Dear reader
As I’ve said before, I believe in synchronicity. The unpredictable paths our life journey takes us on, with wonderful surprises thrown in for good measure. What a joy life is! Here’s an example: at the end of last year, we were working on Home Renovations. One of the stories featured Irené Lourens’s barn in Riversdale. We had a few photos showing the progress of her project, and I was going back and forth via email and WhatsApp with the writer, Elna van der Merwe, making sure the captions were correct.
During this period, I was also doing my usual end-of-year decluttering and had advertised several things on Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree, including two ball-and-claw bedside cabinets. One of the responses I got was from a buyer who said she’d be back in Cape Town soon and would come and pick them up. While chatting on WhatsApp, we realised that we’d both been in the Stellenbosch University choir in the early nineties. Her name? Irené Lourens.
Not putting two and two together at the time, it was only later when Irené showed up at my front door and asked what I was up to these days, that I showed her the printouts of the latest issue up on the wall in my office and she exclaimed: “But that’s my house!”
What a coincidence! My old choir buddy was the same Irené of the
Riversdale barn, and also the new owner of two classic ball-and-claw pedestals. What’s more, I was literally working on her story at that precise moment – the layout was open on my computer screen, as deadline was looming.
Can you believe it? Synchronicity. Irené was able to answer my last few questions about her own house in person, without me needing Elna as an intermediary.
It was Irené’s barn home that inspired the theme for the houses in this issue. All of them are barn homes, a dream for many of us. I’ve envisioned my own barn house for many years and one day I will get around to building it. Exposed roof beams, cement floors, everything in white and the walls a lovely textured bagged finish. One day!
The Oppermans’ barn in Napier (page 20) is something completely different, but so romantic! They are deserving category winners in our 2021 Fix it with Flair competition. And they have the most beautiful kitchen too, our other focus in this issue. If you haven’t yet seen the house, go to our website at news24.com/home and take the video tour. It’s worth it.
• In this issue, no less than R200 000 in prizes is up for grabs: Milestone Kitchens is giving away freestanding units worth R100 000 (page 70) and it’s the launch of our 2022 Fix it with Flair competition (page 65) in partnership with JoJo, also with prize winnings totalling R100 000. #MakeYourHomeJoJo! • And then, check out the gorgeous home of the winner of last year’s Rookie Stylist competition, presented in partnership with Mr Price Home (page 84). Jolindi van der Merwe not only knows how to pretty up a nook, her entire home was worthy of a photo shoot.
Well done, Jolindi!
Home Renovations 2020/21 is now off the shelves but you can still order it from our online store at media24shop.com, where you’ll find all of our most recent and back issues – as well as those of our sister publications.