Gibson Street Bronte is a four bedroom, three bathroom, separate laundry, living room, family room, dining area, expansive kitchen, rumpus for the kids, attic storage, rear deck entertaining and a car port.

Being in a conservation area, the Architect has carefully taken the heritage of the building and contemporary requirements of the client and merged the two seamlessly. It was up to our tradespeople to make the clients wishes and architects vision a reality.

Removing the rear asbestos additions and dilapidated garage we found ourselves in some extremely sandy conditions, not uncommon to the area although we had not encountered such dry non-viscous sand previously. Establishing the strip footing for the retaining walls was tricky and ended up requiring a boom pump so as not to disturb the areas whilst pouring concrete.

Once the ground floor slab had been established our next task was craning in the 10m steel truss beam that would do all the work over the rear of the building. With the help from the guys at Construction Rescue who looked after all the permits and supplied the traffic controllers, we were able to go directly from the delivery truck into position and begin the task of timber framing around the steel backbone of the house.

Once the timber first floor had been built we now need to do the calculations for the interesting shaped roof nicknamed the “fighter jet”. This was then fully cover in 17mm structural ply ready for the metal covering. The roof and exposed pelmets would eventually be dressed in pure Zinc had crafted onsite by the team at CMS roofing.

In the process of timber framing we had to carefully detail out the rear steel awning and rear deck stair case to be laser cut to our exact requirements. Once craned in using a mini unit from Coopers cranes the Teak cladding process could begin. The carpenters meticulously installed the Teak cladding supplied by Woodform Architectural adhering to every installation requirement.

Designing the custom rear sliding corner door had everyone scratching their heads for some time. In collaboration with Architect Nick Bell, Craig from A&G and pmdbuild, we got the desired result eventually. A&G made a one to one scale model of the intersecting door junction and final installation of doors went smoothly.

Finishing off the house was a pleasure from the upside down internal staircase again requiring steel laser cut stringers to the timber floors , polished concrete floors the oversized Corian island bench and the marble tiles. The clients had made all their decisions giving our team a clear understanding of their expectation were and the ability to complete the build on schedule.

I believe the house fits the street perfectly and incorporates all the essentials on modern family living on a relatively compact block of land.