The owners of this grand century-old Villa in central Nelson decided to give her the renovation she deserved to renew her to her former glory. After a succession of owners had carried out different alterations that introduced a lot of different themes, the Villa was a mixture of differing ideas that were not cohesive. As with most old houses there comes a time to alter the layout to better suit a modern family’s way of living. The brief was to create open plan living downstairs and to reconfigure spaces upstairs to make them more user friendly. This required the removal of the old the decommissioned chimney and fireplaces that had serviced the kitchen coal range and the living room fire in the opposite room. Once this chimney had been removed and the walls either side of it, it created a new kitchen/dining/lounge open plan living area allowing for a modern new kitchen with central island. This significantly opened up the ground floor to increased light and to access of other areas of the ground floor. The rear of the house had an existing garage and carport that were demolished and a new isulated concrete floor was added for a new main entryway, laundry and storage shed. Upstairs one of the house’s four bathrooms was decommissioned to create new walk-in wardrobes in bedrooms either side of that space. The main bathroom was modernised with a new walk-in tiled shower. A new office was created in a storeroom accessed from the master bedroom walk-in wardrobe creating a private space. On the ground floor other rooms were modernised including changing the layout of another ensuite. Outside balustrading was replaced on both ground and first floor decks. The whole exterior of the house was re-painted with roofing and cladding replaced as required. A lot of the original features were kept or repaired to create a sympathetic restoration in keeping with the original character of the house. New retaining walls were also built at the front and the back of the section to allow for new fencing and to create a large flat lawn area for the family’s use. Our clients are now very happy in their newly renovated home.