EAST AUCKLAND

A full-home remake for a young family — modern interiors, easy-care materials, and indoor-outdoor living over the water.

Completed November 2022

RENOVATION

Designed & Project Managed By

Quick answer: A full modern home renovation in Mellons Bay, East Auckland — a new kitchen, four bathrooms, walk-in wardrobes, a Kwila deck with sea views, double glazing throughout, a re-roof and a full repaint, all managed start to finish by one team.

A Family Home in the East That Needed Bringing Up to Date

A young family bought this Mellons Bay home for the reasons most people fall for a place out east — sea views, high ceilings, and room to spread out. The house had good bones. A solid structure, big windows, plenty of light. It just didn’t reflect how they actually wanted to live in it.

They wanted the whole place modern, functional, and easy to look after. They also had a large outdoor space that wasn’t doing much, and a clear idea for it: a proper deck to entertain on, looking out over the water.

So this became a full home renovation — interior and exterior, every trade under one team. The family moved out for the build, which meant we could run the full scope hard rather than working around people living on site. Six months, start to finish. That timeline held even through the Covid-era delays and a lockdown that landed mid-project.

This is the kind of job where our full home renovation across Auckland and our outdoor renovation work come together under one roof — one team carrying the whole thing from design through to the final handover.

The Design Brief — Modern, Clean, and Built to Last

The brief our design team worked to was simple contemporary: clean lines, modern, without a lot of embellishment. Dorothy Li led the design and worked through it with the clients room by room. The house already had the right framework — good structure, large windows pulling in light off the water. It needed a current look, not a rebuild.

Materials were where the brief got specific. With a young family, everything had to be easy to clean and easy to live with. So the choices leaned hard-wearing and low-maintenance: fingerprint-resistant acrylic boards, engineered stone benchtops, Melteca cabinetry, and waterproof flooring throughout. Good-looking, but chosen to take the day-to-day knocks of family life without showing every mark.

“With a busy family home, the materials matter as much as the look. We chose fingerprint-resistant acrylic and engineered stone for a reason — they hold a clean, modern feel without needing to be babied. You want a kitchen and bathrooms that still look good on a Tuesday morning, not just in the photos.”
— Dorothy Li, Design Manager, Superior Renovations

If you’re weighing up a similar full-home remake, our in-house design studio is where this kind of material and layout planning gets locked in before a single trade starts on site.

Challenges We Worked Through

No renovation of this size runs perfectly, and this one was no exception. Two things tested the programme.

The first was timing. The build ran through the Covid period, including a lockdown that stopped work on site for a stretch. We rescheduled trades around it and still brought the project home inside six months.

The second was a supply problem. Midway through, our glazing supplier let us down on a job that involved more than twenty double-glazed windows and skylights — a big chunk of the scope on a home built around its views. We made the call to switch glazing suppliers mid-project rather than carry the risk. That cost us some time and caused some frustration, and we were upfront with the clients about it the whole way. The second supplier did a great job, and the family stuck with us through it. Worth saying plainly: that’s how a full home renovation actually goes sometimes, and how you handle the rough patch matters more than pretending it won’t happen.

Midway through the build our on-site project manager moved on to a new-build role, and Sunny stepped in to see the renovation through to handover.

Kitchen Renovation — A Scandinavian-Inspired Take on Modern

Within the home’s modern remake, the kitchen took a Scandinavian-inspired direction — clean lines, a neutral palette, warmed up with wooden-textured accents. It’s a large kitchen, and the cabinetry does the heavy lifting. Bottom cabinetry is Ultra-Glaze Melteca with a wood-grain finish; the top cabinetry and pantry are white melamine to keep things light overhead. A mix of acrylic and Bestwood panels finishes it off, paired with a 30mm benchtop and matching splashback.

The detail is in the storage. Hidden bins, pull-out condiment drawers, and a concealed dishwasher keep the bench lines uninterrupted. The bigger drawers have smaller drawers nested inside them, so from the outside the run reads as one clean, unbroken front rather than a wall of handles.

Bathroom Renovations — Contemporary, Bright, and Calm

Four bathrooms were renovated across the home, all in a contemporary style that runs with the rest of the house — clean lines, a neutral palette of whites and greys, and custom cabinetry with wood-textured fronts for warmth. The standout move was working with the home’s skylights. Where she could, Dorothy placed the showers directly below them, so they fill with natural light through the day.

“This home had skylights almost everywhere, so we designed the bathrooms around them. Putting the shower under a skylight changes how the whole room feels — you get real daylight on the tiles instead of relying on downlights. It’s a small decision in plan, but it’s the thing people notice when they walk in.”
— Dorothy Li, Design Manager, Superior Renovations

Living, Dining & a Modern Fireplace

The lounge and dining were painted in neutral tones to sit with the rest of the home, and they open straight out to the deck and the sea beyond. The materials had to carry that calm through — we laid wood-textured laminate flooring in place of the old floors, and every window in the house was swapped to a double-glazed unit for comfortable, year-round living.

The fireplace was a deliberate piece of work. We pulled out the old traditional wood fireplace and closed off the chimney. The clients still wanted that traditional fireplace feel, just brought up to date, so we retiled the surround in a stone-look tile for a rustic edge and dropped in an electric fireplace — safer, more efficient, and a cleaner modern look.

• Fireplace surround tiles from The Tile Depot
• Laminate flooring from The Tile Depot

Wardrobes, Custom Cabinetry, Laundry & New Doors

We built walk-in wardrobes and cabinetry across all five bedrooms, designed by Dorothy and made in wood-look Melteca, Natural Oak, with BLUM hinges and runners throughout. The entrance got an upgrade too — a new aluminium door with a digital lock for everyday security.

Outdoor Renovation, Decking, Roof & Double Glazing

The whole reason this family bought in Mellons Bay was the view, so the outdoor work was never going to be an afterthought. We built an expansive Kwila deck that wraps the property, with stair decking running down to the lawn and aluminium fencing for safety. A timber-fenced seated area gives them a quieter spot, and the rest of the section was zoned into areas the family can actually use.

The home also had more than twenty skylights, French windows and doors, all replaced with custom double-glazed units for warmer, quieter living. On top of that we re-roofed, repainted the exterior, and renovated the double garage with new electric doors.

What a Renovation Like This Costs in Auckland

Every full home renovation is priced to its own scope — the size of the home, the materials, and how much exterior and structural work is involved all move the number. A project like this one, with a full re-roof, more than twenty double-glazed units, an extensive Kwila deck and a whole-house interior remake, sits well above a single-room update. Rather than quote a figure that won’t match your home, use our renovation cost estimate tools to get a realistic Auckland estimate for your own project.

💡 Quick tip: On a sea-facing home, the exterior line items — double glazing, re-roofing, decking and exterior paint — often carry as much weight as the kitchen and bathrooms combined. Scope those early so the budget reflects the whole job, not just the interior.

One Team, Inside and Out

This was a full home renovation in Mellons Bay handled end to end — design, kitchen, four bathrooms, wardrobes, decking, glazing, roofing and the lot — by one team accountable for all of it. The result is a home that finally matches how this family wanted to live in it: modern, easy to look after, and open to the water it was bought for.

If you’re planning something similar out east, here’s where to start:

➡ Book your free in-home consultation with Superior Renovations
➡ See how our full home renovation service works
➡ Request a free feasibility report for your project

Mellons Bay Home Renovation — FAQs

Further Resources

1. More completed Auckland renovation projects
2. Real client stories from across Auckland