Renovating a Queenslander: What You Can and Cannot Change

On the Sunshine Coast and in Noosa Shire you can change almost anything about a Queenslander that the street cannot see, and much less of what it can. Interior layout, the rear elevation, the subfloor, the services and the roof covering are all workable. The front facade, the roof form, the front verandah, the way the house sits on its block, and in some cases whether the building may be removed at all, are governed by council overlay codes and are not yours to decide alone. What decides which rules bite is not the age or the charm of the house. It is whether your lot is mapped in a heritage or character overlay, and what your certifier finds when the linings come off.

First check whether your house is actually protected

There is no blanket age cut-off protecting old houses on the Sunshine Coast. The Sunshine Coast Planning Scheme 2014 handles this through code 8.2.9, the Heritage and character areas overlay code, and that code applies only to development “subject to the heritage and character areas overlay shown on the overlay maps contained within Schedule 2 (Mapping)”. If your lot is not on those maps, the character provisions do not apply, no matter how original the house is. If it is, the code’s purpose is to ensure “the streetscape character and significance of character areas are conserved and enhanced”, and its overall outcomes ask that development in a character area “complements, rather than mimics or replicates, the identified building styles in the street”.

Noosa Shire runs its own scheme with its own overlay mapping. Noosa Shire Council’s Fact Sheet 2: Building a Dwelling House confirms that where a proposed house does not comply with the acceptable outcomes in the Part 5 tables of assessment, or sits on a site “affected by a constraint”, then “a development application must be submitted to Council for assessment”. Check the mapping for your lot before you brief an architect, not after. A separate and much heavier control applies to places entered on the Queensland Heritage Register under the Queensland Heritage Act 1992. Our guide to building approvals on the Sunshine Coast and Noosa sets out who assesses what.

Character housing constraints, raising and building under: what the rules control

This is the table we work from when a client asks what is possible on a Queenslander. Every row is a real regulatory trigger, not a rule of thumb.

Can you demolish a Queenslander?

Outside a mapped character area, demolition is a building approval question rather than a planning one. Inside one, PO7 of the heritage and character areas overlay code sets a real hurdle. Council wants evidence that the building “is not capable of structural repair”, that “repair is not feasible having regard to economic, safety and health considerations”, or that it “does not contribute to the historical, architectural or streetscape character of the area”. A preference for something newer satisfies none of those. An engineer’s report and a costed repair scope might.

So the keep-or-demolish call has to be made early, with a structural engineer walking the subfloor and roof space before any design money is spent. If you are weighing the two paths on cost rather than heritage grounds, our guide on whether to renovate or knock down and rebuild sets out the trade-offs.

Raising the house: where plans come unstuck

Raising is the classic Queenslander move, and it fails for unglamorous reasons. The first is height. Noosa Plan 2020 caps a dwelling house in the Low density residential zone at 8 metres and 2 storeys, with Table 1 of Fact Sheet 2 noting that a pitched roof may go to 9 metres provided no other part of the building exceeds 8 metres. Lifting a house far enough to get usable ceiling height under it can push a two-storey wall plate straight through that number. On the Sunshine Coast the constraint is the Height of buildings and structures overlay. Council’s 2024 Dwelling houses information sheet is explicit that a dwelling house in the Low density residential zone or Tourist accommodation zone which exceeds the maximum building height nominated on that overlay triggers a referral to Council as concurrence agency, and that Council then “has the power to require conditions to be imposed, or to direct refusal of the application”.

The second is stumps. Sunshine Coast Council requires building approval for re-stumping that replaces “more than 20% of the total number of stumps”, which almost any full raise exceeds. Inside that approval the new footings must be designed for the actual site classification and wind exposure of the site, assessed under AS 2870 and AS 4055. A house that has stood on hardwood stumps for eighty years has no grandfathered right to keep them.

The third is what you find. Raising exposes bearers, joists and bottom plates all at once, and timber that has been dry and stable for decades often is not once you can see it. Concealed timber condition is a common driver of variation on a raise, so the scope needs a real allowance rather than a hopeful figure. Read how variations work under a Queensland building contract before you sign a price that assumes nothing is wrong under the house.

Building in under: the subfloor conversion

Converting the space under a Queenslander adds floor area without extending the roof or the footprint, which is why it is usually the first option we look at. Three rules are unforgiving.

Ceiling height comes first. Clause 10.3.1 of the NCC 2022 ABCB Housing Provisions requires habitable rooms other than a kitchen to have a ceiling height of “not less than 2.4 m”, with kitchens, bathrooms, laundries, sanitary compartments, corridors and garages at 2.1 m, and stairways at 2.0 m measured vertically above the nosing line. Work backwards: 2.4 metres of finished ceiling, plus floor build-up, plus the depth of the existing bearers and joists, plus a slab and its damp-proofing. That total sets how far the house has to go up, and therefore whether the height overlay will let you do it at all.

Streetscape comes second. In a mapped character area, PO8 of code 8.2.9 requires the enclosure of the under storey area of a character building to preserve “the dominant visual form of the upper storey”, and the acceptable outcome is that the work “is recessed behind the front facade of the upper storey by not less than 1 metre”. That single metre changes the floor plan: the front room under the house is a metre shallower than the room above it, and the original stumps and verandah posts stay legible from the street instead of vanishing behind a flush wall. Design around it from the first sketch rather than arguing it away at assessment.

Termite management comes third. Clause 3.4.2 requires a termite management system that complies with AS 3660.1, or has been tested and passed the tests required by Section 5 of AS 3660.3, where primary building elements are susceptible to termite attack, with a durable notice permanently fixed to the building under clause 3.4.3. New timber framing in a Sunshine Coast subfloor is exactly that situation.

What you can change without a fight

Plenty. Internal walls that carry no load, kitchens, bathrooms, laundries, wiring, plumbing, insulation and ceiling linings attract no character assessment, though structural work still needs building approval in its own right. Rear and side additions are easier than anything at the front, because the character provisions in code 8.2.9 are written around streetscape, front boundary alignment and the visible facade rather than the whole building. Glazing, sealing and insulation upgrades are governed by Section 13 of the ABCB Housing Provisions, which sets deemed-to-satisfy provisions for building fabric, external glazing and building sealing, and on a house with single-skin walls and no sarking that is the work which addresses why the place is hard to heat and cool. One caution: in a mapped character area, anything you change on the front facade, replacement windows included, is still a modification to a character building and is assessed against PO9. Wet area costs are covered in our guides on bathroom renovation cost in Queensland and kitchen renovation cost.

Contracts and licensing

The QBCC states that most residential building work in Queensland “valued at more than $3,300 (including materials, labour and GST) must have cover under the Queensland Home Warranty Scheme taken out”. The contract tier follows the same money: the QBCC sets a Level 1 regulated contract at “$3,301 to $19,999 for renovations, extensions and routine repairs on existing homes” and a Level 2 contract at “$20,000 and over”, with a QBCC-approved consumer building guide required to be given to you before you sign a Level 2. Any Queenslander renovation of real scope is a Level 2 contract.

Check the licence before you weigh the quote; our guide on how to check a QBCC licence covers the two-minute version. Roebuck Concepts holds QBCC licence 15280811, and Tom Roebuck holds individual QBCC licence 15015060. We work from Unit 1/18 Lomandra Place, Coolum Beach across the Sunshine Coast and Noosa Shire as renovation builders, on projects including Kara Court, Yaroomba. Our Grandview project at Coolum Beach won three Master Builders Queensland 2025 Sunshine Coast Housing and Construction Awards, among them Home Renovation/Remodelling Project over $1 million.