Heritage Overlays: What You Can and Cannot Change
14 August 2026
A heritage overlay is not a ban on renovating. It is a set of rules about what is visible from the street — and the rear of your house is usually fair game.
From weatherboard cottages in Yarraville to brick-veneer homes out through Point Cook. The west spans two very different kinds of house, and we extend and renovate both from the same office.
House extensions
The inner west is full of small weatherboard homes with sound bones and unusable layouts. A rear extension is usually the cheapest way to get a kitchen, living and dining space that works, without touching the frontage.
Where the original detailing is worth keeping, we keep it. Where it is not, we say so rather than charging you to restore it.
Full renovations
Restumping, reframing where it is needed, rewiring and replumbing, then reconfiguring the plan and finishing it. On a house of this age the work behind the walls is most of the job, and it is where a cheap quote goes wrong.
Site conditions are priced from the survey rather than left as a provisional sum, so the figure holds.
Yes. We take extension and renovation work right across the west, from the inner-west cottages out through Point Cook, Werribee and Tarneit.
Yes. Once the survey and any soil report are in, site costs are itemised in the contract rather than left as a provisional sum.
It usually should be. Restumping is priced with the renovation so the floor levels are corrected before new work is built on top.
Yes. Heritage advice and the planning response are handled as part of the project where an overlay applies.
A heritage overlay is not a ban on renovating. It is a set of rules about what is visible from the street — and the rear of your house is usually fair game.
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