House and Leisure Before & After

‘WHAT MAKES IT AN IDEAL COLLECTOR’S EDITION IS THAT IT’S BASED ON OUR OWN READERS’ INCREDIBLE REAL-LIFE HOME MAKEOVERS.’ After spending every Sunday for almost two years driving from one show house to another, my wife and I finally found our first dream home – a 1930s house in Parkhurst that we bought from its original owners. Perhaps a little too excited about the new adventure, we hastily overlooked signs of damp in the lounge, the haywire electrical setup in the kitchen and the poorly constructed outbuildings, which had been added to the property over the years. What followed was an epic renovation and – after a Christmas spent in a shoebox sized space crammed with all our furniture and two cats, a temporary, taxing stay at my sister’s house and…

‘STAND 47 WAS DESIGNED THIS WAY AS THAT’S HOW YOU KEEP BUILDINGS RELEVANT AND SUSTAINABLE: YOU BUILD THEM TO ADAPT.’ At Saint-Gobain we believe homes can be better. Whether you’re building a new home or improving your existing space, if there is one thing we’ve learned from over 350 years as the world leader in innovative and sustainable building products it’s that people adapt their homes to suit their changing needs. After all, life happens and our living habits change, which means that more and more different activities have to coexist in the same space. Sometimes the study needs to become a new bedroom, or the living room needs to accommodate a work-from-home area, or you would be happier with reorienting your kitchen to make it the culinary centre of creativity you’ve…

FIND OUT HOW TO CREATE THESE PAINT EFFECTS AT HOUSEANDLEISURE.CO.ZA…

‘It helped us to have a consistent theme for our renovations that we applied throughout the project. This was particularly useful when faced with all the endless choices and options available for finishes. We could always go back to our theme to make the decision.’ KERRYN AND JOHN PATERSON, BRYANSTON, JOHANNESBURG ‘Have a clear idea of what you want the end product to look like. Floors are finished towards the end of the renovation; if you don’t get these right your project will be delayed by months.’ Monya Eastman, Cape Town ‘Alterations hold revolutionary potential. It’s amazing what you can make out of a sow’s ear and it’s always exciting to dissect a clumsy or outdated building to find its fluid lines, to liberate its own particular dynamic in time and space.…

It’s not only the spectacular night skies that are special in the Karoo. It’s the feeling of endless space stretching to the horizon and the stillness and stunning views. These open plains are ideal farmland and it was in 1841 that Vrisch Gewagt farm was established on the slopes of the Swartberg. Only decades later, in 1914, was the farm’s grand old Opstal manor house completed. It was a quintessential Victorian home: yellowwood floors, high ceilings with exposed timbers, and doors and architraves constructed by expert carpenters and varnished with ostrich-feather-applied ox blood, a painstaking technique used in those days by travelling craftsmen. A century later the graceful old mansion stood empty. Perched high above the landscape, it watched over the farm from behind broken shutters and peeling paint. By the time…

There are those homeowners who prefer to renovate from a distance and then there are the hard-core fixer-uppers, the ones who live and breathe each twist of the home-creation tale. When you hear Sam and NJ Bouwer’s renovation journey, it’s clear as to which group they belong. Renting in Vredehoek, they began to look around the area for something they could buy and do up. ‘We like old things and when we walked into the property my husband fell in love with the wooden floors and the distant sea view,’ says Sam. ‘It definitely had character.’ The home was freestanding, had one off-street parking space (which they quickly turned into three) and both front and back outside areas. It needed a lot of work – but they decided to move in…