Avondale, West Auckland
Full Home Renovation
in Avondale, West Auckland
An ageing family home reworked across seven months to house three generations under one roof
Completed January 2020
RENOVATION
Project Managed By
Kevin Yang
Managing Director
kevin@superiorrenovations.co.nz
0800 199 888
Quick answer: This was a full home renovation in Avondale, West Auckland — a tired, ageing family home reworked over seven months so three generations could live in it comfortably, including a new upstairs ensuite, a relocated kitchen and a master suite.
| Location | Avondale, West Auckland |
| Completed | January 2020 |
| Scope | Whole-house renovation — kitchen relocated, three bathrooms, master suite, full rewire, new flooring, structural changes, exterior work |
| Project manager | Kevin Yang, Managing Director |
| Project type | Owner-occupier — multi-generational family home |
One House, Three Generations, Avondale
This is the house our client grew up in. That history is the whole reason the family chose to renovate rather than sell. They could have walked away and bought something newer. Instead they decided to keep the home that meant something and make it work for the way they live now.
And the way they live now is full. Three generations under one roof — the grandparents, a young couple, and the couple’s eleven-year-old twin daughters. Five people, three sets of needs, one ageing house that had run out of room. The layout fought the family at every turn: five bedrooms but only two bathrooms, a kitchen and living area too small for everyone to gather, and almost no privacy for the adults. Sound familiar to anyone trying to fit a growing family into a home that was designed for a different era?
Avondale has plenty of houses like this one. The suburb sits on the Whau River in central-west Auckland, and much of its housing dates back several decades — solid homes, but laid out for the families of an earlier era, not for multi-generational living. The bones were worth keeping. The plan was not. Our brief was to fix the plan without losing the home.
What the Family Needed — and How We Solved It
Before any design work started, we mapped the actual problems against what the house could give us. Here is what we were working with, and what we did about it.
The problems
- Five bedrooms but only two bathrooms shared between two couples and two children
- A small living space that could not hold the family when everyone was home
- Almost no privacy for the adults
- A dated house — the family was weighing up moving against renovating
The solution
- A new bathroom added upstairs
- A master ensuite for the couple
- The kitchen moved to the other side of the house to open up the living area
- New storage built into every bedroom and the laundry
- A full electrical and plumbing upgrade
- New flooring throughout
- A complete cosmetic renovation across the whole house
Designing Privacy Into a Full House
In a house this full, privacy is not a luxury. It is the thing that makes shared living survivable. Most of the design thinking went into giving each part of the family a space that felt like their own.
A master suite for the couple
Upstairs the house had three bedrooms and a single bathroom. We brought that bathroom into the master bedroom and added a walk-in wardrobe, turning three ordinary rooms into a proper master suite. The couple now have the privacy and breathing room that a big household makes essential.
A new ensuite for the twins
The twin girls already had their own bedrooms upstairs but no bathroom of their own. One of those bedrooms was noticeably larger than the other, so we divided it into a smaller bedroom and an ensuite. That meant new waste pipes and plumbing where there had been none — which required building consent through the council. The result: two evenly sized bedrooms and a shared ensuite, so the girls were no longer queuing for the family bathroom.
“With three generations sharing one home, the real design problem isn’t square metres — it’s privacy. Every move we made upstairs was about giving each part of the family somewhere that felt like theirs, without adding a single square metre to the footprint.”
— Dorothy Li, Design Manager, Superior Renovations
Opening Up the Living Space
Downstairs, the original plan worked against the family the way these older layouts often do. A small kitchen opened into a small living room. A corridor led off to a separate formal dining room that nobody really used. Three boxed-in spaces where the family wanted one.
So we moved the kitchen into the old dining room, took out the wall between the former kitchen and the living room, and folded all that floor area into one large open living space. The family went from three cramped rooms to a single space big enough for everyone to actually be in at once.
Relocating the kitchen meant running new waste pipes and plumbing to a completely different part of the house, so this change also needed council consent. Worth knowing if you are planning something similar: moving a kitchen is rarely just a kitchen job. The plumbing follows the sink, and the consent follows the plumbing.
Managing 20+ Trades Over Seven Months
A renovation this size lives or dies on coordination. Kevin ran the whole project — more than twenty separate trades over seven months, with the family as a single point of contact the entire time. Plumbers, electricians, suppliers, manufacturers, tilers, grouters, installers, painters, designers and architects, all sequenced so one trade’s finish lined up with the next one’s start.
The house was stripped right back — old flooring, fixtures, cabinetry and paint all removed before the rebuild began. Because the work touched nearly every room at once, the family moved out for the duration. For a job at this scale, that was the right call: it let the trades work faster and meant nobody was living in a building site for half a year.
A palette built for a busy household
The design ran on neutrals — beige and white through most of the house. Two reasons. The rooms were mostly medium to small, and a light, consistent palette makes a modest room read as larger. And with kids in the house, every surface had to be easy to clean. Style mattered, but durability and upkeep mattered just as much.
Three Bathrooms — Two Renovated, One Created
Bathrooms were the heart of this job. Two existing bathrooms were fully renovated and a third was built from scratch in the divided upstairs bedroom.
- All old fittings, fixtures, vanities, tiles, flooring, showers and tubs removed
- New underlay laid across all three bathrooms
- Walls and floors waterproofed
- Damaged GIB stripped out and replaced
- Glossy white and grey designer tiles run across floors and walls
- Light plastering and painting throughout
- New vanities, toilets and showers in every bathroom, with a tub added in the master suite
- LED lighting through the bathrooms and around the mirrors
A New Kitchen, Built to Feel Bigger
The relocated kitchen was designed around one idea: make a modest footprint feel generous.
- White run through as the base colour to open the space up
- Custom cabinetry manufactured, built and installed in-house
- 16mm MRPB carcase boards for high water resistance and longevity
- 30mm engineered stone benchtop with a marble look for a touch of luxury
- Acrylic cabinet fronts for easy cleaning
- Grey Blanco Silgranit sink, chosen for durability and low maintenance
- BLUM soft-close hinges throughout
- Handleless fronts for a clean, uncluttered look
- Laminate flooring for easy upkeep
- White subway-tile splashback
- Westinghouse hob and rangehood
Every one of those choices ties back to the same brief — a kitchen that looks sharp but holds up to a houseful of people using it every day.
Flooring, Electrical and Building Work
New flooring
- All existing flooring removed
- New carpet through every bedroom, the upstairs hallways and the staircase
- New underlay upstairs and down
- Laminate through the open kitchen, dining, downstairs hallway and living room
Electrical and painting
- The entire house rewired
- New LED lighting throughout
- A smart vent ventilation system installed
- All power points and switches replaced with PDL 600 Series
- The whole house plastered, repaired and repainted
- A stainless steel digital mortise lock fitted to the main door
Building work
- Cladding to the front entrance way
- A new main door opened through the deck
- A new wall built between the bathroom and bedroom upstairs
- The wall between lounge and kitchen removed
- Subfloor repaired where needed
The Plumbing Was the Real Challenge
A whole-house renovation that moves a kitchen and creates a brand-new bathroom is really a plumbing project wearing a renovation’s clothes. Both of the big structural moves on this job — relocating the kitchen and carving an ensuite out of a bedroom — meant running new waste pipes and supply lines into parts of the house that had never had them. Each of those triggered building consent through the council.
That is the honest reality of reworking an older Avondale home: the layout you want is usually achievable, but the services have to catch up with the design, and the council has to sign it off. Getting that sequence right — design, consent, plumbing, then the visible finishes — is what kept a seven-month job on track instead of stalling halfway through.
What a Renovation Like This Costs in Auckland
Every full home renovation is priced to its own scope. How many rooms, how much structural change, how much plumbing has to move, the level of finish — all of it moves the number, and a multi-generational job like this one sits at the larger end. Rather than quote a figure that won’t match your home, use our renovation cost estimate tools to get a realistic Auckland starting point for your own project, then we’ll firm it up with an itemised quote.
💡 Quick tip: On older homes, the costs that catch people out are almost always under the floor and behind the walls — moving plumbing for a relocated kitchen or a new bathroom. Map your plumbing changes early, because they drive both your consent and a big chunk of your budget.
A Home That Works for Everyone Again
By the end, the family had the house they’d hoped for without leaving the home they were attached to. Three bathrooms instead of two. A master suite for the couple. An ensuite for the twins. A single open living space where the whole family could gather. The home that one of them grew up in now had room for the next two generations.
If you’re weighing up whether to move or renovate a home that’s run out of room, this is exactly the kind of project we take on across Auckland — and we’ll tell you honestly whether your place is worth reworking.
Avondale Full Home Renovation — Your Questions Answered
How long did this full home renovation in Avondale take?
The whole-house renovation took seven months on site. That covered stripping the house back, two structural changes that required consent, three bathrooms, a relocated kitchen, a full rewire and new flooring throughout. The family moved out for the duration, which let the trades work faster across a project that touched nearly every room at once.
Why did relocating the kitchen and adding a bathroom need council consent?
Both changes meant running new waste pipes and plumbing into parts of the house that never had them — moving the kitchen to the old dining room, and creating an ensuite inside a divided bedroom. New drainage and plumbing of that kind is building work that needs consent from Auckland Council, so we handled the consent process as part of the project.
How do you fit three generations into one existing house?
On this Avondale home it came down to privacy rather than extra floor area. We turned three upstairs rooms into a master suite with a walk-in wardrobe and ensuite for the couple, divided an oversized bedroom into a smaller room plus an ensuite for the twins, and opened the downstairs kitchen, dining and living into one shared space — all without extending the footprint.
What was used in the kitchen?
Custom in-house cabinetry on 16mm MRPB carcase boards, a 30mm engineered stone benchtop with a marble look, acrylic handleless fronts, a grey Blanco Silgranit sink, BLUM soft-close hinges, a white subway-tile splashback, laminate flooring and a Westinghouse hob and rangehood. White was used throughout to make a modest kitchen feel larger.
Can you create a brand-new bathroom in an existing bedroom?
Yes — that's exactly what we did here. One upstairs bedroom was larger than the other, so we split it into a smaller bedroom and a new ensuite. It needs new waste pipes and plumbing, and therefore building consent, but it's a common way to add a bathroom upstairs without extending the house.
Did the family have to move out during the renovation?
Yes. Because the work ran across almost every room at once — including all three bathrooms and the kitchen — staying in the house wasn't practical. For a full home renovation at this scale, moving out usually lets the trades work faster and finishes the job sooner than working room by room around the family.
How much does a full home renovation in Auckland cost?
It depends entirely on scope — the number of rooms, how much structural and plumbing work is involved, and the level of finish. A multi-generational whole-house project like this one sits at the larger end. Rather than guess, use our online renovation cost estimate tools for a realistic Auckland starting point, and we'll follow up with an itemised quote.
Do you renovate older homes across West Auckland?
Yes. We work throughout Avondale and the wider West Auckland area, and a lot of the stock here is older homes laid out for a different era. Reworking those layouts — opening up living areas, adding bathrooms, building in storage — is a core part of what we do.
Further Resources
- More completed Auckland renovation projects
- Real client stories from across Auckland
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