Inner peace

The gods must have smiled when Rebecca Prince and her family decided to move house. According to fung shui masters, a 'death line' flowing through their home was behind their lack of direction in life, and the only solution was to 'get another house'. Says Prince: 'It's bizarre, but that's how we felt: we loved the house but we weren't feeling happy and weren't sure why.'

In the family's 'new', 2,100 sq ft, three-level village house in Sai Kung, however, positive energy from heaven and earth seems to bounce off the walls and the only type of lines are clean, symmetrical ones. A few minor adjustments had to be made, such as turning the back door into the main entrance, but the geomantic gurus were probably on to something when they declared the location 'auspicious'.

Site sorted, Prince and her husband set about a complete overhaul of the property. Having utilised Prince's background in fashion, her husband's in interior design and the help of a third Briton, contractor Paul Cowling, all can be proud of the results.

'My husband was the planner and I did the finishes,' says Prince, who admits that much initial planning had to be reworked because they had guessed wrongly when it came to the position of the stairs. 'We didn't actually look inside before we bought the place,' she explains. 'We loved the village and that's what sold it, with the trees. A village house is a village house.'

Not this village house, at least not anymore. For starters - from the front elevation and the remodelled rooms to the floor tiles laid so lines continue unbroken from one area to the next - there is little that can be called 'cookie-cutter'.

'It was dark and dingy,' Prince says, although light now pours into every level from wide glass doors at the front flanked by single panes of glass. Creating an open-plan living area helped brighten the lowest level. Here, the kitchen segues into the dining area and a lounge.