"Our design brief was to sensitively revive the residence from its dilapidated state into a luxurious, multi-generational, modern-day family home,"
Rock Solid
Home Beautiful
"When the team at Kate Nixon was enlisted to respectfully revitalise an iconic harbourside home in Sydney, it included a compact kitchen in a self-contained lower ground floor.
"Our design brief was to sensitively revive the residence from its dilapidated state into a luxurious, multi-generational, modern-day family home," explains Kate. The area that would become the kitchen was the former living space, centred by a fireplace with asymmetrical hearth. But once work started, Kate and the team were in for a pleasant surprise. A sandstone wall, an original feature of the home, had been hidden away.
"The sandstone had been painted over, so it was a joyous discovery to uncover its characterful beauty," Kate says. As the original foundation of the house, built in the 1840s, there were decades of dust, grime and ash to sandblast away. "It revealed an irreplicable character and beauty, which we strived to champion in our design," Kate says. A few blocks were removed from the chimney to accommodate a freestanding oven and an integrated rangehood was placed inside the chimney flue for the perfect fit. While the home's history was preserved, new steel-framed French doors were added to seamlessly connect the space to the adjacent terrace and the pool, and balance the past with a modern edge.
About Kate Nixon
Kate Nixon is an Australian designer, stylist and long-standing interiors editor of Australian House & Garden magazine.
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