A Owner-Designed Renovation Of A Melbourne Apartment

Christopher Cassidy, senior supervisor of company partnerships at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and David James, enhancement manager at John Holland Team, recently embarked on their major renovation project to date.

After obtaining a mouldy and exhausted St Kilda East apartment, the pair designed and job managed its transformation about 18 months, building a timeless house with refined interiors.

In their possess words and phrases, Christopher and David share how the undertaking came collectively!

When we bought the apartment… the home was quite dilapidated and was not habitable. There have been mouldy carpets, asbestos linoleum, and the entire condominium experienced been coated in a creamy yellow paint. Even the light switches, light fittings and doorway handles experienced all been painted around. In spite of these cosmetic challenges, the condominium had this sort of beautiful capabilities, these as large metal frame windows and an open up fire.

In the beginning, we manufactured some beauty advancements, up to the position in which it was liveable, then moved in and finished off the rest of the is effective while living in the home.

We experienced accomplished a renovation earlier, but had been assisted by a builder — this was the initial time we experienced tried to handle a job ourselves. We have been extremely fired up to begin the approach since despite the property currently being in poor condition, we could see that it had lovely attributes and a good deal of likely.

The vision… was guided by the design and style of the condominium developing. The apartment complicated, named Greyfriars, was crafted circa 1949 by architect and former Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Bernard Evans. Conceived on a then-modern cooperative foundation, whereby ownership was vested in a cooperative culture in which each individual resident was a member, the building is traditionally significant as the initial of its type in Melbourne.

The period of time in which Greyfriars was designed is also extremely interesting, as style and design tendencies all through this time have been shifting from quintessential art deco to a much more article WWII modernist fashion of architecture. Our hope was to develop an interior that tipped its hat to the architectural heritage of the creating, but felt clean and appropriate for modern-day lifetime.

We designed… anything ourselves, selected all the finishes, and sourced all the fixtures and fittings. From that place on, we stepped back and just undertaking managed all our quite capable trades, which ended up typically sourced by way of Hipages. We are large believers in recognizing your strengths, and wielding electrical power instruments is not genuinely our potent go well with!

We tried out to avoid… style developments and stick to items that we felt ended up traditional and timeless. Our hope is that in 10, 20 or 30 many years time, a whole lot of the design selections we have created will even now glimpse beautiful and experience proper for the place.

In bedrooms and dwelling areas… improvements essential have been generally beauty. Aesthetic updates like new flooring and refreshing paint ended up reasonably effortless to action and instantly built these parts habitable. The herringbone flooring were being a big ticket item, but they are also possibly our favorite function of the condominium. People today often remark on them and generally check with if they are the initial floorboards, and for us, that is the maximum compliment.

The kitchen… portion of the renovation was managed by Rosemount Kitchens. The house had an initial 1940s cosy small breakfast nook and some wonderful V-groove timber cabinetry that we liked. As a substitute of tearing these aspects out and replacing them, we experienced a carpenter refurbish them — it was all sanded back again and repainted and it arrived up like new. Refurbishing as an alternative of changing these things saved us a great deal of funds. It also meant the kitchen area felt present day but nevertheless related to the aesthetic of the primary.

Resources were being selected… to complement the architectural fashion of the setting up. This way educated possibilities such as the hardwood herringbone floors in the dwelling spot and the retro checkerboard tiles in the kitchen.

From a comfortable furnishing perspective… we gravitated in the direction of pure products these types of as woollen carpets, natural linen curtains, and furnishings upholstery. Most of our household furniture is vintage or antique and has been gathered around time, and we adore that these parts are equally attractive and sustainable.

The most important challenge… was hoping to dwell in the property though operates have been currently being done, and the only way to overcome that was to chortle so you didn’t cry. It was specially difficult when our kitchen got demolished and we only had a minor electric camping stove in the lounge home to cook all our foods with. Actually though, it is wonderful what you can adapt to and I’m certain we will search back again on that time in decades to occur and snicker.

Covid delivered a great deal of more problems like provide challenges and time delays. Thanks to the many lockdowns, it finished up getting us around 18 months to comprehensive the challenge.

We experience really proud… of ourselves and the conclusion result, so considerably so that we are about to start out renovating our subsequent challenge, which is a identical design condominium in East Melbourne.

When we glimpse at the prior to and right after photos, what we have accomplished definitely hits house (pardon the pun). What at first felt like quite a grim and unloved room now feels like a much beloved property.