Whale Beach

by Ian Bennett Design Studio

The house and the garages are approx 30-40years old, they were poorly constructed and as such, the garages were experiencing water issues. They were both quite small, even for a single garage (the clients couldn’t fit their hatchbacks in either garage). The concept was to widen + deepen the lower garage to become a double garage, though we could only widen to the south as we wanted to maintain the beautiful Cheese Tree to the north of the garage. The concept was to widen and deepen the lower garage for comfortable car parking, to rebuild the upper garage as a multi purpose space that could function as either: single garage, home office, games room, self contained studio.

To realise the concept of multi-function we included a small powder room with shower/ vanity/ toilet, a small kitchenette, a lift from the double garage below, power / data / wireless internet, bifolding doors onto a new garden terrace that was screened from the road below via a sandstone planter + native plants. Furthermore we upgraded the facades of the existing house by removing the rotten timber weatherboards replacing with black aluminium cladding, replaced all the rotten timber windows and doors with anodised aluminium doors and windows, replaced the rotten timber decks with hardwood decking + added a inclinator concealed within new sandstone planters to better access the three levels of the existing house. We replanted the new + old gardens beds with endemic landscaping.