Worlds AWAY

Once a falling-down wreck, this Sydney home has been transformed into a glamorous family pad influenced by the owners’ global roaming.

- Chris Pearson

Having lived in New York and London, Sharon and Paul, the owners of this house on Sydney’s North Shore, could never be content with the ordinary. Behind its neat picket fence, their freshly renovated home boasts a United Nations of inspiration that evokes their glamorous past.

Lured by the generous backyard, the couple bought the property in 2013 as a forever home. But the block was occupied by a Federation brick cottage that had lost face. A renovation in the 1960s had stripped its original features, inside and out. Meanwhile, a clumsy rear addition had little connection with that sizeable yard.

“The roof leaked, the paint was peeling and we had damp issues,” says Sharon. “It was an eyesore next to the cute cottages along our street.”

The couple engaged Clare Carter of Contemporary Architecture and interior designers Jacinta Woods and Sonia Warner to transform the battered bungalow into a light, functional and interesting family home for themselves and their sons Leo, five, and Levi, two.

Top priority was an open-plan kitchen, dining and living area that flowed through to the garden. A nod to Sharon’s past was also on the wish list. “I grew up in a weatherboard homestead in rural New Zealand, so an all-white cottage with a picket fence was my nostalgic dream.” At the rear of the home, cues came from the couple’s travels. “In New York, we lived in a renovated loft with unbelievably high ceilings. The steel windows and doors came from London, the concrete floors from a friend’s apartment in Antwerp.”