Dream home redefined

Morgan and Duncan swapped their big suburban new-build for a ‘renovator’s dream’ weatherboard cottage, bringing it up to modern standards for comfort.

In the outer suburbs of Canberra, homes are large, blocks are small, and the sound of humming air conditioning units is often louder than the birds. For Morgan and Duncan and their young family, the big dream home they’d built here didn’t feel like home at all.

So they did something radical. They swapped the suburbs for a village on the edge of the Southern Tablelands, and the new build for a tiny, wonky, 140-year-old weatherboard house.

Where before they had four bedrooms, open plan living and a media room, the cottage they purchased at Bungendore had only two bedrooms, separate small lounge and dining rooms, a dated and dim kitchen and an energy performance right out of the early 1900s.

The house’s history and character were however part of the attraction, and with no formal heritage listing to contend with, Morgan and Duncan decided to renovate rather than knock it down and rebuild. “From the first moment we bought the house, it always felt like coming home,” Morgan explains.

The goals for their renovation included adding an additional bedroom and bathroom, improving the passive thermal comfort and transitioning the home to all-electric cooking, heating and hot water.

Morgan discovered the Undercover Architect resources developed by Amelia Lee, and did Amelia’s HOME Method course to upskill herself on the process of renovating. Then they commissioned Sarah Lebner from Cooee Architects to work with them on developing the plans for the renovation.

Sarah describes the approach as ‘triage’ rather than a full-scale redesign of the property. “Retrofits don’t ever offer perfect solutions,” she says. “They offer choices. And our role is to help the clients triage what matters most to them and what’s going to make the most impact in terms of alignment with their values. That means the budget they have to spend can go towards their comfort, performance and longevity goals and not just surface upgrades.”

Key spatial moves included adding a small extension to the rear of the house, containing a new bedroom, bathroom and study nook on a new polished concrete slab. Within the existing house, the doorway between the lounge and kitchen/dining area was widened, extra windows added, and a wall in the entry area removed. The result is a much more functional living space brimming with natural light.

“I remember the kitchen was so tiny that the fridge was out in the back room, quite a distance away,” explains Sarah. “And Duncan and Morgan’s expectations were so simple that I remember they said, ‘Oh, we don’t even mind if you can’t fit the fridge into the kitchen’. And I said to them, we will get your fridge in the kitchen. This is a core requirement.”

The two existing bedrooms were lightly renovated to create rooms for the family’s two daughters – though Morgan says they enjoyed sharing a room so much in the pre-renovation stage that they now ask to have sleepovers in each other’s rooms.

The windows throughout the home are now all high-performance double glazing. Operable windows are fitted with insect screens. Honeycomb thermal blinds with a top-down, bottom-up double mechanism were installed, allowing for privacy and glare blocking when required while still letting in light through the upper part of the window.

Before the renovation the home had gas hot water, a gas cooktop and gas heaters set within original fireplaces. “It seemed like a logical choice to go electric,” Morgan says. ‘We knew we were getting solar panels on, so I have no regrets about making everything electric.”

Bungendore gets quite cold in winter, so heating was installed in the form of panel heaters in the main bedroom and kitchen/dining area, and a flame-look electric heater in the living area. The ambience of this heater is something Morgan really enjoys.

The home also has ceiling fans in every room – but no air conditioning at all. Even though summer temperatures in the area can reach close to 40 degrees Celsius, Morgan says there were only two days over the recent summer when the house really felt uncomfortable. Part of this is due to the improvements made to the building envelope, including retrofitted insulation, draught sealing and a vapour-permeable membrane installed by the builder with advisory support from Sarah. The other factor supporting summer comfort is what Morgan calls the “Bungendore Doctor”, a cool breeze that comes through in the late afternoon and flows through the house.

The study nook in the extension is one of her favourite spots, with its view out onto the established greenery of the garden. “I work from home three or four days a week, and I will have the window open and be in an online meeting and someone will notice the sound of the birds outside.”

Sarah describes the process of bringing the home from its initial performance of near-zero NatHERS Stars to 6.7 Stars as like “surgery to almost rebuild the place from the inside out.” Ultimately, she regards the project as an example of focusing on creating meaningful improvement that fits people’s budgets and lives. “Importantly, this isn’t a ‘perfect premium process’ home,” she says. “The clients educated themselves with the HOME Method program, and then took on parts of the project themselves, such as planning approvals, interior design, and project management. Providing partial services as an architect isn’t easy, and a better outcome is nearly always guaranteed when our service is continuous and more involved, but that’s just not the reality for so many families. I’m immensely proud of the outcomes of this project and what the team – client, builder and architect – collectively achieved within the means available.

“We need a retrofit revolution in Australia,” she goes on. “Anyone, for any budget, can do something for the performance and comfort of their homes.”