Jonathan Wilson-Fuller is very sick. His illness is unique and his condition remains undiagnosed. No one is sure why one step outside could almost kill him but he hasn't left his bedroom in thirteen years.

Jonathan does not like the description, but he lives in a bubble.

He has a severe intolerance to most chemicals. He cannot leave his house.

"I really don't see myself as different from other people. I mean I like sport - I watch cricket religiously. I watch movies. I like playing computer games," he said.

"I'm the same as every other teenager in this culture I would expect. The main physical differences I suppose would be the obvious ones - the ability to go outside, the ability to walk. But I don't consider it that important. My mind can go outside."

Jonathan's early years were much like those of any other child - he spent time with his grandfather and had family holidays at the beach.

"I can't tell you what I remember about the last time I went outside," he said.

"I remember a storm - I like storms - lightening coming over the waves."

But at the age of four something happened to Jonathan that changed his life forever.

"The very first time it happened he just said 'mummy' in the most plaintive of tones," Jonathan's mother Yvonne Wilson-Fuller said.

"And when I picked him up he went in to this foetal position and said 'mummy' again as it sort of faded off and he was just so cold. I couldn't believe how cold he was."

Mrs Wilson-Fuller was frightened and confused but it happened time and again.

Family outings became nightmares and as Jonathan's condition deteriorated, it was soon clear to her he was reacting to the outside world.

"We were able to associate, for instance, going to the shopping centres and car parks, smells of petrol, hairdresser shops, people with perfume," she said.

"You gradually knew that those things were going to cause troubles."

At the age of ten Jonathan began his enforced isolation.

Each day became a struggle to keep him free of the smells that made him so sick.

Trial and error was the only way of keeping him alive.

"Going outside's very nice but if you pay for maybe an hour outside with a week or two of pain, that's not really a balance," Jonathan said.

"It just wasn't worth it."

"We've gone through a process of adjustment and readjustment and what you do if you observe something that doesn't work or causes him pain, so you try to work out what that was and modify it," Mrs Wilson-Fuller said.

Jonathan suffers incredible pain because of his illness and it's that pain which runs this household.

"There really isn't a routine. The predictable part is that at some part of the day I will probably wake up and at some point of the day I probably will go back to sleep," he said.

Jonathan has to be very careful about what he eats.

His diet is limited to a few foods including organically-grown rice and potatoes but the main component is pears.

"Mummy makes pears into pear jam, apricot jam, marmalade and that's just the jams and marmalades. And pears go into just about everything," he said.

"Each day gets more varied. Mummy's always inventing new recipes. She's a culinary genius, for which I am eternally grateful. My diet is extremely varied,"

Does Jonathan dream of leaving his room, to be able to live like others?

"I have seen Antarctica both on the television and the slides a friend bought for me," he said.

"I have seen the Amazon rainforest, I've seen the surface of the moon. For goodness sakes, I've seen the surface of other planets. So I'm very well travelled you could say."

But Jonathan's world is about to expand.

Malcolm Edwards runs AW Edwards, a building company.

Jonathan's grandfather Ozzie worked as a bricklayer with the company for 40 years and today that loyalty has paid off.

"When we saw how Jonathan was living we tried to improve the environment that he was in and design certain aspects to his house, so that the light would get into his room," Mr Edwards said.

Mrs Wilson-Fuller asked Mr Edwards for help to soundproof a compressor that provides pure air for Jonathan.

More than two years later, Mr Edward's builders are still renovating the house in the hope that one day Jonathan might be able to leave his room - and they're doing it for nothing.

"At the moment we've probably spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars but you've got to realise there are a lot of subcontractors and suppliers who've come to the party and helped pay for the job," Mr Edwards said.

This is a building site like no other.

Any hint of a smell from paints, sealants and glues will knock Jonathan for six, so a lot of work has gone in to making sure he's protected at all times.

Mrs Wilson-Fuller cares for her son 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week.

She is more than happy to live on a building site if it means a better life for her son.

"It's a major move forward in creating a future for Jonathan and a major move forward in establishing a better environment and a better world and hopefully a better quality of life," she said.

But Jonathan believes his life is pretty good already.

And there's much more he wants to do, even from inside his room.

"There's a great deal I want to do. It's not a matter of passing the time, it's a matter of finding the time to fit it all in," he said.