Stephen Hay was determined that the renovation last year of his 1910 square fronted villa celebrated the best of two eras – heritage and contemporary. Both parts of the house had to represent the best of their period.

So, while architect Mark McLeay and Rigo Gonzalez from Creative Arch focused on re-designing the back of the house, demolishing an earlier addition, and rearranging the front villa bedrooms, Hay focused on authentically replicating the street frontage.

In went quality reproduction three-bay sash windows, front door, columns, fretwork and balustrades. The original bevel back weatherboards on the exterior were restored, insulated and repainted.

Windows got brand new double glazing, ducted heating installed under the new engineered wood floors and the entry hall’s modern panelled walls were replaced with deep skirting boards and architraves.

Even the back cottage, modernised from the former stables for the area, was tussied up with battens and new architraves.

“The house was plenty big enough for two people and three cats,” says Hay. “But then it began to bug us that the master bathroom for two people was smaller than the main bathroom, and we kept moving the living room around.

We started saying ‘why not borrow some room from the next bedroom’. Mark had done the garage earlier, but then it turned into a revolution.”

McLeay helped solve the problem of a vast, sunbaked back deck (known as the helipad) that was too hot in summer, useless in windy or rainy months and disconnected from the sloping back yard.