Maybe you have guessed but this is Jo-Anne & Michael’s house in Edithvale. They love colour & luscious eye catching textiles which they have been collecting for years. You can certainly see that they don’t always design in their own taste. Jo-Anne’s love of cooking and entertaining shines through in this abundant & eclectic home.
Where do we even start on this beautiful gem? Although Art Deco, the existing stunning timber wall panelling & picture rails throughout, screamed ‘Arts & Crafts’ style to us. After a little bit of research, our clients in Bamfield Street, Sandringham, agreed & let us roll with our ‘vision’. The blinds, light fittings and other décor all are symbiotic with this lovely style, mostly sourced from the US. The house oozes a warmth & elegance that has been respected throughout the whole transition. The detailed & accurate manufacture of the cabinetry throughout shows the brilliance of our favourite cabinetmaker, an artisan skill that has been lost on most.
The client’s brief on this job in Elsternwick was very definitive; she wanted a much larger walk-in robe & ensuite, a much larger main bathroom and an elegant powder room. As the powder room wasn’t in the existing footprint and we needed to make each space bigger, the only way that we could achieve to create larger spaces was to design and have built an extension to the boundary that could hold the ensuite & walk-in robe. The other insistence by our client was to create rooms to be in tune with the existing grandeur of her beautiful brick Victorian. She wanted us to hide the extension so that it didn’t looked tacked on either. She wanted it to also be very functional at the same time. Have a look at the exterior photos. You couldn’t tell and we have even designed matching leadlight to match the gorgeous originals.
Our client in this Clifton Hill job needed to be re-organised and given a lot more storage (there was none in the house). We also encouraged him to let us design and build a small extension on the side of his house. This would include an ensuite and extra robe space. Being a client with slightly eccentric taste and having a collection of unusual artefacts & textiles collected from around the world, we played with colour and interesting pieces as we designed the joinery and finishing the job when we’d completed furnishing the whole house. Being outside in nature was very important to our client, so we featured all of the main rooms overlooking a beautifully landscaped, wall garden.
Just as our clients’ in the Hampton home were about to build, they ask us to ‘cast an eye’ over the drawings to make sure everything worked properly. After a lengthy briefing session, we completely re-worked the house drawings, moving walls and recreating more interesting spaces. We incorporated lovely window seats; a functional butler’s pantry; a very interesting ensuite bathroom; a more functional walk-in robe and detailed all of the other rooms to make them work properly. We designed joinery throughout that was in keeping with the style our client had grown to love. She had multiple images in a scrapbook of houses she loved the feel of that she had compiled for a long time before the project.
When a client is up for anything, so are we! Located in South Yarra, this client often had us laughing out loud during this project. The carpet in the living room, (not photographed), matched the Kermit green walls in the kitchen. How about the cool wallpaper in the powder-room & Raspberry walk-in robe? The kitchen was so compact and they were spitting their storage seams, so we designed the kitchen around the whole kitchen/dining area, using up every bit of space whilst still maintaining a lovely spacious & light interior. We even fit in a bi-folding mini-study. With 3 kids, that will be well used. All in all fun, funky inner-city living!
Located in Wallace Grove, Brighton, this home was perfectly suited to our quirky clients who were very interested in contemporary form & function. It had an interesting blend of original Californian Bungalow with a still edgy 20 year old architectural extension. We didn’t want to offend the original house either, so we combined subtle Australian veneers with a more conservative flat alabaster door. We believe this combination created a timeless blend, whilst honouring our clients quirkiness. The existing architectural features that were staying in the home were the plywood flooring and squareset detailing. The added surprises included a red powder coated support post & a double-glazed tempered glass splashback behind the cooktop. This means they could blissfully watch their chooks run past as they cooked. With minor structural work, we transitioned a relatively dark U-shaped kitchen. We also added an oversized laundry and very compact dining room into a light-filled, user-friendly space.
This Sandringham client described herself as ‘boring beige’ and wanted a very neutral interior with plenty of storage. We re-worked all of her draftsman’s working drawings to provide just that. Although we would describe her as very elegant, with discerning taste. We subsequently created a beautiful interior with abundant storage & finished the job by furnishing their home to be harmonious with this gorgeous Edwardian beach house.
This Elwood home was featured in a 2004 Home beautiful magazine. We completely redesigned and changed the entire layout of this house just prior to builder starting. There were huge problems with how the spaces worked together. The clients also couldn’t work out why the architects plans made them feel uneasy. We redrew it and pulled it together to create a house that deserved the best view of the bay in Elwood. This job has aspects of what is now essentially the very popular Hampton’s style, but created 11 years ago.
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