating more space often becomes part of their next chapter.
This month, we’re looking at how we approach adding to a character home without losing what made it special to begin with. We explore five details that can make the difference between an addition that feels disconnected and one that belongs, a material we love for bringing old and new together, and why adding more space isn’t always the first place we start.
Welcome to The Edit.
IN THIS EDITION
01 The Story
02 Five design details
03 Source of the month
04 Design advice
05 Notes from the Journal
01 THE STORY
Old house. New Chapter.
One of the things we love most about working with character homes is discovering what is already there.
The beautiful details are usually easy to spot. Original fireplaces, decorative ceilings, old timber floors, stonework and doors that have been part of the home for generations. But we also look at the proportions of the rooms, the way the house has been positioned on the site and the details that give the architecture its particular character.
These are the things we want to preserve.
What we don’t necessarily want to preserve is a floor plan designed for the way families lived a hundred years ago.
Perhaps the kitchen is tucked away at the back of the house. The main living spaces don’t connect to the garden. Natural light struggles to reach the centre of the home, or an addition made decades ago has created an awkward transition between the original rooms and what came later.
An extension gives us an opportunity to resolve those things, but we don’t believe the answer is to simply replicate the original house.
The new part can be contemporary. It can introduce larger openings, more natural light and a stronger connection to the outdoors. Materials and architectural details can change as you move through the home.
What matters is that those decisions have been made in response to what was already there.
For us, a successful extension should allow you to appreciate both parts of the home. The original architecture retains the details and character that make it special, while the new spaces allow the home to work beautifully for the way its owners live today.
It’s not about making the new look old.
It’s about making the two feel as though they belong together.
02 FIVE DESIGN DETAILS
01 The transition.
Where the original home ends and the new addition begins deserves consideration in its own right.
Rather than trying to disguise the transition, a change in ceiling height, flooring, material or architectural detail can create a natural moment between the two.
Done well, you can feel that you’ve entered a new part of the home without it feeling like you’ve entered a different house.
02 The sightline
Before we create a new opening, we think about what you’ll see through it.
Perhaps an original hallway will eventually frame a view of the garden, or a doorway from an older room will give you your first glimpse of the contemporary addition beyond.
These views become part of the experience of moving through the home, and they can help old and new feel connected even when their architecture is quite different.
03 The material
New materials don’t need to be exact replicas of the originals.
Instead, we look for a relationship between them.
The colour variation in an original brick might inform the brick used in the addition. Existing timber might influence the warmth of new joinery, or an original stone wall may become the starting point for the broader material palette.
04 The light
Many character homes have beautiful rooms at the front of the house but become progressively darker as you move towards the back.
An extension gives us an opportunity to change that.
Larger openings, considered orientation and the placement of windows and doors can bring natural light into the new spaces, but we also consider how that light can travel into the original home.
Because the addition shouldn’t only improve the rooms we’re adding. It should make the existing home better too.
05 The landscape
When we extend a home, our thinking doesn’t stop at the back door.
The position of established trees, the orientation of the garden, where the light falls and how the family wants to use their outdoor spaces can all influence the design of the addition.
We want the new living spaces to feel connected to what sits beyond them, so moving between inside and out feels like a natural part of the home rather than an afterthought.
03 SOURCE OF THE MONTH
Textural Brick
There’s a reason brick has remained part of Australian architecture for generations.
It has wight, texture and variation, and unlike a perfectly uniform finish, it tends to become more interesting as it ages.
When working with a character home, we don’t necessarily look for a new brick that perfectly matches the original. In fact, sometimes trying too hard to create an exact match can make the difference between old and new more obvious.
Instead, we look at what we can take from the existing material.
It might be the warmth of the colour, the variation between individual bricks, the mortar treatment or simply the texture it brings to the architecture.
A complementary brick can give the new addition its own identity while still feeling connected to the home that came before it.
04 DESIGN ADVICE
Before you extend, reconsider the floor plan.
When a home feels too small, it’s natural to start thinking about how much more space you could add, but that isn’t always where we start.
Before drawing an extension, we look carefully at the home that already exists.
Are there rooms that are rarely used? Is too much of the floor plan given over to circulation? Has a previous renovation created spaces that don’t quite make sense anymore? Could moving the kitchen completely change the way the family uses the centre of the home?
Sometimes a substantial extension is absolutely the right answer.
Other times, reworking the existing floor plan and adding a smaller amount of carefully considered space can completely change the way the home functions.
The important part is understanding how you want the whole home to work before deciding how much more of it you need.
Because adding square metres won’t necessarily resolve a floor plan that wasn’t working in the first place.
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