House Nerd

Posted Saturday, June 15, 2013 in: Dare to DIY Before & After

Who’s been tuning into The Living Room? (7.30pm Fridays, Channel 10). This show makes me laugh - the hosts are funny and cheeky in that wry Aussie way, and the renovation segment will have you raring to do some DIY. So when I got the chance to interview host Barry “Baz” du Bois for House Nerd, I jumped at it.

Barry has been in the building industry for more than 30 years (including three years as the president of the eastern-based Master Builders Association) and heads up the renovations segment of The Living Room, helping people transform and add value to their home. I talked to him about renovating houses for profit – an area where he has vast experience. 

Barry has done so well at flipping houses, he retired at just 46! So jealous. He now enjoys spending time with his family (he has twin babies) and has sailed around the world in his yacht - and now spends six months of the year cruising international waters.

ABOVE: Channel 10 The Living Room host Barry "Baz" Du Bois. 

Before that, he worked his way up the ladder in the building industry, starting out with an apprenticeship as a carpenter and joiner before starting his own building company. He started buying and renovating small homes and terraces for profit and soon moved onto renovating multi-million dollar waterfront abodes.

Retiring at 46 and gallivanting around in a yacht after years of property renovating? I don’t know about you but stories like that make me want to pick up a hammer and… hammer something. Or just talk to people about renovating. So with the sweet, sweet background sounds of hammering going on in our ensuite (I love it when I'm writing at my desk and Mr Nerd is renovating) I asked Barry to share his renovating for profit advice.

Barry: I always say, never fall in love with property. If you do, you will lose your money. Every property value is limited by the area surrounding it and its demographic. If the ceiling price on the street is $500K, no matter how hard you try, it's unlikely you'll sell much higher than that. The real way to make a profit is to buy well and then keep an eye on your renovation costs. It doesn't matter how good you think your property is… the limit is the limit!

BEFORE. I wrote about the extensive renovation on this Georgian house in Wembley Downs here.

AFTER

House Nerd: What are the biggest or most common mistakes you see people make when trying to renovate for profit?

Barry: With any property – the mistake you can make is to under-develop or overdevelop. You need to maximise the potential of your development but not spend so much that you end up with the most expensive property in the street. Use your eyes and your ears – get to know the area that you want to buy in. Attend lots of auctions and then look at the street you're buying in and find out what the highest recent sale is. Then consider what features that property has and you can take that into considerate during your own renovation.

BEFORE: Another peek into the Georgian house - when it had a deee-lightful 70s orange, brown and pink colour scheme.

AFTER: Updated and modernised while keeping in touch with the luxe, glamorous look the home's original builder had intended.

House Nerd: Is there a general rule of thumb guide for how far and how much to spend on ‘renovating for profit’ renovations? 

Barry: As a general rule of thumb, if it's a renovating for profit project, you should spend no more than 10% of the un-renovated property value on your project (inside and out). If it's your family home and you intend to live in it for a while, I have a different approach.

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Posted Tuesday, June 11, 2013 in: Home Envy

People buy and build on sloping blocks all the time. It’s certainly not unusual. But building a five bedroom family home on a site that drops a whopping 15 metres (a 40 degree angle) from the street to its back? That doesn’t happen so frequently!

This house and the spectacular, 240 degree views from its elevated hillside position impressed me so much that within two minutes I remarked to its owner Jen Wiggins that it was like something from Grand Designs. As it turns out, the house was actually slated for a season! However difficulties in filming schedules with the producers and presenters based over east meant it didn’t go ahead. So that means you house nerds get to see it first. The selfish part of me feels kind of smug about that.

ABOVE: This part of the house cantilevers over garden below.

TREED VISTA: I love an infinity edge pool! The view makes you think you could be in the hills. Really the house is just 800m from the ocean and ten minutes drive into the city from its Wembley Downs locale.

MAXIMISE ME: Weststyle interior designer Hayley Gardner, who was one of the designers who worked on the project, said Jen and Matt wanted to maximise the use of what would normally be considered a wasteful site, due to its steep grade, and to maintain the significant views. “At the same time, they wanted the home to be understated and appear subtle from the street,” she says. 

BEFORE: Would you try building a house on a site like this? Jen and Matt’s site drops 15m from the front to its back.

ABOVE: The sandy slope needed some very strong retaining walls.

ABOVE: The upstairs lounge has a pretty amazing view!

ABOVE: Owners Jenny Wiggins and Matt Mintz with their gorgeous daughters Maya, Noa and Evie Mintz.

This incredible and ambitious house was built by owners Jen Wiggins and Matt Mintz, who live with their daughters Noa, Evie and Maya (clearly Jen and Matt have excellent taste in names). The family moved into their newly built house just before Christmas, but Jen and Matt had owned the block for eight years before that. It took years to find a designer and builder willing to take on the challenge of the block – so long that they actually came close to selling it.

Before Jen and Matt came along, the block had actually been owned by an architect, and not even he built on it. “The block had been empty for 50-odd years,” says Jen. “It had basically been sitting here waiting for someone to do something to it!”

Adjoining a reserve, the 788sqm block had incredible views across the valley and the nature reserve. But it also had an insane 40 degree slope and was very sandy. And Jen and Matt were keen to build a very spacious home. “We always thought we would put a pole house on the block, but basically couldn’t find a builder to do it,” says Jen. “If they did, they wanted to do it cost-plus.” (If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Grand Designs, it’s if you have a very difficult site, don’t do cost-plus!) “We were getting to the point where we thought we should just sell the block."

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Posted Saturday, June 8, 2013 in: Obsessed With

Serious thinking time today my nerds. Would you buy a house where there had been a murder?

I just read this article over at Apartment Therapy and it got me thinking about this topic again. Last year one of my editors asked me to review a luxury $6m penthouse in the city. I was just getting ready to head out when she sent me another email. “Hi Maya, that penthouse you are seeing today was the scene of a murder."

She attached an old story The West had run detailing the famous murder of Lenard’s chicken tycoon Frank Cianciosi by his long-term boyfriend and business partner, Gerardus Gerrit Heijne. Heijne, a 100kg bodybuilder, had attacked and strangled Ciancisosi in the penthouse. Their row began when Heijne got annoyed at Ciancisosi because he couldn’t remember how to print documents on the printer even though Heijne had showed him loads of times before. Heijne called Cianciosi a “dumb bodybuilder”. Your mum was right when she said you shouldn't call people names.

The real estate agent didn't say anything about the murder when he emailed my editor about doing a review on the penthouse. He and I were travelling up in the elevator to the top floor and I said, all classy, hard-hitting serious investigative reporter, as is my style, “So about that murder...” And then I giggled, because unfortunately I am a nervous laugher. Bad habit.

The agent asked that I keep the murder out of the article – understandably, because whether you believe in bad vibes, negative energy, superstition or ghosts or nothing at all, a murder can dramatically decrease a home’s resale value.

"Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice."

The agent was not happy that I knew about it. “People die all the time in houses and no-one says anything about it,” he said, annoyed. Yes, but they probably weren’t strangled to death. He said the penthouse had undergone a complete makeover and looked drastically different (no blood stains on the new carpet, I take it). By the way, of course I mentioned the murder in my review. And then I talked about the European kitchen appliances.

Oh and here's a picture of the view from said penthouse.

In certain parts of the U.S an ‘unnatural death’ must be disclosed before you sign on the dotted line. I asked a lawyer friend about this and she said we don’t have such a law here. If asked about it, an agent can't lie, but they are under no obligation to tell unless asked. I think we should have such a law. Let's just presume that most murder houses wouldn't have views quite as amazing as the one above. If I were looking at buying a house and someone had been murdered there, I would want to know.

While some people wouldn’t be bugged in the slightest about it, I would be. I know I sound like a total hippy, but I think when you walk into a house you can feel what kind of energy it has. Sometimes when I see houses for work, I think a house is going to be amazing and then I walk in and feel chills. And yes, maybe if horrible things happened in a house, sure, you can infuse it with love and make it feel good again. I’m sure many people have done so.

But if I were living in a house where I knew someone had been stabbed to death? I would think about it all the time. I would keep picturing a person so terrified, dragging themselves across the floor trying to flee their killer, realising they are going to die, taking their last ragged breaths, thinking about where they’d realised it was over. (And what about moving into a serial killer’s house? Even worse!) My overthinking mind thinking about it all the time, probably a bit like Mrs Maxim de Winter in Rebecca. I would probably become consumed by it. Maybe go a bit nuts.

Then there will be people who wouldn’t care at all if someone had been murdered in the home they live in. Some might even relish the fact. A gruesome murder hasn’t seemed to deter people from wanting THIS house at this home open – does it look familiar to you?

Yes, it's the infamous

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Posted Tuesday, June 4, 2013 in: Home Envy

While I love the wow factor of a big, majestic mansion as much as the next person, I’ve always had a real soft spot for small homes. I love the cosiness and closeness of a small place. I like seeing how people make the most of every bit of space. And I love the ease of a little home – everything is close at hand, there’s less cleaning, and it’s less frustrating when you do that annoying thing when you walk from one end of the house to the other and then realise you forgot what you meant to get.

This small house is one that I think is very special – and it has remained one of my firm favourites ever since I wrote about it for Scoop magazine two years ago.

BRUTALISM MEETS COLOUR: The house is unique not only in layout but in looks. I find it very hard to describe – luckily David does a better job. “It's a bit Brutalist in a purely architectural sense, with the raw and exposed materials, but we steered away from a cold, hard box and didn't make it too masculine. So it's colourful and it's playful and it's relaxed. I endeavour with all my work to bring an aspect of joy and delight into it, and I think we achieved it with this home.” Photo Matt Biocich. 

THE AWESOME ROOFTOP DECK takes up the entire roof area. Potted plants add greenery to the exposed aggregate floor while antique and secondhand finds, such as the concrete double basin laundry tub that now gets filled with ice and functions as an esky, are well-used at parties. The benches were salvaged from the WACA ground and saved from junk yards. Photo Ross Wallace.  

A SPLASH OF COLOUR: Three banks of custom cabinetry punctuate the home’s three grey and white rooms with colour. “Clients are often too ready to default to whites and beiges and you can really miss out on the bonuses that colour brings to a space,” David says. “So forget what your real estate agent says about resale value and enjoy waking up every morning to a sea of playful yellow wardrobes!” The Mess Time hanging rack in the bedroom was designed by a young man in Singapore with whom David was in contact for years prior to building the house. “One day I had a reason to buy his product, and he made it up special for me in teak." Photo Matt Biocich.

The home is unique - a one bedroom, free-standing, architect-designed house with 93sqm of living space, built on an inner-city North Perth infill block just 200sqm in size – and it was designed especially for its owners as a perfect house just for them, without a thought to resale value or trends. Now how many houses can you truly say that of?

Owner and architect David Weir and his partner had been searching for a cheap house to live in, and by necessity and desire, a small house at that. When they came across this North Perth block, it was too irresistible a site to pass up.

“My partner and I figured that we didn't need a huge amount of space to live, just the right kind of space,” says David. “Actually, he took a fair bit of convincing, but after we audited the space we used in our rental at the time, an already small three bed, two bath brick and tile house, we realised that we lived in far less space day-to-day, and it certainly wasn't designed to make the most of the block and the usual staples like breezes and sunlight. So I set out designing something that wouldn't cost a heap and would give us a satisfying, succinct space for living.”

He is being modest – I think the concept is fantastic and this house is awesome. I want to live here (and I showed Mr Nerd photos and he wants to live here, too. Excellent...)

THE INTERIORS: “The interior was a definite mish-mash of old and new, inherited and sought-out pieces,” says David. “We didn't furnish this house, we just filled it with the things we had, and we had them because we loved them or they were utilitarian pieces that fulfilled a role. I'm no fan of moving into a place and maxxing out the credit card on a suite of furniture from wherever; I think furniture should be given a bit more credit in the scheme of your life. You spot an amazing something or other and you covet it, so you do anything to get it.” Practical, hardwearing materials like X bond screed to the floor adds thermal mass and complements the 2800mm waxed concrete ceilings and kitchen limestone benchtops. Photo Matt Biocich.

THE ROOF EAVE keeps the sun out in summer and eliminates need for air conditioning. “It’s hardly an innovative design feature, but next time you drive by a new house development spot how few have adequate eaves, if at all,” David says. Photo Matt Biocich.

THE ROOF DECK: David says the idea behind the 110sqm roof deck was pretty much, ‘wouldn’t it be cool to have a roof deck?’ – and says yes, it is! “The whole house opens up into the garden, which is equal in size to the living space, and the garden leads you up on to the roof, so the opportunity for entertaining large groups is great. The roof is engineered to take a second storey, so 60-odd people on the roof is no issue. On the flipside, there are enough separate and smaller spaces - the lounge, the dining space, under the tree, around the firepit on the roof, to enjoy intimate dinners and drinks.” Photo Matt Biocich. 

THE ROOF DECK: A blue box Danpalon skylight floods the bathroom below with sunlight during the day and also lights up to enhance the ambience of the roof deck at night. “Its form is a little nod to the chimneys that poke out the top of every house on the street,” says David.

David says the house was designed to have all the benefits that a single house on a block of land has, like a garden and no neighbours above and below like in an apartment building. The one-bedroom 'Apartment House' is smaller than most houses. It’s about the size of a large apartment, with 93sqm of living space – yet the home doesn’t feel too small. In keeping with the concept of a house designed only for its occupants, it encompasses just one bedroom, a bathroom cum laundry, an open-plan living area, and a garden space (and an amazing 110sqm roof deck, but we’ll get to that later).

Ever the architect fond of a challenge and character, David admits he tried to find the most interesting block possible – and certainly got it in the North Perth site, which only measured a tiny 200sqm. “Finding an old backyard, off a laneway, which had been used for some time as a car park for the large warehouse right next door… well that was just perfect,” he says

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Posted Sunday, June 2, 2013 in: Obsessed With

I walk through all kinds of homes every week to write home reviews for my job as a freelance journalist. I’ve seen lots of lovely display homes and have met hundreds of people who live in some pretty amazing houses.

Some of these people have been in the enviable position of being able to build (or restore) their dream home. I once did a riverside mansion in Applecross that was on the market for $25 million. It was built by a very lovely FIFO worker for himself and his wife. His idea of a dream house feature? Two toilets, in separate rooms, in their lavish ensuite. Not just his-and-hers vanities, but his-and-hers cubicles.
“We knew we had to build two toilets,” the husband told me.
“It’s the key to a good marriage,” his wife chipped in.

Fair enough. That said, a man I once met who had built his dream house in Hillarys had eight bathrooms - for a family of three! No-one needs eight bathrooms!

Maybe you don’t want to have eight bathrooms (I don’t even like cleaning one) but I think we’ve all daydreamed about what we would have in our own dream house. My list of must-haves has changed over the years. The pink queen-sized waterbed I lusted after when I was six is no longer on the list. Neither is the trampoline hallway so I can bounce from room to room (impractical for heels and carrying in the shopping). But if I could build my fantasy dream house with amazing The Sims-like features? I now have other things I would NEED...

A TOWER

Because who wouldn't want a tower? Or a belvedere, if you will. What a good place to get away and sulk or escape from bratty sisters who want you to take them trick-or-treating, like in Hocus Pocus.

Look familiar? It's the best part of Practical Magic - the house, with widow's walk atop the tower.

A WRITING SPOT WITH A VIEW TO INSPIRE (OR DISTRACT)

I’m not fussy, I’ll take either of these.

A SECRET PASSAGE

Um, only one of the greatest books of the 80s:

Give this book a Man Booker.

This book spawned my lifelong obsession with secret passages, bookcase doors and hidden rooms. It had me knocking on all the walls in my parent’s 1950s house listening for hollow noises (ok, I was seven) and dedicating a Pinterest board to secret doors.

For those of you who haven’t read the gem that is The Ghost At Dawn’s House, Dawn and her family have moved into a really, really old farmhouse in Stoneybrook with a barn out the back. Dawn was my favourite BSC member by the way. Because she was ‘an individual’. I also liked Stacey who made me want to have diabetes (did I mention I was seven. Also weird).

Dawn had often wondered if her house could have a secret passage, and one day she goes out to the barn to read and falls down a trapdoor into a secret passage. She grabs a torch and finds out that the underground tunnel goes up to the house and connects to a panel door in her bedroom wall. Creepyyyy.

Dawn and her parents suspect that the secret passage was once part of the Underground Railroad, which I have to say I actually thought at the time was a tiny little underground train tunnel (seven!).

Over the next few weeks Dawn starts hearing strange noises coming from the passage and finding weird old things on the floor. Then Dawn finds a book that says her house was the home of a 200-year-old dead guy called Jared Mullray who went freakishly missing one day. And she starts freaking out that the house is haunted by the ghost of Jared Mullray. As it turns out, one day Dawn discovers that eight-year-old Nicky Pike has been secretly hanging out in the secret passage to hide from his mean triplet brothers and the noises Dawn heard were just Nicky. She and Nicky have a talk with his parents, and they agree that Nicky can keep visiting the secret passage as long as he always tells a babysitter or a grown-up where he’s going. It will probably be only a few years until little Nicky is drilling holes in the wall of the secret passage to watch Dawn undress, but this is not mentioned.

All is well and the Babysitters Club is having a sleepover and watching Sixteen Candles at Dawn’s house when at 1am comes a rapping from inside the secret passage. Obviously not eight-year-old Nicky Pike. The babysitters drag their sleeping bags to the lounge. The book ends. This stuff is literary gold, my nerds.

My obsession with secret passages and secret doors has continued throughout my life. When I was a teenager I became obsessed with the secret room part of Tomb Raider. The amount of HOURS I spent making Lara run full-pelt through the hedge maze only to miss slipping through the sliding door to the secret room by a nanosecond. I nearly wept tears of frustration. But the elation when I finally made it! Ahhh. Like the joy when I figured out I could lock the creepy butler with his stupid rattling tray in the freezer.

I did feel guilty about it though, afterwards.

Anyway. My dream house doesn’t have to have a secret passage. A secret room will suffice.

One very cool Irish home.

A DISHWASHER

This may come as a shock to those of you (with dishwashers) because we don’t have one. We have an old original jarrah kitchen and Mr Nerd says it would be too hard to fit it in the cabinetry and also that WE DON’T NEED ONE. I know, what the hell. It is practically stone age not to have a dishwasher. It would be the equivalent of me going round to a friend’s house and seeing them scrub clothes on one of those old wooden washboards. Depressing.

How my friends see me.

So yes, I want a dishwasher. Clearly when it comes to dream homes I don’t ask for a lot.

A BALLROOM

This would otherwise be known as the party room and we would have our themed parties here. It would have polished parquetry floors so we can put socks on and slide on them.

I’ve seen a couple of old Perth houses that had ballrooms. One was Le Fanu in Cottesloe (you know the crumbling old ruin on Marine Parade?). Falling to bits but very cool.

A WONDERFUL LOCATION

Somewhere pretty and no psycho neighbours please. I want to live in a nice community. Cottesloe and Bicton by the river are lovely spots. Highlands would do nicely. I’d live close to parks and nice walks so I can take Nala for runs otherwise she’d drive me mental.

A SUPER MARIO FISH TANK

Because it’s better than coral. And you can role-play the Romeo & Juliet scene. 

A COSY HARRY POTTER-ESQUE BEDROOM

When I did high school chemistry, my friend Naomi and I spent hours drawing blueprints of our dream house-castle instead. Mr Botterill will tell you that is why I failed chem. (But I always knew I was going to be a writer or a failed architect! Why would I need to know what a covalent bond thingie was?)

Anyway Naomi and I often drew houses with Harry Potter-esque features like secret tunnels and stone walls. I love Harry Potter and even have a Pinterest board for Harry Potter home inspiration. One time Mr Nerd and I even had a giant Pictionary party with a wizard/Harry Potter dress-up theme. Clearly I am Ron Weasley. Mr Nerd is… I don’t know who Mr Nerd is.

I love all the visions that Harry Potter books conjure up – the old framed pictures and fireplaces and beds with bed warmers placed by little house elves.

My dream house would have a really cosy Harry Potter-y bedroom or living room, somewhere really nice for curling up to read with a mug of hot chocolate. Which leads me to…

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Posted Sunday, May 26, 2013 in: Home Envy

It takes a pretty special new modern house to make me weak at the knees. If you have been reading House Nerd a while you've probably noticed that I usually gravitate towards old houses and the traditional features of character homes! But when I walked in the front door of this utterly beautiful new house in Cottesloe, it just blew me away.

Right by the ocean on Marine Parade and completed just five months ago, this three-level house is the current and very, very nice home of Oceanwest Projects owner and builder Jamie Kyrwood, his wife Katherine and their son Cooper, 11. It is modern, big, commanding - and stunning. And when you step inside, it just feels good.

BLUE: There's an uninterrupted wall of ocean beyond the upper floor balcony. Pretty nice spot to watch a sunset with a glass of white wine...

LOTS OF COOKING SPACE: Lacquered cabinets in the kitchen were teamed with CaesarStone benchtops and a built-in timber table of American oak. I love this. Nearby is a built-in laptop desk.

ABOVE: The infinity edge pool is backdropped by an uninterrupted vista of ocean.

ABOVE: Sliding doors open the living area up to the balcony, where Jaime and Katherine love to watch the ships and kitesurfers. Photo by Maya Anderson.

The oceanside site Jamie built on is small – only 280sqm. But its corner block locale, wide verges and endless ocean views give the house a sense of openness. Yet it’s so high above the street that there’s a feeling of privacy, like you are high above everyone else in the world.

I loved the infinity edge pool that appears to almost disappear into the ocean beyond. And I also loved the balcony, with sliding doors that open up the open-plan kitchen, living and dining to the sea breezes. When you stand in the living area and look out to the balcony, it’s like looking at a sheer wall of ocean. You could drink white wine and imagine you are living in a Greek abode in Santorini, or in a holiday house down south in Bunker Bay. Or hey, just in Cottesloe which to many people would be heavenly enough!

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