westgarth house renovation

In Melbourne's inner-city Westgarth area, this grand old home is the definition of good bones with it's lofty ceilings, multiple bay windows and impressively wide proportions. Despite this, a previous renovation had created a kitchen and laundry that felt pokey, dysfunctional and was falling apart faster than the original home! And like many older homes - especially those with high ceilings, old windows and gappy floorboards - it was proving costly and inefficient to run.
Brave New Eco was engaged to design an interior renovation that would provide a better quality kitchen, family bathroom and laundry; feature generous storage throughout; and make energy efficient retrofit changes. Most importantly, the result needed to sit with the original features and be of the quality that a beautiful family home like this deserves. 

The kitchen cabinets were created with a mix of EO (zero emission) - rated laminate, hoop pine plywood and recycled Australian hardwoods. All of the timbers and plywoods were oiled using natural oils and tints.  Custom fabricated slim-line brass handles were created for all of the cabinets.

New locally-made brass and ceramic pendant lighting and high efficiency LED lighting were installed throughout. The entire interior was painted in low VOC paints and all timber finishes are recycled and oiled in naturally based oils. A graphic colour palette was used to create cohesion between the original and newer parts of the home and to provide a good base for the family's colourful collection of artwork and curiosities. 

We maximised the available space for the kitchen and laundry by reconfiguring the rooms. We removed a dividing wall separating the rooms and replaced it with a space saving double-sided cabinetry unit, then flipped the kitchen and laundry to give the kitchen direct outdoor access and installed a new glass door to allow more light in. The kitchen was opened up to the dining room, allowing better connection between the two spaces and a sightline from the dining to the garden.

Into the dining room went a new cosy window seat, with record storage underneath. Heavy backed 100% linen curtains throughout help keep the heat inside the house as the weather grows colder. Wall and ceiling insulation were added and efficient space heating was installed in the open-plan living area.

To reduce the waste involved in upgrading the kitchen, the old kitchen cabinets were re-purposed in another client's laundry fit-out. Appliances were re-used, and pull-out metal pantry shelves were re-used in the new cabinetry.
The kitchen is divided into two zones: the cooking and washing (wet/hot work) zone and the snacking/ drinking/ socialising zone where family members can make drinks and snacks without disturbing the person at the stove of sink. 

The long thin bathroom was reconfigured to create more circulation space and better functionality. A new shelf was added along the entire length of the bathroom to place useful things in easy reach. Handmade lighting, recycled timbers and vintage mirrors were chosen for their enduring details. 

And finally a few words about the project from our client, Rebecca Burdon:

"We wanted to transform our crafty old house into a much more comfortable and workable home. It is a Victorian house that had been renovated about 15 years ago by a builder/developer. The house had not been insulated and many shortcuts had been taken in the original renovation. Brave New Eco provided sustainable, practical, well designed solutions. (They have) excellent problem solving skills; great knowledge about options, suppliers and quality of different products; great relationships with tradesmen and great attention to detail and advice regarding finishes.
We're enjoying all aspects of our home more. It is far more comfortable to live in. Everything looks and works better. It's a pleasure just to be at home now."

the comeback curtain

Window furnishings are the nerds that no one wants to invite to the energy efficient house party. Curtains have had a bad rep for the last few years as natural light and indoor-outdoor connection drive home design. Our windows are getting larger relative to interior spaces and to cover them we often use blind systems that do very little to thermally seal your windows. Many ‘eco’ houses are designed around walls of glass with no thought given to hanging window coverings on them. There is a common misconception among consumers that double-glazing is a replacement for curtains. Double-glazing is an almost essential building element in this day and age, but it will not work to its optimum to thermally protect you home unless combined with high quality window furnishings. 

Good window coverings are an excellent way to increase the energy efficiency of existing homes and new buildings. The humble curtain is set to make a big comeback. If you are sitting in a warm room at night between an uncovered window and your heating source it is likely you will feel a chill, as you are sitting the middle of a draught created by the interior heat making a beeline for the cool exterior. Properly fitted and lined curtains and window treatments are the best way to avoid this effect and to slow down interior heat loss. They also work to reduce heat gain in summer; however shading the glass externally is the better way to achieve this. 

However, not all window treatments have a beneficial thermal effect, they must be designed, constructed and hung a certain way to work. If you are wondering if your sheer curtains have any insulating qualities, imagine standing in the snow in a sheer nightdress and you will have your answer. The curtains/blinds must create a seal over the window so that a layer of warm air can become trapped in between the curtain and the glass. If the curtains hang in front of the window with gaps at the base and top it will become a passive cooling system, sucking warm air from the upper part of the room down beside the cool glass and pushing it out the bottom freshly cooled.

4  WAYS TO CHECK IF YOUR CURTAINS WILL SLOW HEAT LOSS:

1. The are fully lined with 3 pass thermal lining.

2. They touch the floor.

3. They  wrap around at the sides to the wall. (Use track rather than rod and ring hanging systems.)

4. They are sealed at the top by a pelmet. These can be timber, fabric, or invisible (achieved by resting a piece of lightweight timber along the track mounts between the wall and the curtain).

THERMALLY EFFECTIVE BLINDS:

1. Thermally lined roman blinds that sit against the window frame and make a reasonable seal.

2. If you have deep timber reveals or window frames and can mount a blind against the glass and inside the frame of the window then block out roller blinds and honeycomb blinds can be effective, but these must have a snug fit! You can tell if they are sealed at all sides, bottom and top by the amount of light getting in around the edges.

5 TIPS FOR CURTAINS THAT LOOK GOOD:

1. Have them reach the floor: Curtains half way down the wall look like a man with suit pants that are too short. Also mount them at least 200mm above the window (or from the ceiling) so it looks balanced.

2. Pick your fabrics carefully as curtains are a long-term investment. Make sure you don't pick something that will date in 5 years as hopefully they will last at least 10-15 with good care. 

3. If you don’t want to feature them, match the fabric to the wall colour, they will blend in and disappear.

4. Make sure you allow enough room to stack back the curtains off the window so you don’t block any views or light when they are drawn back.

5. Get expert advice. Badly made curtains and poorly fitting blinds draw attention to themselves. Interior designers and decorators often offer you good discounts that mean that you pay less for your curtains and blinds and all of the stress of figuring out what will work and look good is taken care of. Brave New eco specialises in custom curtains and blinds in a range of sustainable, natural fibre and hand printed fabrics by local designers.

The happy co-inhabitation of old and new

Left to right: Aged brass sliding door furniture; Salvaged brass door handles

There are many schools of thought when it comes to renovating and extending period homes.
One is to provide a stark contrast between the contemporary and original build and many council heritage departments support this idea. This came out of a reaction to faux victorian or edwardian extensions that were popular a few decades ago, and an idea that any contemporary additions should be easily distinguishable from the original building.
I like the authenticity of this idea, but on a slightly different spectrum. I believe the old should be old, and the new should be new but they should have an intimate conversation with one another. For me the key to cohesion is in the details, the small signifiers in the interior finishes that reference both the past and the future of a building.
How do you bring a sense of nostalgia to the blandness of contemporary finishes?  Or lift the heaviness of period features so they can dance lightly with the new build?

HIGH QUALITY MATERIALS AND FINISHES
We have all been in a home where the 1980's renovation is falling apart while the original 20th century features still stand strong. Materials such as timbers, stone and metal are timeless and can provide a continuum between the old and new.

LINKING FLOORING
If you are extending consider sourcing either recycled floorboards to match the original; replacing all of the floors with the same material (and sending the existing for recycling); or if you do change the type of timber board, using the same width boards and having the whole floor stained or oiled in the same finish.

LINKING DOORS
If you have unpainted timber doors in the old house consider using timber veneer doors in the new.
In the renovation above of a californian bungalow, the original doors had been replaced with poor quality cavity doors in the 1960′s. I sourced these salvaged 1940′s solid timber doors from Select Salvage and had them dipped to remove the many layers of old lead paint. These are not a traditional Californian Bungalow style but the simplicity of three long panels meant they could be trimmed to fit and worked well with the contemporary spaces. For door furniture I sourced salvaged brass 1940′s handles, that despite the beautiful aged patina they had, were a very classic line that is still used today in contemporary door furniture.

LINKING FITTINGS AND FIXTURES
As some rooms would have both old and new doors in them I wanted the door furniture to be of the same material, so I selected new brass door furniture that echoed the lever shape of the salvaged ones. I then had the difficulty of having to find several pieces of sliding door furniture that would tie in with the original aged brass pieces. The solution was to use pretty awful but readily available bright yellow brass door furniture and age it by hand using very fine steel wool to remove the lacquer and a special solution to darken the brass. For the exterior sliding doors I found beautiful aged bronze handles made in New Zealand by Halliday Baillie.  Brass and bronze are wonderful materials for door furniture as they are 100% recyclable at the end of their life and some high end products from companies like Chant, use recycled material to make their products. If left un-laquered brass will develop a beautiful patina over time. Chrome door furniture requires carcinogenic and highly toxic chemicals used in the chroming process, and the chrome does wear off eventually.

Back to the subject of this post, relationships between the old and new. I used salvaged period and new door furniture in the same space unifying them by the materials they were made of. These small details show that the building is one, that the new respects the old, and the old is willing to move with the times.

COLOURS
This idea can also be utilised in the choice of paint colour and wall coverings. In this californian bungalow I chose softened classic early 20th century colours for the original bedrooms, such as soft blues and mushroomy pinks, washed right out with lots of light grey so that overall effect was still light and modern. In the contemporary space I used warm neutrals so you did not feel a sense of cold or emptiness when you transistion into the extension, which are often lighter and more open plan than the original building.  In the front hall, which is visible from both the new and old part of the house, I selected a contemporary wall paper by designer Penny Maskell. Designed in Tasmania and hand printed in Melbourne, this gum leaf and abstract flower design is new in style but classic in it’s subject of native flora and fauna. In this case I used the gum leaf as a nod to the three enormous gum trees at the base of the property that would have been around when the house was originally built and have watched it ever since. The new extension frames these trees in large picture windows, so the unremarkable front entrance, with its lovely wallpaper provides something in the way of a little promise of what is to come beyond the hall.

Back to the subject of this post, relationships between the old and new. I used salvaged period and new door furniture in the same space unifying them by the materials they were made of. These small details show that the building is one, that the new respects the old, and the old is willing to move with the times. A theme that will always defy the ages is the natural environment, and natural materials. Using recycled architectural features and materials in your extension will help to soften the hard lines of contemporary building and add texture and depth to the spaces.