We turned up at an open house for the worker's cottage in July 2011 on a whim. The week before, we’d been looking at new builds in Smithfield village. ‘No, no,’ I had said. ‘I want a house with character’ (insert mild feelings of regret here).
The Renovator's Dream
The 'cottage' certainly had that. Marks all over the walls, even a secret hidey-hole in one (the neighbours have since suggested that drug dealers had lived here at some point), cigarette butts in the floorboards under layers of stained carpet…it bared the scars of years of being ‘lived in’.
The walls were all kinds of scary: bright orange in the hallway, purple in the bathroom, blue and green in the bedrooms, and the real estate had had to put a fly-screen up in the kitchen to stop the pigeons from getting in through a large unexplained opening in the wall.
We fell in love with it. On the spot.
The Inspiration...
It probably had something to do with the fact that some days before, we had gone to an open home at another Queenslander, nearby. This one was the ‘after’ to our before. It had been done up wonderfully, with a huge balcony out the back and floor-to-ceiling French doors that opened up onto the garden.
The real estate agent was pulling out all the real estate cliches with that house; first of all it was called a ‘champagne viewing’, and we were handed a glass as we walked up (cheeky but admittedly appreciated), she’d had some mood music playing and even a roast dinner cooking in the outdoor kitchen!
Well, her dirty tricks worked…sort of. Although the house was way out of our budget, it made us think about what was possible.
There were several things about our cottage that we loved. For one thing, it was already raised, which meant we could legally build underneath, maybe for a second income, maybe for a commercial premise one day. It had beautiful floorboards once we looked under the manky carpet (and pulled out all the rubbish between the boards). It was close to the city. It had a good-sized backyard.
Renovation Potential?
It had potential. We made excited faces at each other when the real estate agent wasn’t looking…and then told her that it needed a lot of work and we really didn’t think it was worth that much.
Our cover was blown when ten minutes later, back in the car, we phoned her up to make an offer. Three months on, we had the keys to the house.
Initially we had planned to take 12 months – 18 months, tops – to turn the old renovator into something special (I now see we were seriously deluded on that front). 9 months on, I thought I’d start to share the story with you. As anyone who’s renovated probably already knows…it can be quite an all- consuming task, and one that starts to dominate thoughts...!
I hope you enjoy it. Perhaps you can even offer some advice now and then?!
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