Areas we serve
Renovations & extensions in Inner West & Ryde.Licensed Sydney builder — Strathfield, Rhodes, North Ryde, Silverwater and nearby
Our work here
4 completed projects in Inner West & Ryde.
Sydney's Inner West and Ryde corridor is R&Q Interiors' most varied work, because the housing is varied. Four of our projects sit here: a whole-home renovation of an older Strathfield house, a high-end apartment fitout in a Rhodes tower, a dark-timber kitchen in North Ryde, and a large custom entertainer's home in Silverwater.
Character houses and new apartment towers sit within a few streets of each other through here, and they are two completely different builds. One asks you to keep and restore what is worth keeping. The other asks you to work inside a strata building's rules, lift schedules and noise windows without upsetting sixty neighbours.
Recent work
Projects in this area
R&Q Interiors delivered a high-end custom renovation in Silverwater, created for private entertaining — a dedicated dining room, a karaoke lounge and a chef's kitchen for private events. A backlit marble feature wall anchors the main dining room, paired with a large-format LED display, while a dedicated dumbwaiter lift carries dishes from the kitchen straight up to the dining room.
R&Q Interiors built a striking dark-toned kitchen in North Ryde — rich timber-veneer joinery paired with a book-matched Calacatta-gold marble splashback and a black stone benchtop, premium integrated appliances and a statement rangehood.
R&Q Interiors built a high-end apartment renovation in Rhodes finished to a hotel standard. Herringbone oak flooring runs through the living and dining zones, a stone feature wall with concealed LED lighting carries the television beside a fluted oak panel, and custom joinery adds a lit oak servery niche, a recess for the wine cabinet and a glazed steel-framed partition.
R&Q Interiors built a full renovation of a Strathfield home, rebuilt room by room while keeping the character of the original plan — the arched opening to the kitchen was retained and reframed. Shaker joinery with brushed brass hardware runs through the kitchen, laundry and every wardrobe, timber floors were laid throughout, and the bathrooms and laundry were re-tiled floor to ceiling in grey terrazzo-look stone.
What to expect
Two kinds of project, two ways of working
- Character-home renovations that keep original features — on the Noble project in Strathfield we retained and reframed the original arched opening to the kitchen
- Full re-tiling, waterproofing and rebuilds of bathrooms and laundries in older homes
- Apartment renovations delivered under strata rules — building access, lift bookings, permitted work hours and protection of common property
- Custom joinery and stone work: herringbone flooring, stone feature walls, integrated lighting
- Large-format entertaining spaces where the brief goes beyond a standard kitchen
- Council DA or CDC approvals coordinated across several different local councils
R&Q Interiors finished the Walker apartment in Rhodes and the Noble house in Strathfield to a similar standard but ran them completely differently — one inside a residential tower, one on a free-standing block. Both project pages show the full galleries.
Bathrooms, kitchens and single-room work — what it costs and how long it takes +
Local planning
Heritage is the control that decides your pathway here
The Strathfield ring is older housing, and the binding constraint is conservation-area character rather than lot size. Strathfield Municipal Council has 17 heritage conservation areas across its LGA, managed under clause 5.10 of Strathfield LEP 2012 and Part P of the Strathfield DCP 2005. The City of Canada Bay — Concord, Five Dock, Drummoyne and Rhodes — lists over 500 heritage items and 20 conservation areas in Schedule 5 of Canada Bay LEP 2013. Burwood's conservation areas include the Appian Way, and its interwar streets are described in Council's own material by a high proportion of original bungalow and cottage houses, many built in a short window between 1920 and 1925, with consistent face brick, timber detailing and unbroken roof and fence lines.
The term to know is contributory item. A house can sit inside a conservation area and contribute to its character without ever being listed as a heritage item in its own right — and it is still controlled. Owners are often told their house 'is not heritage listed' and reasonably assume they are unconstrained. Inside a conservation area, they are not.
What that means in practice: a heritage or conservation-area overlay takes the project off the CDC pathway and onto a council DA, which is measured in months rather than weeks. It also shapes the design — roof form, face brick, window proportions and the street elevation all have to hold the streetscape together, which is the same matching problem R&Q Interiors treats as the craft in extension work. Strathfield Council runs a free heritage advisory service; on a conservation-area property it is worth using before design money is spent.
Sources: Strathfield Council — Heritage · City of Canada Bay — Heritage listings · Burwood Council — Heritage in Burwood
Extensions in Inner West & Ryde
Extending an older house without wrecking what makes it good.
The extension R&Q Interiors is usually called into around Strathfield, Burwood, Concord and Croydon is a rear addition on an older house — opening a dark, compartmented back-of-house to the garden while leaving the street elevation exactly as it was. That is the right instinct here, and often the only one a conservation area will accept.
The work is different from building on a large open block. Older houses in this ring are frequently solid brick rather than brick veneer, so the walls you want to open are carrying load and the answer is an engineered beam, not a simple stud reconfiguration. Floors sit on joists and piers rather than a slab. Ceilings are higher than modern stock, so the new roof and floor levels have to be set deliberately or the join reads as an afterthought from inside the hallway.
Second-storey additions happen here too, but a heritage or conservation-area overlay changes the question from 'can the structure take it' to 'what will the streetscape accept' — which is why we confirm the overlay before anyone pays for design.
Home extensions in depth — what moves the price, DA vs CDC, second storeys +
Suburbs we cover in this area
Strathfield · Rhodes · North Ryde · Silverwater · Concord · Burwood · Homebush · Ryde · Meadowbank · Five Dock
Building somewhere else in Sydney? We work across all Sydney metro areas — see every area we serve +
Start a conversation
Planning a project in Inner West & Ryde?
Tell us about itOr call 0431 837 378 — R&Q Interiors, NSW Builder Licence 378767C.