Approached by current owners of this 7 year old family home; a sprawling single storey brick homestead in a beautiful rural setting. We were asked to help design an extension for the home to allow for a larger kitchen, and create space for more family and entertaining activities to occur in the warmer, lighter, view oriented north facing side of the house.

However after modelling the existing home and a couple of meetings with the family at the house to see how they and their children used the space, it became apparent that a cheaper and easier solution would be to re-orientate the kitchen and create an island bench that would open the kitchen up to the adjoining sitting and dinning areas. By reworking the formal entry and adjoining south facing formal living area we were able to increased their entertaining areas without increasing the overall floor area. By removing an internal wall and replacing it with a feature standalone two-way fireplace between the formal living area and informal dinning area we were able to maintain the identity of the two areas but create visual links. Replicating the effect of the new kitchen island bench.

The clients have made a wonderful choice of natural materials in their renovation palette; the warm timber tones of the kitchen island bench, floors and interior doors; combined with the neutral / white colour scheme of the walls and light fittings all complement the rough texture of the bluestone tiles that line the two-way fire and hearth.