Planning Change

So what do we want?

We’re not big on moving, having lived in the same place for 26 years from 1988 to 2014, happy to only move again once. Gardening has been fun but not something we need to do. We need an income stream into retirement, we like to meet new people, possibly share a meal with them.

We like a mix of old and new styles, protect heritage but have modern amenities. We want to minimise energy usage and minimise the need for car travel.

The location in Norwood is excellent, the existing dwelling has always been split into 2 so flexibility is there. Without a lot of land, 2 stories on at least half is a likely option to give flexibility.

So we went in search of inspiration which involved a fair bit of walking, looking over fences, checking out places on realestate.com.au, getting ideas from the occasional TV show and websites such as houzz.com.

One such place that inspired was in McLaren St Adelaide, a 2 story rear extension to a Bluestone maisonette with interesting use of a walk-through bathroom with creative use of stairs. http://harrisrealestate.com.au/3983259/56-McLaren-Street-Adelaide

We tracked down the architect, met with him on-site at Norwood and the first thing that became obvious was that the rear of the house wasn't in a fit state to handle any major alterations, it would be far more economical to knock over the back.

We tried following up with this architect but he never got back to us, clearly not the right person but his design did give some inspiration and Smartdraw got a hammering.