Scandinavian Bathroom, Walk In Shower, Frameless Fixed Panel, Wood Robe Hooks, OTB Bathrooms, Strip Drain, Small Bathroom Renovation, Timber Vanity

Twin Peaks House is a vibrant extension to a grand Edwardian homestead in Kensington. Originally built in 1913 for a wealthy family of butchers, when the surrounding landscape was pasture from horizon to horizon, the homestead endured as its acreage was carved up and subdivided into smaller terrace allotments. Our clients discovered the property decades ago during long walks around their neighbourhood, promising themselves that they would buy it should the opportunity ever arise. Many years later the opportunity did arise, and our clients made the leap. Not long after, they commissioned us to update the home for their family of five. They asked us to replace the pokey rear end of the house, shabbily renovated in the 1980s, with a generous extension that matched the scale of the original home and its voluminous garden. Our design intervention extends the massing of the original gable-roofed house towards the back garden, accommodating kids’ bedrooms, living areas downstairs and main bedroom suite tucked away upstairs gabled volume to the east earns the project its name, duplicating the main roof pitch at a smaller scale and housing dining, kitchen, laundry and informal entry. This arrangement of rooms supports our clients’ busy lifestyles with zones of communal and individual living, places to be together and places to be alone. The living area pivots around the kitchen island, positioned carefully to entice our clients' energetic teenaged boys with the aroma of cooking. A sculpted deck runs the length of the garden elevation, facing swimming pool, borrowed landscape and the sun. A first-floor hideout attached to the main bedroom floats above, vertical screening providing prospect and refuge. Neither quite indoors nor out, these spaces act as threshold between both, protected from the rain and flexibly dimensioned for either entertaining or retreat. Galvanised steel continuously wraps the exterior of the extension, distilling the decorative heritage of the original’s walls, roofs and gables into two cohesive volumes. The masculinity in this form-making is balanced by a light-filled, feminine interior. Its material palette of pale timbers and pastel shades are set against a textured white backdrop, with 2400mm high datum adding a human scale to the raked ceilings. Celebrating the tension between these design moves is a dramatic, top-lit 7m high void that slices through the centre of the house. Another type of threshold, the void bridges the old and the new, the private and the public, the formal and the informal. It acts as a clear spatial marker for each of these transitions and a living relic of the home’s long history.

Fotos: Sandra Hauer, Nahdran Photografie

These clients needed a first-floor shower for their medically-compromised children, so extended the existing powder room into the adjacent mudroom to gain space for the shower. The 3/4 bath is fully accessible, and easy to clean - with a roll-in shower, wall-mounted toilet, and fully tiled floor, chair-rail and shower. The gray wall paint above the white subway tile is both contemporary and calming. Multiple shower heads and wands in the 3'x6' shower provided ample access for assisting their children in the shower. The white furniture-style vanity can be seen from the kitchen area, and ties in with the design style of the rest of the home. The bath is both beautiful and functional. We were honored and blessed to work on this project for our dear friends. Please see NoahsHope.com for additional information about this wonderful family.

Greg Fonne

Ensuite bathroom. Vado products

Porcelain Tile Walk in Shower in Newport Coast

Understairs toilet with pocket door.