Complex renovationsWithout thesleepless nights.

Case 01 · Remedial renovation · Parakai

Making an illegal house legal

Council file

250+ documents reviewed

Weathertightness

Building Code and E2 compliant

Council sign-off

Final sign-off passed, CCC on its way

The brief

These clients came to us with a house that was illegal. It had no code compliance certificate, and nobody could tell them what had been done to it or what it would take to put right.

The hard bit

We pulled the council property file and combed through more than 250 documents. The previous owner had consent for two extensions in 2011, amended in 2020. Nothing he'd built matched the plans or the Building Code, none of it had been inspected, and council knew nothing about it.

We first looked at a certificate of acceptance. Once we opened things up, there were no top plates, the window lintels were wrong and the framing was incorrect, so that route was off the table. We varied our contract, stripped the cladding off that part of the house and redid the work properly. We also found that the four point loads holding up the ridge beam weren't carrying the load down, so we reframed them and had our engineer check them to modern code.

The budget was tight the whole way. One wall turned out to be rotten, and council's usual reclad approach means opening up a metre in every direction from each rotten spot: pulling up floors and ceilings downstairs, and blowing the budget. Instead we brought that end wall into the existing building line as part of the reduced extension, so we could reclad just that wall under the minor variation.

What we did

We had plans drawn for a reduced scope, worked through several on-site meetings with council, and got the minor variation approved, 12 months after our first meeting with the clients. We removed the work that couldn't stay and fixed all the defective workmanship we uncovered.

The mini corrugated cladding had been fixed over square battens instead of castellated ones, which traps water in the cavity and makes the house damp and cold. We took it off, replaced the cavity battens and building paper, and redesigned the flashings around every penetration, which didn't match the consented plans either.

Under the deck, the roof was rusted out and had no fall, so we repitched it to modern standards with new roofing iron to stop water getting in downstairs. New entry stairs now run up and dog-leg back onto the deck to a new front door. When we pulled out the old deck, we found the 135 mm glulam posts another contractor had installed were floating above the ground, not touching their footings. Builders call them "Bluetooth" posts: no connection. Our engineer designed new footings with a new length of post scarfed into each existing one, so we didn't have to replace the whole posts.

The house has four bedrooms and had no storage at all, so we added a false floor and a lower ceiling to create storage cubbies above both bedrooms.

The result

To stay within budget we reused the existing cladding. That comes with some visual compromises, but the house is compliant with the Building Code and E2, and our clients are absolutely wrapped with the work. Council has since given the job its final sign-off, and the code compliance certificate for a house that came to us illegal is on its way.

Case 03 · Deck and timber bifold

The window that became a door

Deck

Kwila, half new and half relaid

Door

Custom timber bifold

Aftercare

Split boards replaced free

The brief

The owners wanted the lounge to open straight onto the back garden, with a deck to step out onto.

The hard bit

The ground was full of underground services, so we changed the framing design to work around them. We also found a retention tank and soak pit that weren't on the drainage plans, and adjusted the layout to suit.

Half the deck is brand new and half is the existing deck relaid, so the two had to finish as one.

What we did

We built a low-lying kwila deck and replaced the lounge window with a custom timber bifold door. We opened up the covered verandah onto the deck, arranged artificial turf so the dogs can't dig up the lawn, and transplanted the hedge and mondo grass from where the new deck went. The lounge now opens straight onto the deck and the garden.

After handover

Three weeks after handover, some deck boards split. We went back and replaced every affected board at no charge.