a carefully crafted extension to an 1890s New Zealand bay villa in Johnsonville, Wellington. This wasn’t just a renovation — it was a love letter to heritage architecture.

The brief was clear: extend the existing villa to create more space, while making it impossible to tell where the original house ended and the new work began. Our client, deeply passionate about historic homes, had already curated the existing home with incredible detail — vintage light fittings, antique furniture and carefully sourced materials. Our job was to take that vision further.

From replica pressed-tin ceilings to finely detailed timberwork, every element of the extension was meticulously crafted to reflect the architectural language of the Victorian era. One standout operation involved the original bay window — a defining feature of the façade. To preserve it, we undertook a complex and delicate process: carefully bracing and securing the structure, bringing in a crane to extract it intact, then storing and protecting it off-site throughout the build. Once the new extension was complete, the window was craned back into position, reinstated, and fully restored. With the exception of this salvaged centrepiece, the entire structure is newly built — yet it integrates so seamlessly that it reads as original. This project offers not a reproduction, but a refined continuation of the villa typology — one that arguably expresses its architectural intent with more clarity and care than many surviving examples.