From the street, nothing has changed. Botanic 8 presents as it always has: a modest 1930s bungalow, all its own, giving nothing away but a new postbox and a number. You climb the original stairs to the top, and find a whole new story within.
This is my home. After selling our larger house, an opportunity arose to buy the bungalow two doors up. I had always had a soft spot for it. It had been owned by the same family since it was built in 1930, and to me it had always been an enigma: from down the street, you could just catch a glimpse of one bay window peeking out from the trees. I would often stop, gaze up, and wonder what lay behind it.
Although the house stood in largely original form, it had undergone some unsympathetic changes over the years, including a curious 1970s "man cave" built in underneath, complete with a pool table and a tartan-clad bar, the latter salvaged from the old Monterey Hotel in Mosman Bay.
The brief was simple: keep the bungalow's exterior as it is, and reimagine the interior for our twenty-first-century creative family. A grand piano at the centre of the house. Room enough to host soirées for fifty. And a kitchen where I can happily cook for every one of them.
Gaston Bachelard wrote that our houses "are in us as much as we are in them", that even the humblest dwelling gathers our memories, desires and dreams. Botanic 8 holds to that. The bungalow keeps its old story on the outside, embedded in time, while inside a new one begins: warm, north facing dynamic light, generous but unshowy spaces, and rooms shaped around music, entertaining, and a family of makers!
