Extension and Alteration, Highton

Highton has a lot of homes built through the 1970s and 80s, and they were designed for a different kind of family life. Rooms were separated. The yard was something you walked out to through a single door. Nobody was thinking about a kitchen that opens to a deck. That's true right across Geelong, and it's the reason so much of my extension work is in suburbs like this one.

This house had something most renovations don't get: genuine slope. The block fell away at the rear, which meant a ground-floor extension could step down and follow the land rather than fighting it. That's the ideal version of this job, because you're working with the site instead of against it.

The difficulty was overhead. Adding a roof that ties into an existing one is the part that decides whether an extension reads as part of the house or as a box bolted to the back. The original roofline here had a shallow pitch, and the new work had to match its profile, its materials and its eaves detail exactly or the join would be visible from the street.

The family had already decided they weren't moving. Kids were settled at school, they liked the street, and the house worked apart from the fact they'd outgrown the living space. So the brief was an extension that felt like it had always been there.