White Gates — Two-Bed Bungalow Transformed into a Modern Three-Bed Home.

The brief was ambitious: take a tired two-bedroom bungalow with a dark porch and dated roof, and turn it into a light, modern three-bedroom family home the owners would want to live in for the next twenty years — all on the same footprint.

We spent the design stage focused on two moves. First, a full-height glazed gable at the front — a bold, contemporary entrance that would flood the middle of the house with light. Second, a complete re-roof in grey plain tiles so the whole property read as one new home rather than a bungalow with an extension bolted on.

We took the front porch, rear walls and old garage back to shell, keeping the original slab where we could to reduce waste. Every brick and tile from the demolition was sorted on site — reusable material set aside, the rest crushed and re-used as sub-base under the new driveway.

New strip foundations and drainage were dug in one visit, pinned to level with datum markers, and poured with our own plant. That single-visit approach kept the site tidy and the programme tight.

The whole roof came off and went back on in grey plain tiles over site-cut carpentry — no factory trusses. That's a slower way of building a roof, but it lets us match the pitches on the new front gable exactly to the existing roof lines, so nothing looks bolted-on.

Full scaffold across the property gave the carpenters and roofers a safe, clear working lift, and let us bring materials up the side elevation without cluttering the front.

The heart of the design is the full-height glazed gable at the front — floor-to-ridge glazing framed in white, with a central pedestrian door and symmetrical side panels. It reads as one calm geometric composition, and it turns the middle of the house into a light-filled entrance hall.

We built the brick reveals in a reclaimed-blend red to soften the modern glazing against the traditional tile roof, and stepped the threshold onto Indian sandstone bordered by a charcoal soldier-course brick — a small detail that grounds the whole front elevation.

The detached garage at the rear was in worse shape than the bungalow — so we took it down and rebuilt it in the same reclaimed-blend brick and grey plain tile roof, so it now reads as part of the house rather than an afterthought.

The whole plot was then re-landscaped: a large Indian sandstone patio off the new rear bifolds, a fresh gravel driveway across the front with block-paved edging, and a sandstone path leading up to the glazed gable entrance.

Handover happened in the summer of 2024 — the same programme we set on day one, the same budget we quoted at the start. The owners have since described the process as "smooth and enjoyable" and the finish as "impeccable" — a testimonial we're proud to feature below.

White Gates is the kind of project we love: a tired plot, a bold design, and a family that will now live in it for years to come.