Geldeston Road

When we bought the house in 2017 everything was mixed up and in the wrong place. The basement kitchen was dark and damp and disconnected; the bathroom was oversized and located within a large second floor bedroom; and the small garden was overgrown and isolated from the living spaces.

By adding a new two-storey extension, the house has been unravelled and resolved. A contemporary take on the Victorian outrigger volume, the addition allows a large L shaped kitchen and dining space to be created, interlocking with the L shaped garden to form a whole. Massive sliding corner doors, hand-built from solid oak, define the threshold between inside and out, and allow the spaces to become unified into a single ‘garden room’.

This sense of continuity is heightened through the use of continuous water-struck Petersen brickwork to the extension and garden boundary walls. All brickwork has been pointed flush with hydraulic lime mortar mixed on site with sharp sand. The textured concrete floor to the extension is constructed from standard ready-mix cement with 10mm exposed limestone aggregate.

On the upper floor of the extension, a compact family bathroom features dual aspect views directed towards mature trees in the adjacent gardens. A range of solid oak cabinets have been integrated with the window frames and recessed into the walls. Large niches have been created for these by forming structural openings in the new cavity walls.

The project was completed on a very tight budget of £95k inc vat. All joinery has been designed, built and installed by Emil Eve and the corner sliding doors were also developed as a bespoke product by the studio.

All photography by Mariell Lind Hansen