Cheers, that all makes sense.

Photos attached and here are those additional details:

1. The walls are double brick, with sandstone footings. Though outside has all been rendered 😏
2. The floors from Bed 1 to Dining are floor boards, covered by floating laminate as they weren’t in good shape to be polished when we ripped up the carpet. The floor of the Kitchen and Bathroom, and Covered Entertaining is cement slab.
3. The roof is tiled until the Dining which is then sloped corrugation.
4. Block is approx. 6m wide x 40m long
5. Ceiling Bed 1 through Living is 10ft
6. Ceiling in Dining is 9ft
7. Ceiling in Kitchen is 8.4ft
8. Ceiling in the garage is 7.11ft

Thank you.

Roof view

It would be good to extend the hall straight through. Is the fp a must keep?,

Do you want to enclose verandah at stage 1. Or use part of dining/. Can you provide photos of of the living space and its features

Looks like a great corner block, what is the platform at the rear, Garage? You should be able to achieve 3 bedrooms with a family living at the rear

The fireplace doesn’t work, however it is a nice feature and the patterned ceiling follows its line. But we could be convinced..

We’d like the balcony and and outside improvements to be part of phase 1 (You can see it needs some love!) Photos of Living below.

Yes, the platform at the back is the garage which is a higher level than the yard.

Beautiful property and important to keep historical features, is it in Sydney. So the platform isn't able to be a garage as it is, what were the previous owners building?

It’s a 2-car garage. And a dance floor on top ha! In the first lot of photos you’ll see there are stairs on the left which go down into it, to street level.

So already has approval to build on top of the garage, do you have any plans from council,

No, didn’t come with any plans for any additional building.

But garage was approved as single level, can you check with council

keeping the original living area means that there would only be the space now used for the original kitchen, bathroom, dining and outdoor area to be used for a new kitchen, indoor laundry, bathroom, extra toilet, dining area and extra bedroom while also allowing for the differences in roof structure and internal floor and ceiling heights and keeping the new bathroom away from the new kitchen dining as well as allowing for stairs to outdoors ...all of which i don't think is possible without major compromises...so, subject to structural restrictions, building regulations, neighbours' wishes and your long term budget my suggestion would be to demolish the old skillion roofed section of the house and build a new split level extension from the ground up including new downstairs family kitchen leading directly out to the backyard and an upstairs new master suite ...something like this might work and could be a better investment than the room over the garage but a new roof shape will be challenging so you will need a local specialist designer and builder with experience on similar renovations

another variation with master suite downstairs

Working within your current foot print over looking the "Hills" which I can imagine will go and be replaced with a garden between the future Studio above the garage. Keeping the living on the existing level and adding attic bedrooms and bathroom, you need to check the height of the proposed roof entry as to allow for head height. We did a similar extension of two bedrooms, study and bath in our Federation house and finding the access into the ceiling space will dictate what your floorplan will be. The current down stairs can be a utility storage space depending on available space

The new kitchen laundry can use the existing bathroom plumbing

Stage 1 in current footprint. Bed 2 becomes 2 bathrooms. Living becomes bed 2 and hall extension
Dining becomes living and bath becomes dining. Store becomes laundry off dining.

Keeping in mind that the master and current living both have beautiful ceilings to preserve, if the wall is opened between the living and the new kitchen they would have separate ceilings

both the ceiling and floor in the dining room are at different levels than the rest of the house so the roof structure over the dining, kitchen and verandah would probably have to be raised to be able to raise the floors to be level with living floor and then the ceiling would be too low or you would need a step down and a structural beam across the whole room

After checking the photos it shows a step down from the living into dining, so it could be under the metal roof?, If the wall is opened it could need a support beam we did that in our Federation house which also defined both ceilings and a wide singe step across the room would work. I prefer to keep living areas on a single level not having to climb up and down to make life easier. What ceiling height is in both spaces.

Pic for my concept. Bed 2 retains most of period ceiling. Add some more periods features to back of house

That’s stage 1 and sets you up to easily extend in stage 2 while staying in house

How many and what ages will be living in the house

Personally as per Moniques 2 photos showing the beautiful ceiling and fireplace in the living room I would work with and keep those important period features

Thanks so much all! More options than we’d expected. Next step is definitely checking with council about what we can/can’t do and then costing some of it up for what we can afford for phases.

These plans have got us thinking, given the dimensions, do we think this is workable?

So squeeze a (narrow) bathroom between bedrooms, widen the doorway from Living (possibly an archway), shrink bathroom into laundry/WC, knock back wall onto balcony and add sliding or folding doors.

Do you think that you would consider attic bedrooms so need to plan for stair space or happy with 2 bedrooms and a possible studio above the garage. What kind of budget are you considering

Would love to add a bedroom upstairs (above kitchen dining probably makes most sense), but probably can’t afford that at this stage. That seems like a +500k job? We’ve might have half that. Thinking stairs could be added later behind the Living fireplace?

Another suggestion maintaining Kitchen and bathroom insitu, saves money, adding an Archway between Living and dining. You could add a laundry cabinet to the kitchen or keep the laundry downstairs with a laundry chute from the bathroom. this can be stage one.

Stage two when funds available adding stairs into the second bedroom to access the attic, builder will help with that plus ensuite to Master.

Stairs and Powder room can be adjusted to better suit Attic rooms.