Entry/study
When homeowners-to-be Phil and Adriana first viewed a 1970s Mission Brown house in a quiet part of Sydney’s Carlingford in the middle of 2014, it was with heads rather than hearts firmly in place. “House prices in Sydney were rising and we wanted to buy a family home that we could rent out and then look to do something with in the future,” explains Phil. “My main criteria was that it was on a decent-sized corner block so we could also build a second [smaller] house. I saw it more as a potential investment. I didn’t really look at the house in detail because I thought we might knock it down and rebuild at some point.”
Phil and Adriana asked interior designers Janice Yim and Theresa Chan from Studio Quarters for ideas on updating the rundown house, but the plans were put on ice when they bought a three-bedroom apartment closer to the city instead, and welcomed their first son in 2017. “The apartment was fine with one child,” says Phil, “but then we found out we were expecting our second son. I needed a study to work from home, and we could see that the apartment was getting too tight.”