Sometimes, the right home comes along when you least expect it. This was the case for Studio Dot director Steele Olney and his wife, art teacher and gardener, Rhiannon Dawson.
“Our main goal was to buy a place with a large backyard,” says the architect. “We were outbid at auctions and couldn’t find the right place.”
Then, in 2016, they examined an old weather board in Lorne, a quaint suburb of Maitland, New South Wales.
The house was in dire need of renovation – the hardwood logs were rotting and the walls were cracking. However, it had a special charm, reminding them of a farm cottage with its wrap-around veranda and abundance of fruit trees including mango, orange, lemon, lime, tangerine, feijoa and avocado.
“We were ready for a renovation project, but really, we were addicted to the idea of raising kids in this backyard,” Steele says.
With the initial updates focused on returning the house to livable condition, Steele and Rhiannon knew they wanted to restore the property sensitively, retaining existing features wherever possible.
“We kept the original ceilings, floors, weatherboards, doors and windows,” Steele says.
He also enlisted the help of his friend and passive house builder Evan Graham, who built the addition.
“Evan was actually the person who opened my eyes to the world of passive design as a better way to build around 2018, and I’ve never looked back,” says Steele.
By the time the couple had saved enough money to expand the house in 2020, Steele was a certified passive house designer eager to put his knowledge of energy-efficient building standards into practice.
“For the new 40sqm extension, it was primarily about reducing the need for energy inputs,” he says. “We were somewhat hampered by the performance of the existing house, so we wanted to make sure that anything we added was built to perform well,” he says. .
Drawing on basic Passive House principles, Steele chose double-glazed wooden windows. Vapor tight roof, walls and floor; And a continuous layer of insulation to improve the overall thermal envelope of the house.
Weatherboards removed from the existing slope were given new life on the extension’s high roofline, with high-height windows to capture north-eastern sunlight in winter and reduce reliance on artificial heating.
For the design, Steele was inspired to “flip” the typical pairing of a brick house with weatherboard—an architectural combination common in their suburb. Their old cottage now hides an addition clad in recycled brick, with minimalist interiors allowing their verdant native garden to take center stage.
The new open-plan kitchen, living and dining area is the quiet hero of the floor plan, opening directly onto the backyard the family has always dreamed of.
Adding to the home’s sustainable credentials, Steele replaced most of the gas appliances with electric, and installed a 6-kilowatt solar system on the roof. Next on the list is switching to electric water heating – “the final piece of the puzzle”.
Steele and Rhiannon mostly handled the interior fit-out themselves, as time allowed, over several years, which is why it took some time to complete the house. “We now have three children, Dot (9), Flo (6), and Art (4),” Steele explains. ‘When we first started the renovation, we had one!’
But the experiences along the way made this house even more emotional, as well as shaping the sustainable approach Steele now takes to each of his architectural projects.
“It was important for us to take the time to do it right,” he says. “It was something I really believed in, and I still believe in.”
This story originally appeared in Issue 01 of Design Files magazine, and is on sale now.
