When family is everything and pizza is a close second, the result is an elegant renovation in Northcote. Personalised for a family of four that enjoys nothing more than to share their love of food, cooking, and entertaining, pride of place is the figurative fireside created by the open kitchen and dining pergola, centred around the recycled red-brick pizza oven.

“Our clients are big cooks, and spend much of their weekends cooking and baking and making jams or preserving things,” says Breathe project architect Emily McBain. Anything not immediately devoured by the family and their friends are given as gifts or stored to be enjoyed later.

Pizza is something that doesn’t last long in anyone’s home, of course, but cooking in their homemade pizza oven was not only a Friday night ritual for the family, but had turned into a regular gathering of extended family and pizza-loving friends.

When it came time to renovate then, part of the brief was to incorporate a new recycled red brick pizza oven into an outdoor kitchen and entertaining space to keep the tradition rolling.

Homeowners Penny and Stuart are both from the country, and had grown up on large properties with fond memories of gathering around bonfires with family and friends. The project was named Fireside around that same idea. “The pizza oven became this figurative fireside, a place where they would all congregate,” Emily explains.

The new outdoor kitchen, dining and pizza oven sits on a deck and covered pergola between the extended home and workshop.

“It's kind of this space where they can be in the outdoors, but comfortably,” Emily says. On cold nights, they can gather around the heat emanating from the pizza oven, and energy-efficient infrared heating brings additional warmth when needed. On summer days and nights, the doors of the house can be flung open to bring in the breeze and create one seamless space.

Time for an upgrade

Despite having been renovated in the past, the ‘80s extension on the original double-fronted weatherboard added neither light nor connection to the garden. It was dark and cramped and the layout made it difficult to make good use of the available space – the formal dining room, in particular.

To transform their home, they turned to Breathe, a B Corp architecture firm with sustainability and liveability at the forefront of its design philosophy.

Breathe soon decided there was little need to extend the home’s footprint more than a metre (keeping both the budget and environmental impact in check), and much of the existing house could be improved upon without a major overhaul.

“We actually retained most of the existing floor plan, and only extended about a metre to the north,” explains Emily. “There was so much floor area, but it just wasn't really working for them from a functionality perspective.”

They retained the heritage details of the original home, but the front bedrooms on either side of the hallway leading from the front door were treated to new joinery, paint and floor finishes. The windows were replaced with double-glazing throughout, and insulation added to the walls, inner floor and roof cavity.

The new extension, replacing the ‘80s one, continued the double-gable form of the existing roof over the new kitchen, living and dining space and on to the outdoor pergola and workshop. A vaulted ceiling brings light and volume to these areas of congregation, along with a sense of warmth and safety.

Going green

As well as a more liveable home, the family wanted to live more sustainably and enjoy lower energy bills, Breathe’s director of houses Madeline Sewall told ArchiPro.

“A big part of their brief was about improving the thermal efficiency,” Madeline says. “It was an old, single-glazed leaky weatherboard house so they were really keen to really tighten up that thermal envelope to improve comfort year round.”

Breathe has been carbon-neutral since 2017 and tends to attract clients who are environmentally conscious and open to ideas about how to live more sustainably. Switching off gas and onto all-electric GreenPower is one of the ways Breathe gently encourages them to do this.

Fireside’s owners are keen cooks, however, and had just splashed out on an expensive dream oven with a cooktop that ran on gas. “We did kind of win them over,” Emily says. “When we were on the site, they actually sent it back and got the induction version and removed the gas connection from the site. That was a pretty exciting and rewarding part of the project for us.”

GreenPower is an option offered by most electricity retailers, ensuring that all electricity used in a home is generated by renewable energy sources. At Fireside, additional solar panels were also added to the roof, facing east and west to capture the morning and afternoon rays. Locally sourced recycled or recyclable materials were used for the renovation wherever possible, along with FSC-certified timber and veneer joinery, and bluestone tiles from nearby Port Fairy.

“The pergola itself is made out of recycled blackbutt and then the bricks for the pizza oven were a combination of recycled bricks, including some from the site,” Emily says. A chimney had been taken down inside and many of those bricks were reused to make the pizza oven.

As for the indoor kitchen, ample storage and bench space has enabled plenty of baking and making, eating and storing of jars of jam. The island allows family members and guests to circulate freely around the kitchen, and there’s extra space for the girls to do their homework and for guests to be entertained while dinner is being prepared. “It allows them to congregate in that space,” Emily says.

This home isn’t all about being together, however. In fact, it was redesigned with the needs of every family member in mind. Each of the two girls now has a desk built in to the joinery in their rooms, Penny has a study/flexi space of her own, and Stuart has the workshop at the back. “Within a modest footprint, they each have their own space they can retreat to when they need to,” Emily says.

Pepper, the dog drove some of the design decisions too. A dog-bed-sized niche at the base of the workshop wall facing the outdoor entertaining area gives Pepper a comfortable place to snooze, and it’s within sniffing distance of whatever’s cooking – you never know when a morsel might be offered!

Location: Northcote, VIC

Builder: Never Stop Group

Completion: 2021

Photographer: Tom Ross