Couple Ben Campbell and Vicky Young have notched up some unusual sights and experiences while renovating and restoring period homes across Melbourne’s inner north.

The pair — a master builder and builder and operations manager — run a business named Building Evolution that specialises in extending and renovating heritage residences, plus design and architecture for such buildings.

​Their own Brunswick house was “literally falling apart” when they bought in 2019.
It had been declared uninhabitable and was so unsafe the real estate agent was not allowed to show buyers inside.

Read more ......as featured in realestate.com
Picture Credits: Josie Hayden/The Herald Sun

Concrete is one of those materials that has increased in cost exponentially since the pandemic. As we reset our project with current pricing (given a three year hiatus since the budget was initially drafted) we found concrete, windows and steel to have been impacted the most.

We partnered with our friends at Liquid Systems who  gave generously of their time and skill to help us lay the foundations for the rear of our home - the deco interpretation of the modern extension (no box at the back for us!)

As always we faced the access challenges of a tight site and inner city parking (including navigating the bus stop for the 508 to Moonee Ponds and two Telstra pits). Whilst to some that maybe intimidating, to us it is par for the course. Each of our team are experienced in the way materials are drip fed to site to ensure compliance with council storage requirements. We also use a distributed method to pump concrete in from safe parking locations via extra long line. 

Pouring concrete is an adrenaline fuelled exercise and our pour was no different.  The traffic management crew had an accident and were hours late, so Ben and I jumped in to manage this and save our several thousand dollar loads of live wet conc from ending in landfill. 

With 30 days to fully cure we were able to measure for steel fabrication and finish off framing internal to the cottage to get those tasks off the list.  

Sometimes life happens. And for our family these past few years have seen the end of life journeys for Ben's beautiful Father, Mother and Step Father. Combined with pandemic lock down years and the demise of the building industry, we made the difficult but obvious decision to put our personal renovation project on hold. 

Whilst this meant a ess than ideal situation in our own living environment, we were able to complete our contractual projects for our clients, making time for the final months and days with three treasured family members. So in our grief and the complexity of saying our goodbyes, we are extremely proud to have handed over 25 projects in the past 5 years. Some of these can be seen in our Gallery

 Towards the end of 2023 we finally found some time to breathe and dust off the plans for our very own 'Barry House' project. What became apparent was that we still very much loved the core of the building design. We were also able to refine some areas of the design to reflect the growing needs of our family and introduce some innovations that were newly available on the market. This included the introduction of an attic roof storage, covering about 2/3rds of the ceiling space over the heritage cottage. We engaged our engineer Helen, to rework the structural steel and framing plan to enable this. As luck would have it we were able to secure the services of, in Ben's words, 'one of the best carpentry framers that exists'. Not only was he exceptionally skilled, but he was considerate of the subsequent construction stages and presented ideas to enhance the design. We enjoyed working together and a grateful for this Unicorn resource who changed our project from too hard to happening.  

Building is a tough game. The highs and lows of the journey are amplified because it is a delicate balance between the vision you have for the life you will share with your family in your newly renovated home and the realities of your available budget. For us, as experienced as we are with the journey, it’s been a great reminder of the responsibility we have to deliver on our clients hopes and dreams as we embark on the same for ourselves.

During the various lockdowns we endured the complexities of town planning and obtaining our Building Permit. We used our spare time to undertake some preliminary cleaning of our home which previously housed a series of itinerate squatters. We uncovered some beautiful original features, like the door hardware, marble fireplace hearths and stained glass panels which to us was like finding gold. Our treasures were taken back to the workshop a stripped, polished and buffed back into their original condition. We’ve relocated them into storage until we can call for them at the final fix stage, which seem like it will be sometime early in 2022.

With permits in hand we were able to really get stuck into striping her back to bear bones. This mean over 10 skips of dust and debris (and god knows what else). The ceiling pretty much fell in on itself and bought with it 100 plus years of chimney soot and dust from the nearby brickworks that was trapped in the rafters. The iron roof and rafters were in amazing condition, the hardwood withstanding the test of time being the kind of raw material you couldn’t afford to purchase these days. Asbestos from the 50’s bathroom remodel was removed by our expert demo crew and we were pleased to find this was neither difficult or expensive.

Excavation works commenced in February with our digger crew scrapping the last of the debris and creating the trenches for our new ground plumbing and footings. The first of the known unknowns, what we often find in heritage homes, was revealed. The boundary trap plumbing infrastructure- basically the bit that connects the house to mains services- is cactus. It’s a pretty common problem and one of those expensive things that you really don’t have a choice about doing.

By April we had come to see that the timber weatherboards on the whole cottage needed replacing, together with some of the structural timber. A delicate task ensued to gently remove the old and replace them in exactly the same way they had first been assembled. 

And so continues the labour of love… and no doubt more known unknowns to come

Like everything else in a global pandemic  planning and building became infinitely more difficult.  For us we were blessed with the ability to continue working under Stage 3 and 4 restrictions which mean our projects, the homes we are building for our clients, could continue moving forward. Our reality TV dreams however were crushed as we received notification from the producers the show could no longer go on. Sigh.... 

Our Registered Builder Surveyor called for two additional 'Report and Consents' from council which threw a spanner in works and were completely unexpected. Whilst the cost to apply for these was relatively small (about $450 each) they required a traffic management consultant (circa $550) and detailed explanation on how our building designed adequately addressed the principles outlined in Moreland's Planning Strategy . Urgghhhhhh....

Add to that that the council staff had been deployed to work from home and their already glacial speed became even slower. We wouldn't have though that was possible however it took over two months for our files to even be opened. Such is the joy of dealing with local government. We found ourselves in the same predicament as many of our clients during the planning stage. Belting our way through outdated planning requirements and restrictions, many of which were no longer either relevant or logical for our block and design. One example was pertaining to the position of the side fence which Council require a set-back of 9m from the front boundary. Curious that the house which had been there for 120+ years starts at about 4.5m from the front boundary, as did the existing fence. It was exceptionally difficult to find anyone at Council who could see this rule just couldn't apply to our house (and most other residents in any other inner city address). Mind blowing when in our minds having a little front garden was a beautiful asset and we were simply replacing a fence that was already there, albeit pretty much falling down. 

All we wanted for Christmas was a Building Permit.  

Seems our ambitious little project has caught the attention of some local media and one blogger particularly concerned about the state of our lawns! 

Check out these links to see what they are saying: 

• https://www.realestate.com.au/news/protected-exemplary-edwardian-facade-in-brunswick-has-seen-better-days/
• https://www.realestate.com.au/news/brunswick-auction-battle-for-dilapidated-house-with-heritage-overlay/
  
• http://mow-your-lawn.blogspot.com/2011/03/39-barry-street-brunswick-vic-australia.html

One of the challenges with building is that it takes an inordinate amount of patience. For a long time it feels like nothing is happening as you wait for Council to finally open your file and take a look at your planning application. Often there will be a number of “Requests for Information” (RFI’s) which ask you to review and amend things that push the boundaries of the local planning code. Add to that the complexities of navigating a Heritage Overlay and time simply seems to stand still.  
 
For Barry House two rounds of RFI’s resulted in a scaling back of our internal atrium as the local Heritage advisor would not approve skylights in the existing tin roof. Sigh…. We also wanted a taller fence for privacy and noise reduction which was knocked back by Council. So now we’ll have to get funky with some hedging plants instead. 
 
We find ourselves now almost on the downhill run to achieving our permit. We have the neighbourhood advertising underway and hope that our new community finds our restoration an appealing option and one which adds value (rather than detracts).   
 
What kind of things are we doing whilst we are waiting? 

• Kitchen test drive – singularly the biggest and most helpful thing we have done in our planning process.  

• Shopping around – searching for period features and recycled materials takes time and patience. Sometimes it’s a willingness to drive a fair distance to find that perfect piece. Facebook Marketplace has proved the best gold mine thus far.
• Internal strip out – removing what is no longer required has been no mean feat and involved many rubbish skips and mountains of dust. First we’ve carefully removed all the pieces – fireplaces, skirting, doors etc – that we intend to reuse. We then went about stripping the old plaster and lath together with generations of carpet and rotted floor timbers to get us back to bare bones. Several of our clients have had success selling bits and pieces prior to the demolition and it’s a great way to add some money back into the budget.   
• Sustainability study – we have set ourselves an ambitious target of being a 6-star self-sustaining home which can be a challenging prospect for a weatherboard cottage. We are working with an energy consultant to define extensive insulation and ensure thermal efficiency throughout. Solar energy provisions are being designed together with battery back-up. Whilst we know this will add about $25k to the build cost we feel this will pay for it’s self in the longer term. 
• Appliance research – we’ve been to check out the appliance retailers to inform ourselves on the latest in technology. It is somewhat mind blowing to know how much diversity is available. From fridges that are touch screen enabled to steam ovens you can pre-set to have your roast ready when you walk in the door, the choices are endless. Combining our showroom learning and reviewing Choice.com for more community recommendations we are narrowing down our brand and model choices to a smaller playing field.  
• Colour planning – this is an incredibly personal part of the journey and can be a delicate area to navigate balancing your aesthetic with current trends and finding just the right shade of white (there is said to be 486 shades!). We have Blu Tacked paint samples in our current home and are living with them to see which ones we like the most over time. The next step is to assemble a shorter list and do some onsite testing once we have walls to play with in our new home. As the light varies colours can and do presently differently based on location (a bit like the way perfumes smell different on different people).   

 
As we get closer to having our permit in hand we are also finalising the design components that inform our project budget. This has meant a lot of exchanges of text, email and Pinterest Boards to create our internal ‘aesthetic’ and determine our choice of finishing’s. We have stepped out of builder mode and handed over the reins to our expert in-house designer Anita Sweeney (https://www.buildingevolution.com.au/about.html) Anita has expertly navigated by our needs and wants, creating designs which blow our mind and introduce materials and finishes we’ve never seen or thought of before. Traversing the fine line between our wish list (big) and our budget (small) we are in awe of what has been achieved. With Anita’s superpower in storage maximisation and family functionality we are confident our Kitchen is an award winner in the making. 
 ​

We have come across some treasures in the house too including a stained-glass cabinet and some armchairs we are working on restoring. There were also some fireplaces and ceiling roses in the house that we are going to use in the building process as well as some Hoffman bricks which will feature in our front pathway.
 
We tracked down an original clawfoot bathtub in Bendigo which had been in the same family for over 90 years! We will be using a local service provider to resurface our beautiful tub and restore its unique chrome feet. Vicky dreams of soaking in this tub in their new home. But in the mean time she has tested it out in the backyard! 
 
Our favourite new purchase so far had to be the sensor tap for the kitchen. It just makes so much sense especially for a family that loves to cook like ours. In terms of purchasing fixtures and fittings we are focused on tracking down the tapware and lights we want to use in our home. These will be the first items required for the rough in during the construction process.

We are currently awaiting round two of feedback from council for the planning permit. We have been advised there may be an issue with our Dawson Street side atrium conflicting with the requirements of the heritage overlay, though we wait in hope that we can work around this. Our next task is to finalise our research and preferred approach to solar power. We are exploring options available and considering what will best meet our family’s needs. We’ve been Inspired by our new neighbour Peter who hasn’t paid a power bill in 5+ years!

We shared in our last post that we would be having our first filming session of our building journey. What an experience! We filmed for most of the day and were intrigued by the process. It seems that to get a short clip of only a few minutes, so many takes are required and then in post-production it is whittled down to what you see on television. A time consuming, but exciting and interesting process so far! Our next filming days are the 29th and 30th of January.  ​

We have some exciting news to share that we have been holding off announcing until the final bits of paperwork had been signed. But now we can let the cat out of the bag! Barry House is going to be documented on film! We are very excited to have this opportunity to document the ups and downs of the reconstruction process and to see the transformation process on film. Barry House is a special part of Brunswick history (check out our previous post about 'The Process of Beginning a Project' for more info about the history of the house) and it is our family home, so it holds an extra special space in our hearts.

This week the first filming session takes place at Barry House! We have been madly preparing for the arrival of the film crew and will have our first interview shortly! The crew will primarily be focusing on capturing the current state of the house as it is. This will be so interesting to see once the house is complete. They will ask us questions relating to the condition of the house and what our plans are. We will let you know how it goes!

In other news, the wonderful women at Mani Architecture have finalised our plans after going back to the drawing board to make a few changes. We were absolutely thrilled with the initial direction, however wanted to make a few changes to the living space to suit how we use our living space currently. We asked for a butlers pantry for somewhere to store our baking equipment, bulky appliances and to hide dirty dishes when guests come over! We also have big dinning nook to host our family dinners and have opted for a smaller laundry as this isn't something that takes up a lot of space in our home currently and it works well, so we didn't feel the need to take up valuable real estate with the big laundry. 

We got the revised plans back and couldn't be happier! Mani totally nailed our brief and we are becoming more and more excited to see this home come to fruition in 2020!