Cheat sheet
Who lives here Heather Low, a semi-retired pharmaceutical representative and mother of two; and her groodle dog, Lulu.
Style of home A Clarendon
Home that was built in 1989.
Work began in July 2019 and was finished that September. The renovation and furniture cost about $150,000.
Keen cook and entertainer Heather Low didn’t actively dislike her kitchen. But in 2019, having been recently widowed, she began thinking about ways to enhance what was quite a small space. “I wanted the kitchen to be a room that people could spend time in – myself included,” she says. “My first idea was to replace the existing granite benchtop with something larger.”
Heather contacted her friend, designer Cate Liedtke of Catherine de Meur Interiors, and began brainstorming ideas for a sleek, modern kitchen. There was only one problem: Heather’s house, where she and her late husband raised two boys, had a very distinctive interior style. “It was built by Clarendon Homes in 1989,” Heather explains. “Everything in the house was very much of that time.”
One retro feature was the terracotta-tiled floor in the kitchen. “It took a bit of convincing, but eventually Heather agreed to replace the flooring in there with something more contemporary,” says Cate. However, the living room was tiled in terracotta, too. Says Heather: “I spoke to my sister, who also works in the interior-design space, and she told me all the terracotta had to go.”
Heather subsequently decided to expand the scope of the renovation to include the living room. Then Cate made a radical suggestion: why not move the kitchen into the larger space occupied by the living room, and combine several small ground-floor rooms to make a new living room? “As soon as she suggested it, I knew it was a good idea,” says Heather. “I spend so much time in the kitchen – why not make it bigger?”
When Heather and Cate began to discuss specifics, it quickly became clear that the extra kitchen space would be put to good use. In addition to a larger kitchen island, Heather dreamed of expanded cupboard and pantry space for her array of juicers and food processors. She also wanted an informal dining table, plus enough room around the island to accommodate bar stools.
In the living room, Heather asked Cate to design a space conducive to relaxation and reflection. “My husband was a Buddhist,” says Heather, “and I light incense for him every day. I wanted the living room to be a space where I could sit and reflect on what life has given me and what it’s taken away.”
Heather also decided to re-do her downstairs powder room and laundry. Across these four new rooms, she hoped to incorporate a nautical theme in recognition of her late husband’s love of the water and her sons’ ongoing interest in fishing and sailing. “It’s part of our identity as a family,” she says.
island bench