BROADENING HORIZONS
A contemporary extension helped Lynne Harris bring an old cottage right up to date – and it all suits her growing family perfectly
For one couple with a growing family, a big extension helped create much-needed space in their South African cottage
The Victorian home of Lynne Harris and her husband Gavin Whitfield is situated in the suburb of Oranjezicht, at the foot of Cape Town’s majestic Table Mountain. ‘Ours is one of the oldest buildings in the area and when we bought it in 2007, it was a very run-down, single-storey cottage,’ recalls Lynne. She continues, ‘At the time, we were in our early 20s so we were only able to undertake a modest renovation, although during the project, the insulation in the roof caught fire and so we had to replace the entire roof as well as the ash floors.’
It wasn’t until six years ago that the couple decided to take on a much bigger refurbishment of the house. ‘By this point we were expecting our third child and we needed extra bedrooms as well as more living space,’ recounts Lynne, who as an interior architect knew exactly what she hoped to achieve. ‘I gutted the entire house and extended the kitchen right up to the boundary wall,’ she explains. She also converted the loft to create a bathroom and two bedrooms for their daughters Libby, nine, and Audrey, seven. ‘We already had three bedrooms on the ground floor, which now serve as a study, our master suite and a bedroom for our five-year-old son, Harrison,’ Lynne adds.
For the interiors, she favours a pared-back aesthetic. ‘I’m not keen on overly decorated spaces and, instead, I like to create a simple canvas that can be added to over