A terrace house with a charming backstory is revived in an ode to the original owners.
The idea of a Sydney terrace holds a certain kind of romanticism for Jaime Bligh, a New Zealander who fell immediately in love with her Victorian home in Annandale. The interior designer and founder of Care Of Studio was especially smitten with its storied past: a first-floor landlord who fell in love with his downstairs tenant. “He ended up winning big at
the Melbourne Cup and moved to a larger estate outside Sydney,” Jaime says. “He asked her to come with him, but she declined, and in the end he left the entire house to her
and her family.” In that lady’s honour, a powder-blue ‘Luise’ has been painted on the home’s facade.
While the place Jaime now shares with her partner, Yogesh, and their twin toddlers undoubtedly had soul, it lacked some key functionalities and needed a new upstairs bathroom and rewiring. Aside from a tacked-on 1970s extension, the 1890s terrace was mostly original. While it did need some basic upgrades, Jaime didn’t want to mess with it too much or add a modern extension. “We loved the history and traditional layout of the home and were happy to work within the existing footprint and honour the proportions of the space by not creating an open floor plan,” she says.
The most significant improvements the couple made included widening an opening from the kitchen to a rear room that was converted from a laundry to a secondary living area. Landscape architecture studio Even Spaces helped to raise the courtyard with a pedestal system so it could sit flush with the internal flooring and provide easy access to the
services concealed below. In the front rooms, traditional features such as the decorative moulded ceilings, hardwood floors and cornices were beautifully intact. The original
fireplaces were restored and contemporised with Norwegian rose marble mantels.
“Natural materials are heroes in any interior as they become more tactile and patinated with age,” says Jaime, who has an affinity for all things vintage. “I have always been drawn
to antiques and interiors that have a worn-in feel to them.” Throughout the home, older pieces contrast with modern art and soft tones mingle with bold hues, such as Cappellini’s
sunshine yellow ‘Sofa with Arms’ and an electric teal window seat. There are new plaster pendant lights from Anna Charlesworth and Flos ‘Foglio’ sconces in the kitchen alongside a 1950s Murano glass flower wall light in the casual living area. “The flower light came from Etsy with a note from the seller explaining that it was found by a florist in an attic in the medieval city of Bergamo.”
