HAPPY HOMECOMING

Returning to Australia after years overseas, an expat family are now enjoying the space, grace and style of their newly renovated property in Melbourne.

- Carli Philips

They’re the words no homeowner – or designer – ever wants to hear: “there’s been a flood”. Yet it was this unwanted message that architect Anne Hindley of Hindley & Co received not long after the painstaking completion of this home in Melbourne’s inner east. “There was a sewage issue in the street and the entire ground floor had to be redone, including replacing the furniture and flooring,” she recalls. “The owners were upstairs when it happened and had to wade through water to get out of the house. While it was horrifying for us, they were actually very good-natured about it. But it did add at least six months to the project.”

The grand double-storey home had been extended in the late 1990s and had all the space its owners required, but some internal adjustment was needed to suit their lifestyle. The owners, an expat couple with a teenage son, had spent the previous decade living abroad and bought the property on a visit to Melbourne. Since the family were based in Hong Kong at the time, they had already planned to do much of the project remotely, which Anne says gave them a headstart on working through a pandemic.

The owners and their designer only met once onsite, but Anne says she was surprised at how easy it was communicating via Zoom. “We loved sharing a screen and seeing the same things simultaneously. Once we narrowed down our selections, we would post a big package of samples to Hong Kong so they could see and touch the materials in person.”