Heritage home extensions in Orange and across NSW

Restoring a heritage home is about repair. Extending one is about adding something new that the old house can live with. The new work has to give a family the light, space and connection to the garden they want, while leaving the original house clearly readable, especially from the street.

Our approach is simple to describe and hard to do well. We keep the historic rooms intact where we can, place the new work where it causes least harm, usually at the rear, and let it be honestly contemporary rather than a copy of the old. A clear line between old and new is what heritage advice generally favours, and it usually makes the better house too. The result is a heritage home with a modern extension that feels like it belongs.

March House is a 1910s Federation style house on one of Orange's best streets. The owners wanted a light filled, contemporary home for a young, growing family. We added a simple new form at the rear holding a new kitchen, dining and living space that looks over the back yard, with an internal courtyard that visually links the existing house to the new form.

The original house was completely restored, with new services and facilities carefully added. The project received AIA NSW Country awards for Interiors and for Alterations and Additions, a Commendation for Heritage, and an Orange City Council Heritage Award. A second stage, a garden pavilion with a garage, gym, indoor pool and sauna, followed later.

Several of our projects follow the same principles. At River House, a historic property on the banks of the Macquarie River, the owners have taken on the task of restoring a house that had not received much care. Our design, currently in design development, carefully inserts contemporary services and additional bathrooms into the existing structure and adds a new living and main bedroom wing that opens to the landscaped gardens.

Sadlier House, a substantial Victorian Italianate style country home from the 1870s, shows where a Victorian home extension can begin. We removed unsympathetic verandah infills and created new north facing living spaces that open to expansive new landscaped gardens.

Many older homes in Orange and other Central West towns sit inside heritage conservation areas, where council looks closely at anything new that can be seen from the street. Ellore is a good example: a property dating from 1910 on a heavily treed site within the Central Orange Conservation Area. Our design, currently pending approval, restores the existing house and adds new contemporary living and sleeping spaces for a growing family, with a direct connection to the landscaped yard.

We prepare the drawings and documents council needs, and we work with heritage specialists when an application calls for them, so the proposal is clear and well supported.

Our studio is in Orange, and most of our heritage work is in and around the Central West, but we take on heritage home extensions across NSW where the project suits. Whatever the town, the process is the same: we visit the house, understand what makes it special, and design an extension it can live with for another hundred years.

Owners in Bathurst can also see our page for a heritage architect in Bathurst, and you can see more of our heritage architecture across the region.