THE PROBLEM
Roslyn Street sits inside the Ashbury Heritage Conservation Area, a tight grid of Federation and inter-war cottages where the streetscape is protected and the council looks closely at anything that changes it.
The family had outgrown the original cottage. A lean-to rear extension and a detached garage had been added over the years, and neither was doing the house any favours: the rear rooms were dark, the levels stepped awkwardly down the block, and the backyard was cut off from the kitchen.
The brief was simple to say and hard to do. Keep the cottage, respect the street, and give the family a proper kitchen, living and dining space, a new master bedroom, and a guest room, and give the kids the cottage as their own end of the house, all on a 594 m² block that falls almost two metres from front to back.
BEFORE THE BRIEF
Before we drew a room we sat down with the owners and talked about how they actually live. Not the room list. Who cooks, where everyone ends up on a Sunday, who needs quiet and when, and what the house has to do in ten years that it doesn't need to do now.
Three things came out of that conversation and shaped everything after it.
The kids are older and want to be part of it. They cook, they're at the table when people come over, and they're not being sent to another room. So the kitchen, dining and living are one space and the bench faces the room, not the wall.
Older kids need their own end of the house. The cottage at the front became theirs: bedrooms and space that's separate from the living wing without being cut off from it. The parents moved to a new master bedroom on the mezzanine, with a guest room beside it.
The porch had to come back. It had been enclosed and altered over decades. Working inside a heritage conservation area is a commitment, not a constraint, and reinstating the porch properly was the owners' way of honouring that.
The brief came after that, and it was a short one because the hard thinking was already done.
THE ANALYSIS
The block runs long and narrow with the street to the north-east and the backyard to the south-west. That orientation set the strategy early.
The original cottage holds the front and keeps its relationship to the street. The rear addition steps down with the natural fall of the land, so the new living level sits 1.5 metres below the cottage floor and opens straight onto the garden.
Winter sun reaches the addition from the north over the side boundary, so rather than fighting the neighbour for privacy at eye level, the north wall lifts its glazing to high level. Summer breezes come from the south-west, straight through the rear doors.
THE SOLUTION
Two faces, one house
From the street, the cottage reads as it always has. The two-storey addition sits well behind the main ridge, tucked under the 8.5 m height limit, and is only glimpsed from the backyard. The heritage conservation area sees a restored cottage, not a new house.
Restoring what was lost
The front porch had been enclosed and altered over the years. The design reinstates it with new dry-pressed brick columns in Lincoln Blue Mottle, a low brick porch wall built from the existing external brick, and a tessellated tile path in the traditional Federation palette.
A double-height living void
The dining and living space at the rear is open to the roof. A 25° skillion lifts toward the north, and the first-floor bedrooms sit on a mezzanine that looks down into the void. It is the one move that makes the house feel much bigger than its footprint.
A FACADE RETURNED TO ITS HERITAGE BEGINNINGS
Roslyn Street is an intact run of inter-war Californian bungalows and Federation cottages, built out as Ashbury took shape in the 1920s and now protected as a heritage conservation area. The rhythm of gabled roofs, deep verandahs and low brick fences is the street's whole character.
Decades of ad hoc changes had dulled the cottage's front. The work strips those back and puts the original elements in again: dark clinker brick, shingled gable infill with exposed battens, turned verandah posts on rendered piers, leadlight windows, a red Colorbond window hood, the original tiled roof, and a tessellated tile path running to the gate through a diagonal brick fence.
HERITAGE DETAIL
The porch is where the project is judged from the footpath. New dry-pressed brick columns, a low wall rebuilt from the existing external brick, and a tessellated path set out in the traditional Federation pattern: off white, black, red and terracotta.
THE LAYOUT
Ground floor
The cottage keeps its front rooms, now the kids' bedrooms and their own space, and the reinstated porch. A short link at the change in level drops into the new wing, where the kitchen runs along one wall with a butler's pantry and laundry tucked behind it. Dining and living open through a 3.5 m stacking door to a rear deck and pergola.
First floor
The master bedroom and a guest room sit over the kitchen and service zone, with the master taking the western corner. Both rooms have protected openings to the north and look out over the void to the living space below, with a landing that doubles as a quiet reading spot.
Cut through the addition and the logic is plain. The living end goes up two storeys, a clerestory sits above the sliding doors, and the mezzanine looks back over the void.
Winter sun reaches deep into the plan; summer sun stops at the eave. Warm air leaves through the high windows on the garden side.
HOW THE HOUSE WILL BE USED
A winter afternoon. Sun comes over the north boundary through the high glazing and drops into the void. Someone is on the landing with a book, one of the kids is at the bench, and the doors to the deck are shut because they don't need to be open.
A Saturday night with people over. Stacking doors back, breeze straight through from the south-west, dinner half inside and half on the deck. The kids are cooking with everyone else, not waiting to be called. The clerestory pulls warm air out the top.
The front of the house. The porch is back to being a place you sit, not a room that got enclosed in the seventies. The tiled path is the first thing a visitor stands on. Behind it, the cottage is the kids' end of the house, quiet when the living wing isn't.
BUILT FOR THE NEXT VERSION OF THE FAMILY
The cottage rooms are the right size for teenagers now and the right size for a study or a home office later. The guest room on the mezzanine works for visitors today and for whoever needs to be close by in years to come. Nothing in the plan assumes the family stays exactly as it is in 2026.
INSIDE
Each interior was drawn first and rendered second. The line drawing carries the idea, the render carries the light, and the pair is how the client sees the room before it exists.
These are test images rather than finished pictures of the house. We make them to try combinations and orientations, to move a bench or a window and see what it does to the room, and to test how one space sits against the next. Some of what you see here will change. That is the point of drawing it.
MATERIALS
Three materials from the original house, brought back on the addition and reworked.
Brick
Recycled brick slips wrap the rear pavilion at ground level.
Board and batten
Cement cladding in Surfmist takes over on the upper level.
Shingles
Picked up as texture, set against a low Colorbond Wallaby roof beside the tiled cottage.
WHERE IT'S AT
The frame is up and the double-height void is already legible. You can stand in the dining room and see the shape of the finished house.
Construction Certificate documentation was completed mid-2026 and the project is on site. The rear extension and garage have been demolished, the slab is down, and by early September the ground floor frame, steel beams, first floor joists and the skillion rafters were all up. This page will be updated as the build progresses.
The owners are building the house themselves as owner builders. Structa Consulting Engineers carried the structure and Apex Studios the landscape. The heritage side of the design, including the porch reinstatement, was worked through with Canterbury-Bankstown Council rather than around it. We visit site through the build and update this page after each visit.
THE BUILD
The rear of the site went from a 1970s extension shambles to a new two-storey frame, answering the family's wish for upgraded, usable space to meet and enjoy life.
The cottage stayed standing the whole time. Everything below happens behind it, which is the point of the plan: the street sees no change until the porch comes back.
AFTER THE BUILD
We photograph the house once the family has lived in it, not the week the frame comes down. We'll come back after the first year and ask the same questions we asked at the start: what do you do here now that you couldn't before, and what would you change. That answer gets added to this page.
"With this house, the first stage was to ensure we respected the original bungalow by carefully restoring it to reflect its original character and charm.
For the extension, we wanted to create a clear juxtaposition between the existing bungalow and the new addition. The aim was to introduce an open, light-filled space that would provide a series of welcoming communal areas for the whole family to enjoy.
Aesthetically, the history of the original home remained an important influence. Materials such as board and batten, brick and shingles were retained as key references, but reinterpreted in a contemporary way. This approach allowed the extension to pay homage to the original house while creating a modern architectural language that connects the old with the new."
THE OWNERS, AT THE START
Architect: Slaviček Studio Architecture
Structural engineer: Structa Consulting Engineers
Landscape: Apex Studios
Builder: Owner builder
Status: Construction Certificate issued 2026. Currently on site.
Slaviček Studio Architecture / Roslyn Residence, Ashbury NSW