Updating a house with architectural assistance
If you have a house with a great position and historical features but an older style of internal fit-out, you might want to look at an architectural update. Architects can provide unique ideas if you have restrictions on the changes you make due to historical listing or neighbourhood restrictions in changing the outward appearance of a home.
Expanding the back of the house
Often one of the restrictions in older houses is around the street appearance of the home. Architects can help to design extensions that are not visible from the front of the house but that provide extra living areas or extra bedrooms. This can be a great way to modernise an old house, particularly as the extension can be designed in a more modern style to help create larger light-filled living areas, for example.
Go underground
It can be a hard to find parking in many locations with historical housing and it may be considered against historical restriction to have carports or garages added for your vehicles. You can often get around this by adding underground parking to your current house. This can also be a good way to make the most of a small block but can be a significant project due to a lot of earthworks required and the extra work to sure up the old foundations, so it is best supported by an experienced architectural firm.
Converting internal areas
Architects can be excellent at looking at the internal space you have available and reconfiguring the space to better suit your lifestyle. This could include using the roof space for extra storage or an additional room or tweaking the internal walls to remove formal dining areas and create more open living spaces. Space-saving appliances such as smaller washing machines and dryers can mean that you can often sacrifice a little area in one less used room to get more area in a heavily utilised room such as a kitchen. Moving internal walls in the right way can often make an house feel much bigger without actually increasing the overall area of the house. Additionally, changes such as adding additional skylights or windows can be a great way to modernise a dark and stuffy room such as a traditional hallway.
If you are looking to update a house that has restrictions around modifying historical features, then you should contact an architect with experience in similar historical home conversions.