Ute Mesa

Retrofit work in a finished house of this calibre is a very different discipline from new construction. There is no pre-wire stage to fall back on, no chance to route cable through open walls, and no tolerance at all for damage to surfaces that cost a great deal to create. Every route had to be found through existing chases, ceiling voids and joinery.

We removed the entire lighting system and replaced it with a panelised smart system, moving the dimming hardware into a plant room and putting clean keypads on the walls. The wired and wireless network was rebuilt from scratch to bring the whole property up to standard. Whole-home audio was distributed across eighteen zones inside, with two further zones outside.

Smart window treatments went to every window in the house, and the entire system — lighting, audio, shading, climate, security — came together under a single app. Because of the sheer size of the property we used occupancy sensing throughout, so lighting in unoccupied rooms switches itself off rather than burning for days in wings nobody has walked through.

We also built out entertainment the house did not previously have: a dedicated home theater, and a simulator room that runs both golf and shooting — one room, two games, with the lighting and audio following whichever is loaded.

Some of the more satisfying integration here is the part that is not audio-visual at all. The bar and party room touchscreen carries lighting and streaming alongside a control for the waterfall, and keypads through the house put the fireplaces on the same plate as the room scenes. Once a control system is in place, almost anything with a contact closure can join it — and it tends to be those small conveniences, rather than the theater, that get used every day.