Hammond Bay House
A 1978 split-level taken back to its posts. We kept the roof line, lost two bedrooms and put the money into one twelve-metre room facing the strait.
Eight built, three on site
The register
Every plate below is the same cut — three wide by one high — and carries the same three fields. Read down the right-hand columns and you are reading the practice.
Cedar Road Annexe · corridorN 41° E08:25
PlateHouse & noteBearing · hour · built
Protection Island Cabin
148 m² on a lot three surveyors called unbuildable. Everything arrived on the 12-car ferry, which added eleven working days and $31,000 to the programme.
Milton Street Flat
An interior only — we never touched the envelope. One wall came out, a clerestory slot went in above the party wall, and the flat gained four usable hours a day.
Jingle Pot Longhouse
Forty-one metres long and one room wide, because the lot is a strip between a creek easement and a hydro right-of-way. Every room has glass on two sides.
Pipers Lagoon Rooms
Two wings and a gravel court. The owners lived in it with four chairs for a year before buying furniture, which is the best brief we have ever been given.
Cedar Road Annexe
A workshop and two rooms for a parent, set 9m behind the main house. Cedar was milled from four windfall trees on the lot; the cladding cost $6,100 in total.
Harewood Workshop House
A 1911 machine shop turned into one dwelling. The vault was already there under a dropped ceiling; finding it cost two days of demolition and changed the whole scheme.
Departure Bay Walk-Up
Six flats over a shared court for a family trust. Our only multi-unit job, and the only one where we were not also the contract administrator.
The cheapest job we have done
$198,000, one wall, four hours of daylight
The Milton Street flat faced the wrong way and its only good window looked at a fence. We removed one non-structural wall, cut a 2.4m slot high on the party wall where the neighbour's roof drops away, and lined the reveal in white-oiled ash so it bounces rather than glares.
Measured before and after with the same meter in the same spot: 114 lux at noon in March, 690 lux after. No extension, no planning application, eleven weeks on site.
What the eleven weeks were spent on →
Eight houses, counted
- Smallest
- 52 m²
- Largest
- 411 m²
- Median build
- $684k
- Over tender
- 2 of 8
Two of the eight came in over the tender figure: Jingle Pot by 9% after rock was found at 600mm, and Departure Bay by 4% when the glazing supplier folded in month nine. Both are written up in full if you ask for them.
On site now
Three we cannot photograph yet
Wallace Street Rooms · hallS 2° E11:40 Strip-out finished in August. Four arched openings came out from behind studwork; we are keeping all of them. Hand-over is planned for May 2027.
Townsite Schoolhouse · hallE09:05 A 1923 schoolhouse becoming two dwellings. The chalkboards are staying on the party wall; the heritage consent took nineteen months.
Brechin Point House · livingN 58° W16:15 Glazing went in last week, three months late. The slab is polished concrete with the radiant loops set at 150mm so the floor holds the afternoon.
Brechin Point House · landingS 70° W17:30 The landing window is 360 × 460mm and sits at eye height on the second riser. It is the only opening on that elevation and it took four site visits to place.
Studio · Front StreetN 49° 09′09:30–17:00
Ask for the full file on any of the eight
Drawings, the tender comparison, the snag list and what we would do differently. We send it as one PDF, usually within two working days.
Request a project file