POTENTIAL

A CREATIVE, HANDS-ON COUPLE TRANSFORMED AN ORDINARY HOUSE INTO AN ENCHANTED WONDERLAND OF INTERCONNECTED SPACES WITH INSPIRED DESIGN COMBINATIONS AND EASY-GOING GLAMOUR.

- GRAHAM WOOD

RHYS AND MEG RALPH HADN'T INTENDED to live in this house. Rhys, a property developer, originally acquired the derelict stand with the intention of "flipping" it. Hidden away in a quiet nook in Parkhurst, opposite a park with the Braamfontein Spruit running through it, the setting was beautiful, but the stand had been vacant for some time when he took possession and had clearly been used by local builders as a dumping site.

At that point, the park was, as Rhys puts it, a "no-go zone".

While clearing the rubble and building a house, Rhys took on the rehabilitation of the park, too. "We ripped out all the Spanish reed," he recalls - the invasive species that choked the space. "I planted grass. I put in trees and benches. We secured it, and got rid of all the rubble."

He also added signage, bins, benches, swings and a trampoline. By the end, it had become a "pretty spectacular little park".

His efforts gave this somewhat-neglected corner of the neighbourhood a significant lift, and he and Meg soon realised the property had the potential to be quite special - special enough to live there themselves.

The went so far as to give it a name - Cartref, inspired by Rhys's Welsh roots. "It's the Welsh name for home: a place of feeling, family, laughter and love," he explains.

After moving in with their daughter Lily, they started making adjustments - a skylight here, a door or porthole window there- and when their second daughter, Scarlet, was born, they made a more substantial alteration, adding a new bedroom suite and an upstairs room that Rhys uses as an office.

They also moved the swimming pool, and built a covered terrace with a vast fireplace inside and a roof garden above.