This character-filled home in Sydney's inner west boasts a colourful past - in more ways than one. Back in the early 90s, it featured on the pages of Belle, revealed in its Memphis splendour, with saturated primary hues and sawtooth joinery, so unashamedly chic at the time.
The then-owners, design writer Davina Jackson and former NSW government architect Chris Johnson, had also extended the 1886 villa at the back to create a luminous, light-filled pavilion overlooking a courtyard while converting the attic space into three bedrooms.
Between old and new was a double-height void. Meanwhile, cornices, moulded ceilings, architraves and ceiling roses were blissfully intact in the original section. While Ettore Sottsass's whimsy soon had its day - and the couple later replaced that aesthetic with an earthy, ethnic one - those structural moves have proved timeless.
The same smart floor plan - and some of the accompanying joinery - met the current owners when they bought the home in 2015. They fell in love with the house's individuality, the indoor-outdoor connection and an odd quirk or two.
"You could tell someone with an eye had been living there. It wasn't run of the mill," says the owner. "The Victorian section at the front pulled at the heartstrings for me, as it reminded me of homes past, while the new pavilion made it so liveable." But the interiors needed a revamp. "It was run-down. We didn't want to change the structure, just freshen it up. The kitchen was dated and I wanted more workable space, as I love to entertain. And the tired bathroom had a huge 1980s spa bath that we called the Queen Mary."
From an internet search in 2020 the couple hired interior designers Heath Baldwin and Hayden Bagnall of Baldwin & Bagnall (Hayden is now solo as Bagnall Design Office). "I liked the colours and the warmth of their interiors," says the owner.
"Chris and Davina weren't afraid to go all out and be adventurous," says Hayden, who recalls being somewhat awed to be working on a home with such a pedigree. "We wanted to tread lightly, not raising the ceiling heights or extending the footprint. The clients were after character and personality, not too clean or polished. While prepared to take risks, they were invested in maintaining the original character, making it comfortable without changing it too much."
The design duo's take is light years away from what Davina called the "overboard, theatre-set" iteration that greeted Belle readers three decades ago. This is more subdued and restful, but still with a nod to the home's boisterous past - it celebrates colour too, but with 21st-century circumspection tempering their take.
Structurally, the home worked smoothly, so the designers left the layout intact. But they gutted the pavilion and reconfigured the laundry so it doubles as a butler's pantry. The lounge at the front, having been used as an office, boasted a bulky joinery unit, which they removed. Similarly, they replaced the cartoon-like zigzag edge to the stairs, a relic of the original renovation, with a smoothly flowing balustrade, its sinuous curve reprised in a new generous joinery unit in the dining area and the kitchen island.
They swapped out all the old mullion timber-framed doors and windows in the pavilion and the main bedroom, also overlooking the courtyard, with aluminium-framed offerings. These vast sliding panels without mullions would not have been available in 1990, says Hayden, so they intensify the intimate indoor-outdoor connection.
Instead of French doors at the far end of the kitchen, they installed a picture window that frames a Corten steel sculpture. Underfloor heating and discreetly concealed air-conditioning, also not on the shopping list back then, up the comfort factor.
The home now boasts "simple colours" such as the lush green carpet which flows throughout because the original floorboards were not up to the mark. "I took a bit of convincing about that [tone], but I love it now. It brings the whole house together," says the owner.
A mustard sofa in the living room combined with the collection of diverse artworks provide further pops of various hues. So, too, does the kitchen swathed in green dolomite, black granite and medium-toned oak.
"It's colourful, but more muted than in those early days, with no whites but chalky, smoky shades, using our own principles of design, balanced and minimally eclectic," says Hayden. "It's a slow, relaxed feel, with nothing to be taken too seriously."
The layering of textures gives the house the same level of decoration as in the past, Hayden explains. In the kitchen, the dolomite and granite and the oak are highlighted by the original slab floor, stripped back from stormy black.
Existing sofas were reupholstered in linens, while walnut furniture is a nod to the past, complemented by oak joinery, "calmer and more orderly than the original, but with the same craftsmanship. I love how we have kept the charm and essence of the original house, which was of its time, while making it new, too," he adds. "I felt a little daunted by its heritage, so I approached the task with care and respect. But it was also a lot of fun." And that playfulness, harking back to its Memphis era, is probably what makes this house so special.
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