The Studio, a collaborative workspace

We went back to Paddington on a Saturday morning a year after we handed over the keys to Arch House. The first thing you notice is that the garden has caught up with the architecture: the arches that looked new and rendered last spring have a hedge in front of them now, and the lawn has been used.

What the family would change

Not much, and they were honest about it. The laundry could be larger. The downstairs kitchen gets more use than anyone predicted, which means the upstairs one is now mostly for breakfast. One bedroom became a study. None of that is a fault in the plan; it is a family finding out how they live.

What we learned about colonnades in Brisbane weather

The arches face north-east. In summer they throw the undercroft into deep shade by mid-morning, which is exactly what the drawings promised. In winter the low sun reaches all the way to the back wall of the kitchen. What we did not fully predict was how much the rendered surfaces would weather: a year of storms has softened the white to something closer to the colour of the original stumps, and the house looks better for it.

We photograph every project at handover. We have started photographing them a year later too, because that is when a renovation stops being ours and becomes theirs.