HIDDEN GEM

A contemporary layout and neutral palette transform a traditional Edwardian home and the owners' lifestyles.

- Sue Wheeler

Cherished by its owners and their daughters for 20 years, this five-bedroom, semi-detached Edwardian home in Sydney’s Inner West is brimming with heritage charm yet, like many period homes, its lack of modern convenience and functionality had finally got the better of it. Having renovated two bathrooms and a guest bedroom upstairs three years earlier, in 2020, the owners were ready to make additional updates downstairs.

“The layout was typically traditional with a small dark kitchen leading to a bathroom and laundry at the back,” recalls Ben Selke, a friend of the family and director of architecture and design practice Studio Barbara. “Sometime during the eighties a ‘sunroom’ had been tacked on to the back, creating a collection of cramped, gloomy spaces, but we saw the potential to swap the kitchen around and create a more contemporary and functional open-plan living area with an indoor/outdoor flow that didn’t exist before.” However, having lived with this layout for two decades, and now spending half their time in Melbourne, the owners decided to knock down an internal wall or two, update the kitchen, sunroom, laundry and bathroom, and keep the layout as it was.

Fast-forward to day three of the renovation when the builders were demolishing a partition wall. “Both Ben and the builder had recommended moving the kitchen to the back of the home, and once the internal walls were taken down and we could feel the new space, it made complete sense,” says one of the owners. Happily, the designs had already been created so it was easy to implement.