A house that fits
how you live now.
Home renovations across the Adelaide Hills and Adelaide
Good bones, a layout built for a different life. The homes we work on run from 1920s cottages through to houses built in the last twenty years. We open them up for light and flow and keep the parts worth keeping, rather than stripping the character out to start again.
Whole-of-home reworks, done in order.
A whole-home renovation is mostly a sequencing problem. Walls come out before services move, services move before the linings go back, and every one of those steps has a trade waiting on the one before it.
Jake runs that program himself, with trades we have used for years. You get one point of contact, regular contact through the build, and a site tidy enough to walk through on a Sunday.
What we focus on.
Where the walls sit now is usually the problem. We rework the plan so you are not walking through one room to get to another.
Bigger openings, better placed windows, a back door that actually gets used. Older homes are often darker than they need to be.
Skirtings, architraves and joinery that line up with what is already there. It is the part people notice without knowing why.
Getting new work to sit against old floors, old trims and old plaster takes some care. We will tell you where a match is realistic and where it is not.
Insulation, glazing and ventilation are cheap to fix while the walls are open and expensive once they are closed. We will point out what is worth doing while we are in there.
Most of the pain in a renovation comes from trades turning up out of order. Jake sets the program and holds them to it.
How we run a whole-home renovation.
Initial consultation.
Consultation to understand priorities, constraints and what success looks like for your home.
Planning and scope.
Planning and scoping, including what is coming out, what has to move behind the walls, and a program.
Build and coordination.
Construction with the trades coordinated, and regular contact so you know what is happening on site.
Completion and handover.
Completion and handover, with a walkthrough so anything not right gets listed and fixed.
Character worth keeping, layouts worth changing.
The homes we work on run from 1920s cottages through to houses built in the last twenty years, and it is worth being honest about what the older end of that means: good bones and real character, wrapped around a plan built for a different life. Stirling and Aldgate carry heritage and character overlays that shape what can change at the front of the house. Lobethal, Charleston and Woodside are looser, and the constraint is usually structural rather than planning.
Homes of this age also hide things. Old wiring, footings that have moved, no bracing where the drawings assumed some. We open up, show you what is there, and price the options in writing before anyone goes further.
We build across the Adelaide Hills — Stirling, Aldgate, Crafers, Bridgewater, Mylor, Hahndorf, Oakbank, Balhannah, Woodside, Lobethal, Charleston, Mount Barker and Nairne — and into the Fleurieu at Victor Harbor and Goolwa, and Adelaide’s eastern suburbs around Burnside.
Before you get in touch.
Whether you can stay in the house while we work, what character details are worth keeping, and how the price is set before anything starts.
Ask a questionWhat types of home renovations do you take on?
Reconfiguring internal layouts, opening up living areas, taking walls out, and reworking kitchens and bathrooms as part of a bigger job. Anything structural gets an engineer involved before we price it.
Can we live in the home during a renovation?
Sometimes. It depends on the areas being renovated and whether services need to be interrupted. We’ll help you plan staging to minimise disruption.
Do you help with design decisions?
We are builders rather than designers. We will tell you what works, what does not, and where a plan is going to cost more than it needs to. If you want a designer or an architect involved, we can put you onto people we have worked with.
How do you manage variations and unexpected issues?
The contract is fixed price quoted work, so the documented scope is locked. Renovations do uncover unknowns behind the linings — old wiring, failed footings, no bracing where the plans assumed some. When that happens we stop, show you what we have found, price the options in writing and get your approval before anyone picks a tool back up.
Do you service areas outside the Adelaide Hills?
Yes. We work throughout the Hills and surrounding regions, including down towards Victor Harbor, depending on the project.
Keep exploring.
Outdoor rooms built to shelter, extend and last. Spotted gum, Merbau and steel, picked for Hills weather.
Kitchens built around how you actually cook. Custom joinery, stone benchtops, storage where you would reach for it.
Bathrooms built properly under the tiles, not just over them.
Second dwellings built to the same standard as the main house.
New square metres that look like they belonged to the house all along.