Magic Pudding Interiors: 5 tips for creating space in your house without extending
There is nothing more pleasing than the satisfaction of your clients to know that you’re on the right track. In on recent project the feedback from our clients was really great validation in achieving what had been the key project objectives:
“Once we finished the renovations with Ballast Point our friends kept asking how much we extended the house and they were disbelieving and a little suspicious when we told them it was just an internal reno”
~ Nick and Chloe, Balmain East
To overcome planning and heritage restrictions and a desire to preserve outdoor space, Nick and Chloe made their home feel significantly larger within the existing envelope. Their secret weapon? Help from the Ballast Point team with meticulous planning, clever design, and industry expertise. On this project the cookie cutter approach wasn’t going to cut it (pardon the pun). We needed to find solutions that solved the problem from first principles.
Your 5 Step Plan to creating space without extending:
1. Don’t ever hesitate to move things that need to be moved like bathrooms, laundries or walls, the cost of moving things is often negligible in the context of the project. So many times people think it’s too expensive or too hard, in fact as a portion of the build cost it’s very marginal.
2. Straighten and align - the way you move through space changes your perception of it. Spaces aligned with each other feel bigger, seeing through the property increases your perception of space.
3. Open and combine spaces - Opening areas means that they borrow space and light from each other making them both feel bigger. This is particularly important when you’ve got limited space to work with. The small the spaces the more focus should be put into borrowing space from adjacent spaces.
4. Redistribute Space to the most important areas. Kitchens and living areas are more valuable than laundries and guest WC’s, it’s like turning copper coins into gold coins.
5. Create multi function spaces and joinery, in Nick and Chloe’s renovation there simply was not enough width so we created a moveable bench that functioned as both an island bench and a breakfast bar.
Need more help? Our mission is to help you reimagine your home and where constrained find ways to create space from nothing. Here’s a link for a design consultation or email us.
