We’d been talking about it for ages, whether or not we knock the whole thing down or renovated what we had, or even just moved. As the picture shows it was a very modest original fibro house – built in 1963 it was starting to show its age (even despite a quick and dirty reno by the previous owners in the late 1980s) and definitely needed a lot of work. The kind of work where you start off thinking that maybe the kitchen needs doing, in which case we might as well do the wiring because it was still the original stuff, so we might as well also connect the laundry to the house somehow, and before you know it it’s a full-scale reno anyway!

We went back-and-forth about it for a long time before finally settling on staying, either knocking it down (if the foundations were not up to scratch) or renovating/extending.

Fast-forward to now and after some huge life changes, rising building costs, and many plan iterations, work is underway! Thankfully the house isn’t being knocked down – although it was my initial plan the costs part put paid (ha!) to that, and I’m renovating around the original footprint. But I’m actually really happy about that – I love the views, I love my low pitched roof and the sloped ceilings, and I love the proportion of the house with respect to the block it’s on.

So In January 2025 work started on rejuvenating my little home! We’re aiming to blend restoration with renovation – Emma and Brent from Takt, and Chris (and the boys) from North East, are amazing to work with and understand what the vision is, so I’ve really fallen on my feet there. Obviously doing a completely faithful restoration of a mid-century fibro house is basically impossible; materials, building methods, and regulations have all moved on dramatically from 1963! But we’re doing our best to keep the principles of simplicity, working with readily-avaiable materials, craftsmanship, appropriate scale, and linking the indoors and outdoor that were prevalent at the time but coupled with good, thoughtful design in order to make the most of (what these days is) a small footprint with my limited budget.

This is my first time attempting a blog and so I’m bound to make lots of mistakes – please bear with me, I’m sure to get the hang of it 🙂 I’ve also got a bit of catching up to do with posting and I’ll get onto that as soon as I can.

I hope you join me on this dream of mine, and maybe even find it useful!

In the meantime, below is a photo of the house just before work started in January this year. Literally just before it started – the garden out the front is being replaced too 🙂