OUR STARTING POINT
My name is Ascher and my fiancé, Dylan and I run a Landscape Design & Landscaping company in Perth, Western Australia.Dylan had bought the Duke Street brick and tile home in 2006 and I moved in 4 years ago. The initial idea was to renovate to sell or rent it out a few years down the track. So the house and garden renovations began…and never stopped!
Brick and tile house-Before
We spent almost every hour of every weekend knocking out walls, windows, doors, paving courtyards and making Greenwalls. We have already renovated the kitchen…twice, we have turned bedrooms into lounge rooms, poured concrete kitchen bench tops, clad the whole house in limestone, built natural limestone stone archways…We couldn’t stop, and neither did we want to as our passion and our vision took over and we both made the big call around 3 years ago to get our close friends and exceptionally creative architects Dave & Chris Willcox involved to drawn up some plans for a second story extension. So 3 years &, about 2000 emails later, it is about to begin.
I love to see the work of other talented people who are also lucky enough to do it for a living … and they inspire me to make our home as lovely as we can. When we were planning our second story extension, I researched every blog, website, t.v program & company to try to find out more about what really goes into a second story extension. I found hardly information on this type of build (especially in Perth), as most houses, especially ones like this, are just knocked down or rented out as investment properties. “Why would anyone spend THAT sort of money on THAT?!” most people would say.
I am the Landscape Designer of our company, which allows me to express my ideas and creativity around the house. Dylan is the hands on part of the business, and is out on site with the crew making the designs come to life. He has taken on almost every aspect of our initial renovations around the house and can do just about anything he puts his mind too. We both have very similar tastes in design which helps when we need to agree on things, but most of all, we have that vision and the passion that it takes to turn the ugly duckling into the beautiful swan. And as we do this for a living for our clients and their gardens, it wasn’t hard for us to see the potential even in this house!
Blogging is most definitely NOT my full-time job. Nor have I really had the opportunity to do so before. But I have decided to document our renovation highs and lows through this blog. It came about after many requests from friends and family, both local and across the country, and even clients asking for pictures and info about our new home and the work we have dedicated ourselves to for the past 4 years and now the next year ahead. Along with running a busy business & overseeing this 8 month renovation, we just found out that I am in fact now 4 months pregnant and am due around the same time of handover… this also being a few months before our overseas wedding we had planned in Greece (yes, we’re completely crazy!) Bring it on, we say!
I wanted to write this blog so hopefully we can show other people that may see that same potential in a home they have come to love, that all the complete exhaustion, sore backs, blisters, blood, sweat, tears and most of all, money…is all worth it end the end.
Here is the brick and tile house in its former days 5 years ago.. Before it all began. ‘What ‘Vision’ could you possibly have with this?’…you say…Well, I’ll show you!
