Homes

House of the Month - Small Wonder

After years of designing houses for others, architect Tanya and her carpenter husband Larry relished the idea of renovating their own home. “We really wanted to work on a project together,” says Tanya. The pair were keen to stay in inner-city Sydney, but it took them over six months to find the right property. “We were looking for one that had the potential to put a bathroom upstairs without extending,” says Tanya. The couple’s patience eventually paid off when they found a three-bedroom corner terrace with just the right possibilities, although it wasn’t love at first sight. “It was pretty awful, and very small and poky!” recalls Tanya. After snapping it up, they decided to transform the house into an open-plan, modern home while refurbishing damaged period detail. Their initial deadline, however, was brought forward when Tanya found that she was pregnant, just weeks after moving in! They had always intended to split the reno into two parts, but stage one, which focused on doing up the front of the house, had to have a finish date before baby Sonny – now a year old – came along.

Photo by Simon Whitbread May 25, 2012