What style should I turn this house into?

We bought a two storey in need of a full renovation; however I'm finding little details that we may either use as feature pieces, or incorporate to make into something more modern Else, remove altogether.

Arch: definitely remove as we need to turn the 60s home into an open plan. Should we replicate an arch elsewhere, or is this going to become a trend?


Door: found one as a large balcony door, and one smaller one as an interior door. Ideas what to do with them? Else what style interior doors to compliment? I'm thinking no frames.

 

The arch looks nice. There may be too much wood for some people. The phone behind the arch does not appeal. I agree with Wylie about the doors, too much wood. I had unpainted wooden door frames in my PPOR, and painted most of them white. The result is a vast improvement. The skirting boards are a bit small, so think about replacing them. It may be simpler to paint new skirting boards before they are installed. A plan would greatly assist.

 

Exterior is purely an old flat brick box.
No style whatsoever besides those random wood accents.

Here's the plan. ALOT of opening up to do!

 

All my midcentury fanatical friends are saying to keep the wood.
Definitely heading towards paining the doors! Only don't want any regrets as there's alot of white-on-white nowadays.

 

Oh no. That arch + door panels and tiles are all for a skip bin for sure

 

My partner definitely agrees with you.

Did find pic of the door refurbished

 

This is a difficult reno. I cannot recall seeing a house with eight bedrooms, much scope, limited only by the budget, goals, and sanity.

Four or five bedrooms should suffice, so it's a question of how they are combined. The bedrooms have minimal or no BIRs, so they can be added. BR 7 has no windows. The dining-kitchen-living layout does not appeal. One problem is that many options are subjective, and the goals are not known. Hence, the following is a starting point.

Entry
Having an air lock or at least something to stop the wind coming in will keep heating and cooling costs low. My former residence has an air lock, and I have this on the plans that are with council for my current PPOR. The simplest way is to have glass or polycarbonate on most of the porch, although this will catch the heat in summer unless it faces south. Another option is a new door just above the "y" in entry. The porch is covered, good - this gives shelter in bad weather.

Ground floor corridor
Based on doors being 900 mm, the corridor looks to be about 1000-1200 mm. This is okay, but a little wider would be nice. A wider doorway (no door) going into the living room from the corridor will give a feeling of spaciousness.

Kitchen and dining room
While this is more or less okay, if the budget allows, the following may work. Move the kitchen to the other side, next to the toilet. Remove as much as possible of the wall between the kitchen and living room, giving a kitchen-dining-living space about 12 X 4 metres This may be a bit long and skinny, and may need a divider to break up the length, perhaps at the current kitchen-living wall. This would be enough to see through and give a sense of demarcation. The doorway at the top left of the dining room could be filled to make the kitchen more functional.

Bedrooms
BR 1 is often at the front of the house. The BR at the front is BR 6. Make the bathroom an en suite for BR6, with a WIR on the right, where the existing BIR is located. The BR 6 window looks too small, so if possible make this bigger. Make the bottom of BR 7 a bathroom, and the top is now the bottom of BR 8. That is, split BR 7 horizontally, around half-way.

BR 4 could have the storage and toilet turned into an en suite, and joined with BR 5. Put a BIR between the stairs and the top wall, next to the existing toilet. BR 1 could have a BIR across the full width of the top wall, adjacent to BR5. The BR 1 sliding door does not appeal, but the width makes it easier to get big furniture into the room.

BR 2 could have a BIR across the top, next to the bathroom. If the door to BR 3 is moved to the corridor then the storage alcove could be the bathroom. BR 3 could be an office, no need for a BIR.

This give five bedrooms plus an office, with bathrooms and en suites on both levels, should be adequate for the hordes.

Light
Some rooms seem to have small windows. One option is to have light tubes, which are very bright, even on the ground floor. These can go through a BIR. However, the cost of perhaps $1000 each needs to be weighed against the cost of an LED light, far less. That said, light tubes look rather nice. The first floor corridor seems to be dark, minimal natural light.

Doors and doorways
See how one looks painted white, and if that works, paint the lot.

 

It is your home, decorate it however you and your partner want to. The mid-century friends are not paying for it, their opinion doesn't matter as much as your opinions.

The wooden doors appear to have water damage. They are possibly veneer too, so not worth repainting. Also you might get really sick of seeing timber features after a while in an otherwise non-timber home.

 

Removing the arch will open up that area that needs to be done to improve the aesthetics, will also depend on what overall look you are wanting to attain.

 

What have you decided to do? Any pics?

 

The reno job ended up being bigger than expected. Up to council approval stage.

Quote stage was a nightmare, plenty of builders get dollar signs in their eyes when they do a walk through. We'd get dodgy people claiming to only do kitchens, suddenly want to take on the whole project even though they don't have the experience. Two diff builders threw random extreme prices at us to test our budget. We ended up with one that was pretty reasonable and ticked all the boxes (had insurance, one of their referrals even let us walk through their house).

As for the arch? It's getting ripped out in the next month or so. Got enough reaction from builders when getting the quotes...had one throw up his hands in mock horror when I suggested keeping it.

We've gone modern with elements of Mediterranean influence.

Before


After


Colour Scheme. Keeping it simple, warmer woods.

 

What demographic area suggests? Stick what the style of era is and update and modernize. You can repaint the door you suggested same with those wooden arch panels but it really depends on whether that's the need in your demographic suburb. Do some research on your suburb and what sells and looks like that's similar.
It's pointless to advise to say modernize to contemporary style if area suggests character is preferred. I like your suggestions and pictures you provided as long as that's the demographic style of the suburb.

 

Yeah we have that covered, there's way more other houses in the area that look more Mediteranean or Contemporary compared to ours.

 

Those are some pretty doors. Paint it white and it will stand out way nicer than any new ones. We had our entire house with hideous brown doors and wood paneloing of the same color along with red bricks inside the house. A good coat of white paint made it look like so much better.

 

Jealous. Your plans look good, and that current floorplan just screamed potential plus.

That's the kind of house I'd buy, an ugly house with a lot of room (pardon the pun) under the roof.

 

Looks great, thanks for the update.

 

Thanks, when I first saw it, it reminded me of something out of a Stephen King movie (dark repetitive rooms, hadn't been properly cleaned in past decade), only 3 potential buyers came to see it in first pre-inspection but my partner quickly snapped it up as it was an emotion sale so they accepted offer within 48 hours. In hindsight it was a good buy as afew minutes walk from in-demand schools and 20mins from city centre.

He did all the dirty work and has spent days cleaning, and putting in ventilation systems til it resembles something we actually could have lived in if we just redid wet areas.

Finally got a builder, met all the nice neighbours who like our plans and are going on holidays to avoid the noise. Can't wait to show some progress.

 

Wow, what's the budget for this reno?

 

This is our 2nd PPOR and hope to stay long-term... $300-400k budget.
Biggest expense is all new wiring, flooring, moving staircase and opening up the living space.

Not all rooms will be done by builder, some is going to be via flat pack (Ikea the pantry / bedrooms/ dressing room, painting all the rooms ourselves, landscaping). No exterior work for now, I don't care what our place looks to others, we're young professionals who've been scrimping away, just happy we got this. Making it minimum livable for now.

This is in Sydney, welcome to critique as I have no ideas if we're reasonable in expectations.