An Illawarra builder spent nearly a year renovating and restoring a century-plus old heritage terrace in Paddington.
Unanderra-based builders Souter Built recently completed the heritage renovation project.
Director Adam Souter said the house had been "quite dilapidated", and was difficult to access.
"One-hour parking at the front of the street, narrow lane... And everything - machinery, materials, concrete - had to be through the front door, as there was no rear lane access," he said.
Mr Souter said the property was located within a heritage conservation area.
"That means there's strict guidelines of what you can do to the heritage aspect of the house, and you have to abide by them," he said.
"Also the trades that we had to get on-site; we had to screed in cornice to remove sections of walls, where trades like that aren't really taught at TAFE any more."
Mr Souter said the home had previously featured small, pokey rooms with no flow.
They sought to transform the dated terrace with an overgrown backyard into an "inner-city haven".
He said the clients' vision was to open up the back area to flow into the garden, which was previously overgrown and lacking atmosphere, and therefore not used.
"Hector Abraham Architects created a relationship with the front of house and back of house eco-system within the dwelling," he said.
"In order to do so, we demolished all but one of the internal ground floor walls, installed Blackbutt Timber flooring, a new kitchen, new laundry and installed a water closet under the stairs."
During the demolition of dilapidated floors, unused sandstone footings were recovered, cut, faced and re-purposed for backyard seating and landscaping sculptures.
All demolished existing ironbark bearers and joists were transported back to the warehouse, and thicknessed, cut, sanded and sealed to be used throughout the project, including for custom made shelving, fireplace mantel, vanity, robe hooks, screening, clothesline structure and sculptures.
The rear boundary wall was built from reclaimed bricks from a previous Souter Built job at Lavender Bay.
Timber screening was made using new and recycled timber and the steel trellis was built with recycled steel reinforcement mesh.
The garden seat was made using sandstone from footings under the house, with recycled timber joists from the demolition and a copper toilet roll holder and towel rail holder were created from the plumbing off-cuts.
Souter Built won three Master Builders Association Awards for the Southern Region of NSW last year.
The building firm took out the Master Builders Association Award for best alteration and addition valued between $1 million and $1.5 million, best bathroom renovation over $50,000 and best commercial refurbishment under $500,000.
The refurbishment was for the Toscani blow bar business in Wollongong.
They have entered the Paddington project in this year's awards.
Brendan Crabb
I'm a member of ACM's national property team, covering the Illawarra and South Coast. Based in Albion Park, NSW, I write about exciting, interesting or just downright quirky properties that have been listed for sale, major sales, market trends, auctions and more. One of my favourite aspects of being a journalist is I believe everyone has a story to tell. What's yours?
I'm a member of ACM's national property team, covering the Illawarra and South Coast. Based in Albion Park, NSW, I write about exciting, interesting or just downright quirky properties that have been listed for sale, major sales, market trends, auctions and more. One of my favourite aspects of being a journalist is I believe everyone has a story to tell. What's yours?
