Welcome to the Clever Small Terrace Home in North Perth

At Shelford, we always love a challenge. It helps us continuously push boundaries and create something new to make the seemingly impossible thing possible. So, this is what we did with our recent project in North Perth—build a home on a small terrace block, making the most of the space without comprising style and function. Shelford took out the finalist award at the Perth 2021 HIA for Small Lot Housing and in Lightweight Housing, for this spectacular home.

Designed by Gary Batt of Gary Batt and Associates Architects and built by Shelford Quality Homes, this small, family-friendly, and free-flowing home on a challenging 185 square metre block is a lifestyle opportunity. Its strategic location is within walking distance of the well-known Angove Street with its popular cafes, restaurants, and shops.

The perfectly positioned windows bounce light throughout the home as you are drawn into the welcoming open plan living where the kitchen, dining, and lounge spaces flow seamlessly into one another. The wonderful proportions and use of materials, including glass, mirror, and featured brickwork for the texture make this a warm and inviting space. Shelford’s commercial-grade stacking doors bring the outside in, and the landscaped outdoor courtyard is a natural extension of the living area, the perfect oasis.

We extracted every inch of this interesting site to build our clients their dream home in their dream location. Let’s look inside their new home and their building journey with Shelford and how we worked together to maximise the terrace block.

Exterior details

The home’s exterior emulates a modern contemporary design with an interesting mix of modern and traditional materials. The main external feature is the Midland Brick 1c Restoration red brickwork laid hit and miss with white brickie sand and lime and white sand combination. We also added elements of grey render to give the home a modern striking feel, and the external Scyon Stria grooved cladding painted a beautiful woodland grey adds to the effect.

The combination of various materials used helps to break up the bulk and scale the home. The articulation of the laneway facade also softens the two-storey modern home in a heritage setting.

A modern contemporary design with a mix of modern and traditional materials

Interior design

The kitchen, dining, and lounge spaces are part of an open-plan design. This makes the house feel a lot bigger than it is, with a lot of transparency on both floors.

Highlighted finishes include the skirting boards, high ceilings, featured bulkheads, shadow lines, plasterboard details, feature brickwork wall in the main living area, and fireplace. And the standout among these feature pieces is Shelford’s own manufactured commercial-grade windows from our commercial series, louvered windows, and a six-panel door with a recessed sill.

Spacious living and dining with custom commercial-grade windows

Smart and optimised design

The innovative design of this small 185 square meter block makes smart use of maximised space to its full potential to deliver both comfort and space. The architectural details also include high ceilings and shadow lines to make the home look and feel more spacious than it is.

The home design features two front doors—facing a main street and another on the laneway, respectively. With high ceilings, large windows, and open plan living, the design brings the outside in and makes it accessible to all four boundaries, maximising the home and site to its full potential.

The large courtyard on the north side of the block has good usable proportions and addresses the main living area to offer that indoor-outdoor living, which adds space, function, and beauty to the home. One facade is built right up to the laneway to maximise the land on the ground floor. The balcony on the first floor overlooks the lane and into trees, and therefore, has no overlooking restrictions. The bedrooms are also located on the first floor to provide a beautiful ambience and views. Bringing the outside in is a priority in the home design, which can also be seen in the unique addition of the private and relaxed freestanding bath on the balcony.

The home incorporates stylish and functional indoor-outdoor living spaces

Lightweight construction materials

Every aspect of the home has been carefully planned to provide our clients comfort and space. The home was designed to maximise the site’s potential. The first floor was constructed using lightweight materials and lightweight construction methods with timber stud framing and lined internally with Gyprock. We used James Hardie’s Scyon Stria for the external cladding and James Hardi ComTex facade panels. Using timber framing and cladding saved significant space due to the width of the cladding, creating more room in the inside spaces of the home and complements the build perfectly.

Every aspect of the home has been carefully planned to provide our clients comfort and space

Visual appeal

The home visually captures contemporary elegance wonderfully with a mix of simple, strong forms and a contemporary modern palette. Bold to light tones and textures from face brick, render, vertical weatherboards, and glass can be seen internally and externally. A focus to have natural light bounce through the home was also intentional with the expansive windows, mirrors, glass balustrade, and colour palette.

Strategically placed lighting inside and outside the home creates a welcoming sense of warmth and ambience at night. With the garden lighting, LED strip lighting on the kitchen overhead cabinets and the open shelves, and LED step flights, elements of the home light up and create a beautiful atmosphere.

The home allows plenty of natural light sources such as large windows

Innovation

Our clients love modern living and entertaining, so we made sure to highlight on-trend smart design and inclusions. We built the ideal lock and leave home for them, and building on such a tight, small, unique block has raised the bar on small lot solutions. We loved every part of this challenging project!

Using a mix of construction methods, from the double brick setup downstairs to the lightweight framing upstairs, showcases that a home design can adapt to the site, and a home build can be flexible.

Designed for modern living and entertaining

Energy efficiency

Not only was the home designed and built to adapt to our client’s needs and the space available, but also to respond to its environment. The home design incorporated the principles of environmentally sustainable design with a strong emphasis on passive thermal principles.

The large north-facing windows to the living areas will help in shielding direct light in the summer and allowing direct sunlight in the winter. We placed windows on two walls of many of the rooms to provide two-directional light and cross breezes. There is also a west-facing large window shaded by two metres of roof. The strategic placement of the windows allows an ample amount of natural light to enter the home so that the homeowners will not need general electric lighting during the daytime.

The upper level of the home using lightweight materials means that it’s quicker to cool down on the hot summer nights we have in Perth. The homeowners will only have to open the doors and windows at night to cool it down in a matter of minutes, which is more cost-effective than turning on the A/C.

Strategic placement of windows allows an ample amount of natural light to enter the home

Flexible and smart home design and building solutions by Shelford

Our team at Shelford Quality Homes takes pride in our capabilities and construction techniques when it comes to flexibility and providing the best customised solutions to our clients. Speak to us today, and let’s get started with your home-building journey!