Masters of the makeover

With several renovations behind them, Mary and Paul had creative expertise and DIY skills to draw on when it came to finishing their dream family home

-  ALISON JONES

Renovating a home is not for the fainthearted. It takes a certain gritty determination, patience and a lot of imagination to see it through, and even emerge with the enthusiasm to do it all over again.

Mary and Paul Walker-Harrod have the true grit of the born renovators. They’d already tackled their own home makeovers when they met, and after they married, they moved to Epping where they found a house to do up together. Four years later, in 2006, they moved back to the town where Mary grew up.

‘The main reason was so the children could go to the school that I went to as it’s a really good school and my mum taught there,’ says Mary. ‘And I wanted us to be nearer my family – my brother lives just down the road.’

Inevitably, the home they bought there was livable, but packed with the potential for improvement in the future: ‘The couple who owned it had done it up quite nicely, extending out to the side. They had permission to extend out the back but hadn’t – so it had a tiny kitchen with a double-sized living room,’ Mary recalls. ‘We really loved the garden, which had been professionally landscaped.’