All Hands on Deck

The Sunday Times, 22nd November 2009
By Paula Aubin

It has taken Rose Yeoman and her family more than a decade to give their home a new look, but it’s been well forth the wait

Cooking family meals on a camping stove in the basement of her Swanbourne home is a distant memory for Rose Yeoman now that she has this splendid new kitchen and living area to enjoy.

The transformation may have been more than 10 years in the making but it’s been worth the wait, turning what was once smart but dark into a bright modern space awash with natural light.  “We’d always anticipated a renovation.  It just took us a while to get round to it”, Rose says.

Despite the white-painted brick walls, the original kitchen and dining area was small and gloomy, with half-height windows, a jarrah ceiling and a terracotta floor.

“They’re north-facing rooms and the back yard is north-facing but we weren’t making the best use of light” Rose says.

The team at Dale Alcock Home Improvement removed the back wall of the house to make way for an extended kitchen and family room and a brand-new alfresco area.

“In the old structure, we had a gable roof over the family room.  We still wanted a gable roof but our designer at Dale Alcock came up with the idea of having a wider gable encompassing the new kitchen as well,” Rose says.

The results is a fantastic feeling of height and volume that has really opened up the back of the split-level property, which is home to Rose, her husband, Paul Robinson, and children Daniel, 17, and Anya, 12.

While the family wanted fresh, clean and modern, it was also important to them that an essence of the old was carried through into the new.

The home’s previous owner had been passionate about woodwork and had added jarrah architraves, stripped back the recycled Oregon doors and handcrafted the old Tasmanian oak kitchen.

“I haven’t’ got a real wood kitchen now, but I do have a clean, light and bright kitchen”, Rose says.

The old solid timber kitchen may have been removed and sold in favour of sleek white cabinetry and Essa Stone benchtops, but the family opted for jarrah-framed windows and big sliding doors to the alfresco from the dining room.  Jarrah also highlights the vast triangular arrangement of highlight windows.

Combined with crisp white walls and ceilings, and the sleek gloss-white kitchen, the simple modern lines of the joinery successfully blend traditional timber with today’s clean, uncluttered style. 

Offering an open invitation to head outdoors to relax, the new poolside alfresco was a crucial component of the overall overhaul.

“We all lie around in a more meditative way now, reading books and gazing out the window” Rose says.

“It has changed the way we live in the house.  We’re more in and out and we also eat most of our meals on the back deck now”.

Installation of the pool had already begun when the family got a start date from Dale Alcock so its completion was put on hold until the extension had been finished.

With limited access to the back of the property, a platform was built across the shell of the pool so that all the building materials could be craned over the limestone wall from the rear laneway.

“Everything was just a maze of ladders and platforms” Rose says.

Rose, a landscape designer who heads up Koru Landscape Design, has been busy planning the new gardens and pool surrounds, starting with an established frangipani that was retained and relocated.