We have a very special house tour for you today. It is this beautiful, iconic Art Deco building which was built in 1940. The reason why it’s so special is because it’s mine, so I love it and I want to take you on a little house tour, so let’s go.
“I bought this place when I was in my twenties and I was obsessed with the TV show, The Secret Life of Us, where they always used to hang out on the rooftop and have parties. So, it’s safe to say when I saw the rooftop, I had to have it.”
The cool thing about this building, other than the fact that I own a little slice of it, is actually its historical significance. So this building was built in 1940, and the particular area we’re in at the moment is Armadale. Armadale used to be kind of just all about mansions and stately homes, you know? We’re talking about suburbs like Armadale, South Yarra and Toorak, and this land actually used to be part of a big, old, fat mansion.
Back in, I think it was 1909. The owner of the mansion, when he died they basically said, ‘right, we’ve got a lot of land here, let’s subdivide it all up because we need to actually provide more housing for people because of the population growth’, and all that sort of stuff. So, they decided this spot was going to be for residential flats. So, that’s what they did. They started to build.
But, all of the incredible owners of these other mansions and stately homes in this beautiful suburb were like, ‘we don’t want no stinking flats. That’s gross. That’s going to ruin the character and charm of beautiful, beautiful suburbs.’ So, what they did to counteract that was that they employed leading architects to basically come in and design these incredible buildings so that they could counter that criticism of these flats going up, and what that meant was these buildings were built, they looked amazing and then all of a sudden they started cropping up in magazines and features, and all of a sudden they’re on trend.
So that is the story of this house, because they employed a leading architect called Stuart Hall. He was best known for his modern architecture with Jazz and Art Deco styling and this is very much done in that Art Deco style. He designed this in 1940, and fun fact, they actually wrote an article on this building in Australian Home Beautiful in 1940 when it launched. So it’s kind of a little bit of a celebrity, which is pretty cool.
Recently we had actually been involved in the external renovation of this building. It was very tired, a little bit run down as you can imagine, I mean, she’s an old gal. So we gave her a new paint job, we took her back to her original colour scheme cause she kind of became a really weird yellow and blue there for a moment. So we took her right back. We stripped it back to some more light and neutral tones and then we’ve also just finished the garden as well. We were really inspired by Palm Springs Gardens and that kind of Miami feel to reflect the Art Deco nature. So that’s the vibe of the building at the moment.
“When it came to doing the interiors of this home, I really wanted to reflect what was going on on the outside. I wanted to create more of a modern, coastal vibe for this space. So there’s a lot of warmth, there’s a lot of timber, and there’s also just a lot of nice neutrals. But I focused on a lot of textural items as well.”
I love greenery. Greenery is everywhere I go, if I can fit a plant there, I will. So that’s something that I just always do. There is also a lot of colour, and personality because that’s kind of what I’m all about. I love that. The other thing that really matters to me in my home is artwork, so all throughout this home I’ve got beautiful, beautiful artworks.
I have mixed art prints in and around original artworks as well from friends, because I think, it doesn’t matter what type of art it is, I love to see different combinations. I’ve got collage from a good friend of mine, Diana Ellinger, I’ve got a beautiful original painting from Sarah Kelk and I’ve got an amazing artwork from Rowena Martinich as well. All in all, I’ve kept it really simple and neutral and I’ve sort of just chosen a few key pieces to speak for themselves.
That’s it guys. Thank you very much for coming on a tour of my very compact but super cute and super sunny apartment. Let us know what you think in the comments, and if you actually have a house or an apartment or a space that you want us to come and visit, let us know cause we’d love to hear from you. Also if you liked this video, please make it official and give us a thumbs up and subscribe so you can be the first one to know when we have our next Let Us In house tour. We’ll see you soon. Bye!
