House Extension & Villa Renovation in Birkenhead, Auckland
This lovely old villa was in good order but needed a house extension to provide more space for the growing teenage daughters. The owners thought at the same time it would be nice if a the old single garage on the road boundary could be replaced with a large double garage with internal access.
Keeping the appearance of the house extension in character was also an important consideration. One further complication was a protected Pohutukawa tree in the only area suitable for creating these extra spaces. After some careful calculations it was found that with a small amount of judicial pruning of the tree we could get the space need.
The end result was a lovely new second lounge over a good sized double garage with internal access into the existing hallway and stairwell area.
House extensions on a villa can be problematic if the property is a heritage building. We have done many of these types of projects and we pride ourselves at getting good results in our dealings with council and resolving issues to get a good outcome for the client and the project overall.
Maintaining the character of this home was assisted by the great relationship we enjoyed with the client. A good working relationship between the builder, designer and the client is essential to getting a great outcome. The client needs to have confidence and trust in the designer and builder and in turn, the designer and builder need the skills to be able to deliver the results. A house extension on a home of this period requires an understanding of how homes of the time were designed and it is important that the builders have knowledge of how to build heritage homes.
The selection of the types of weather boards is critical. The deciding factor is colour. There is a scale used for paint colours called the “Light Reflectance Value” LRV. This scale starts at 1 for black and finished in 100 for white and relates to how much light is reflected by the colour. The heat generated by the colour can be extreme and anything under 60 will cause problems for wooden weather boards. You will be surprised at how light in colour 60 will appear. On a sunny summers day with an air temperature of say 23 degrees, a 1 on this scale would return temperatures of around 26 degrees while a colour of 100 on the scale would create a temperature of over 80 degrees. This is like putting the weather boards in an oven and will cause them to crack, split and bleed resin. So weather board selection verses colour is very important. You need someone that is knowledgeable in this area to avoid major problems with your weather boards.
