sharui2000's Ideas
The extension and renovation turned this tiny house into a generous home comprising four bedrooms, a study and two bathrooms, all the while protecting the neighbours’ privacy and respecting historical concerns. The design also had to avoid casting shadows over the neighbours’ north-facing living room windows – careful sunlight and shadow studies were required.
Time is moneyEzra and Morris lived off-site during their renovations and finished the project in just over three months. However, the interior architect cautions people against believing that completing major changes in a small timeframe is the norm.“Again, that’s not a true representation of what it would take for most people, because we didn’t have to get a planning permit for anything and we knew exactly what to do. We got a building permit within one or two weeks, we both project manage all the time for other people so we know how to cut through the nonsense,” Ezra explains. “Realistically speaking, I think this job would take about five months,” she says of her home, pictured here.
Renovating versus building anewA wall moved here, a room widened there, the ceiling heightened throughout… surely renovating is cheaper than demolishing and building from scratch, right? According to Holbrook, this is assumption is usually wrong.“If you are wondering whether to renovate and extend an existing dwelling or build a brand new house of the same size and level of finish, you would probably assume that to renovate and extend would be significantly cheaper than to build an entirely new house,” she says. “But when significant changes are required to bring the existing dwelling up to scratch, we find the costs end up being quite similar.”5 Reasons Renovating Costs More Than Building From Scratch
“We encounter this misalignment often, so much so that we developed a specific service to assist people,” says Holbrook. Northbourne Architecture + Design offers clients a technical cost estimation process to ascertain how viable a project actually is, before launching into the expensive design phase.“Our objective is to help people make informed decisions about their project before they invest too much money,” says Holbrook. “There is nothing more heartbreaking for both client and architect than spending thousands and thousands on designing a house, only to find it is well over your budget and cannot be built.”
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