This is the house that Herbie built. He built it in 1924, and being a plasterer by trade he spent many hours etching the finest details into the ceilings of every room. In the front bedroom, a ring of grapes on the vine with swallows and bees in each corner. In that very room his wife Josephine would later give birth to a son, then a daughter, then two baby girls in one night! One of those baby girls was named Lola, and she’s standing by the front gate in this photo. She went on to have her own children, and her son Randal married me. The day we first saw this house was the day I fell in love with it. To hear Lola tell it, I had ‘’stars in my eyes”. Perhaps they blinded me to the tobacco-stained wallpaper, the dry rot in the back wall, the mission brown paint that covered almost every surface, from skirting boards to kitchen cupboards. But I only saw the window seat, the camellias in the garden, the leadlight front door, and Herbie’s beautiful ceilings. And it wasn’t really about what I saw anyway. It was about what I felt.
I still feel that way, sixteen years and three children later. I love this house and I know she loves me. But I also love seeing other people’s houses, learning what makes them love their home and how they create their very own sense of place. Won’t you join me?
