01Mount Lawley · 2025
Rear extension and open-plan kitchen
Double-storey rear addition to a 1930s brick-and-tile — new kitchen, family room and two bedrooms above.
- Added
- 78 m²
- On site
- 14 weeks
- Contract
- Fixed price, held
02Fremantle · 2024
1950s cottage, full renovation
Rewire, replumb, new kitchen and two bathrooms. Original jarrah floors and ceilings kept and restored.
- Suburb
- Fremantle
- Type
- Whole-house renovation
- Floor area
- 146 m²
- On site
- 11 weeks
- Contract
- Fixed price, held
- Occupied
- Owners in residence
Before — as purchasedAfter — 2024 renovation
01The brief
A weatherboard-and-iron cottage two streets back from the port, bought at auction with the carpet still down. Under it: jarrah in good condition, and above it, pressed metal ceilings that had been painted six times.
The owners wanted the house brought up to a standard they could live in for twenty years without touching it again — and they wanted to stay in it while that happened.
02The constraint
Salt air, a 1950s switchboard and no side access
Fremantle's proximity to the water is hard on fixings. Every external fastener, hinge and bracket on this build is stainless, and the new roof plumbing is Colorbond rather than zincalume for the same reason.
The switchboard was original — ceramic fuses, no earth on half the circuits. That was replaced in week one rather than left to the end, because the owners were living there.
There is no side access at all. Everything went in and out through the front door, which shaped the whole program: strip-out and structural work were sequenced room by room rather than all at once, and the kitchen came in as flat-pack carcasses assembled on site.
03Scope of works
What was actually built.
- 01Full rewire, new switchboard, RCDs and hard-wired smoke alarms
- 02Complete replumb in copper and PEX, new hot water system
- 03Kitchen rebuilt with a scullery in the old laundry footprint
- 04Two bathrooms, waterproofed and certified
- 05Pressed metal ceilings stripped, repaired and repainted
- 06Original jarrah floors lifted, stored, relaid and finished in hard wax oil
- 07New roof plumbing, gutters and downpipes in Colorbond
- 08External weatherboards repaired and repainted
04Outcome
Eleven weeks, with the owners in residence for all of it except a nine-day window when neither bathroom was usable. The house was sealed off and cleaned every afternoon, and the weekly program told them which rooms were live.
The jarrah and the pressed ceilings are the reason they bought the house, and both survived the build. Everything behind the wall is new.
“We lived in the house through the whole renovation with two kids. They kept it sealed off, cleaned up every single day, and always told us what was happening the following week.”
Service on this build
This was a full renovations job. Older Perth homes brought up to standard without stripping the character out of them.
Also on fileAll projects
The next step
Come and have a look at the house.
Free to have us out, about an hour on site, and you leave with a written summary of what is feasible and a realistic budget band.