Empty nester turns old family flat into party home, complete with supersized bar-entertainment area
Bored with her previous renovation, a party girl cum interior decorator turned her spacious Mid-Levels apartment into an entertainment hot spot
Text Jane Steer / Styling David Roden / Photography John Butlin
Interior decorator Debbie Pun’s apartment is designed to party. “We meet at the bar,” she jokes, referring to the cocktail counter that dominates and defines her large, open-plan living space.
“We call it the Buddha Bar. The apartment is about the same size as the Buddha Bar in Paris, plus I have hundreds of Buddhas, so it seemed to fit. I even found a Buddha Bar sign in Shambala, which I put outside in the hall when we have parties.”
The marble-topped surface and the freestanding wall behind it are the centrepiece of the 1964 Mid-Levels apartment that Pun and her lawyer husband, Nigel Binnersley, bought 10 years ago and recently renovated for the second time.
“It was a dump!” Pun recalls of first seeing the flat. “But it was a great space – 2,700 square feet, or maybe more. I totally renovated it, with lots of red and black and a bath in the middle of the master suite. But after seven years, I got bored and my son was grown up, so we decided to downsize and rented it out.”
Downsizing, however, didn’t suit the sociable Pun.