The Story Of Us
This Perth couple doubled their space weeks before an important new addition.
Everyone needs a starting point for a renovation. For Ascher Smith and Dylan Lindsay, it was their bedroom. “Our old room was so tiny we almost had to crab-walk out the sides of the bed each morning, so our dream was to have an oversized bedroom with high ceilings and a ‘floating’ fireplace,” says Ascher.
The couple, who run a garden design and landscaping business north of Perth, had just finished updating their threebedroom 1996 house but felt the 110m2 structure was still too small for future children. So, after three years of planning and one waiting for council approvals, they went up and doubled the floor space, completing the seven-month build in January 2015 – weeks before their first child, Hudson, was born. “Had we only spent six months planning, it may have taken three years to build,” says Ascher.
While their home is on one of the busiest roads of the coastal suburb, it’s set quite high on the 307m2 block. The second floor has given them borrowed views of the valley and beach a kilometre away, as well as the large west-facing balcony they wanted off their bedroom. This area and the upper floor’s hallways were mostly suspended out over existing courtyards, so none of the internal space was compromised.
According to Ascher, the bedroom was “almost designed around the new revolving fireplace”, an award-winning matte black steel design called the Gyrofocus by Oblica. It pivots a full 360 degrees, bringing warmth inside and out. “This masterpiece is the centrepiece!” she says.
Before ordering the Gyrofocus from France, they visited Oblica’s Melbourne showroom to see it in action and stumbled on lighting designer Christopher Boots working in the same building. “We were speechless at the beauty of his Portal lights and immediately bought one to be our ‘nightlight’ on the bedhead.”