Cool, calm & collected

Every day feels like a holiday in this earthy home that epitomises minimalist coastal elegance.

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For the Gründlinghs of Grotto Bay, there is little distinction between ‘real life’ and holidays – for this couple, every day feels like a vacation since making the West Coast their permanent home in 2016. “John surfs almost every day and when there are no waves, he catches fish and forages for seafood,” says Carla. “We love looking for mussels and seaweed in the rock pools and harvesting wild cabbage, common ice plant and samphire from the dune ‘pantry’ here on the West Coast.”

John and Carla bought their house in the Grotto Bay Private Nature Reserve on auction in September 2015. Since it’s less than an hour’s drive from Cape Town, they can still cope with the daily commute to work. Although the house was in a terrible state, the location was perfect with a green belt between their property and the sea – which meant that no one would be able to build in front of them and obstruct their view.

“When we first walked into the house and John opened a window, the wood was so rotten that the frame literally came off in his hand!” says Carla. “That winter, we also discovered that the roof leaked like a sieve – there were ‘waterfalls’ all over the house!”

Over the years, John and Carla have taken on as much of the renovation work as possible. In 2018, John and his brother Sean set up a construction company, Gründlingh Construction & Project Management, which enabled him to work on the house with the help of a team of builders whenever they were in the area. The project took five years – with phase two now in the pipeline. >>