Creating a stylish and practical abode for parents with a young family is a challenge. But, as one couple have shown in renovating a Clearwater Bay property, with a little careful planning, it can be child's play.
It takes vision and courage to buy a virtually dilapidated house, but when Glen and Kim Plumbridge first viewed their current home in Clearwater Bay, they immediately spotted its potential.
'The house had been empty for years and was in a real mess,' says Kim Plumbridge. 'It needed a serious amount of work but we knew we could create a great place to live.'
The Plumbridges enlisted the help of architect Adrian McCarroll of Original Vision (tel: 2810 9797) and set him the task of creating a modern, comfortable family home from what was effectively a shell of a building. The couple had fixed ideas regarding the form and function of the house (they wanted a contemporary design with a lot of open space), but McCarroll's sense of style matched their own.
'They had a good aesthetic sense, so it was very much a collaborative process that brought the house to fruition,' recalls McCarroll. The result is a multi-level dream home that is visually stunning as well as child-friendly.
One of the Plumbridges' top priorities was the integration of indoors and out, so McCarroll installed bi-fold glass doors between the living room and the terrace and used the same limestone flooring in both areas to provide a seamless transition from one to the other. An elegant lap pool was installed on one side of the garden and was also made to look like an extension of the interior thanks, to a floor-to-ceiling glass partition separating it from the house.