After the original 1930s California bungalow was removed from site, RAM Builders Ltd won the contract to build this 520 square meter Jessop Architects designed house. It has Cedar weatherboards, a combination of torch on membrane flat roofs and French quartz Zinc pitched roofing. It also has a large heated swimming pool at the rear of the house and a large built in concrete spa pool. Inside the house there are five bedrooms two lounge areas, and at the front of the house, above the garage, a large self contained guest loft with bathroom and kitchenette. It also has a 6 meter by 5 meter wine cellar below the main entrance and stair well.

We started work on this Daniel Marshall Architect Ltd designed house after we demolished the 1970s Cedar home that originally occupied the site. It is based on three 8m x 8m boxes and was a very technically challenging build as it is built on the side of quite a steep hill. People arrive down the long narrow drive to the site of a large black box, which gives no hint to the enormous size and volume of the house, which has three bedrooms and two large living areas as well as a large self contained guest area. The main kitchen and lounge area has a 7m high ceiling. The outside is vertical Cedar weatherboards with black anodized joinery, it also has a tennis court and a large swimming pool and spa pool.

This is the second large house I’ve built for this Client, and having lived in the first new house I built for them for eight years, they new exactly what mattered to them so they fine tuned things and we built them a bigger and better one. The exterior is clear finished Cedar with a ‘state of the art’ Sto plaster system to the block work. The plaster theme is continued on the inside with the plaster being sanded to produce a smooth concrete plaster look without the sandpaper finish

The small 1940s bungalow that once sat on this site is now a Bach somewhere in Northland. The house that sits on the site now is a modern interpretation of a California bungalow. When we cleared the site we started to dig a very large 3.8m deep hole in which to accommodate the large basement level of this deceptively large house, which is effectively three levels tall. It has four bedrooms three bathrooms, two living areas and a big basement rumpus room area

I hope the photos give you some idea of the scale of this renovation - it's actually more of a rebuild and addition. The only part remaining of the existing structure is a small part of the northern corner of the original house. We removed all the existing joinery and stripped it, by hand, back to bare wood before reinstalling it to its new position in the house. The original weatherboards were reused where possible.

The clients directive was for a grander more modern house, while preserving some of the character and feel of the original house, most of the people we show through the house are surprised that it is almost entirely new.

We rebuilt this house for a busy professional sailor who didn’t have too much time to spend on site before he was off overseas again. So the approach was simple, if parts of the original building needed ‘doing up’, we did them up. This resulted in a completely reframed and relined interior as well as the originally planned new basement garage and laundry. The rear of the house was demolished and pushed out to provide a new lounge and kitchen area as well as a new concrete pool and outdoor living area with opening roof. The third and final addition to the house was completed in 2016 and consisted of the addition of a third story master bedroom and ensuite.