Renovations & Extensions
Renovating, extending or reworking an existing home to the same high-performance standard as a new build.
Written for people planning a home in Nelson, Tasman, Richmond, Motueka and across the top of the South. New to the terms below? Our glossary explains them in plain English.
High-End Renovations and Extensions: Doing It Properly
Why renovations are harder to price than new builds, what you can and cannot fix in an existing home, and how to decide between extending and starting again.
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Renovate or Rebuild? Making the Call on a High-Performance Home
How far you can realistically lift an existing home’s performance, where the ceiling sits, and the honest test for when rebuilding returns more than renovating.
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Whole-House Renovation: A New Zealand Guide
What a whole-house renovation actually involves, how to decide between renovating and rebuilding, why renovations carry more unknowns and how open-book pricing handles them, what an older home will and will not let you change, and how to renovate to a warmer, healthier standard.
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Renovating a Cold, Damp Villa Into a Warm, Dry Home
Why older villas are cold and damp, and how a sympathetic renovation adds insulation, better glazing, gentle heating and ventilation to make a character home warm and dry without losing what makes it special.
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Retrofitting Insulation and Double Glazing to an Existing Home
How to make an existing New Zealand home warmer and drier: what you can retrofit, how to add ceiling, underfloor and wall insulation, the double-glazing options and their trade-offs, the sensible order to do the work, and the real gains in comfort and running cost.
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Adding a High-Performance Extension to an Older Home
Yes, you can build a warm, airtight, efficient extension onto an old house. The real work is the junction where new meets old: matching insulation lines, sealing air leaks and avoiding a cold bridge, then deciding how far to upgrade the existing home so the comfort is not undone.
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