The view is even more intriguing from the background swimming pool around the corner, where the brightly glazed PGH bricks, arched doorway and spiral stairs can be seen softening the hard corners of the solid brick wall.
Inside these walls this studio home remains bold and bright, with blue walls and ceiling, and round porthole windows. The effect is striking, but for HIA member Vince Sainato this was just another build, albeit using various custom and recycled elements.
‘It was fairly straightforward, the main challenge was access, and the tight space within the area,’ he says.
The laneway access presented some difficulties with getting equipment and materials in, and the backyard area that Vince and TCM Building Group worked in eight years ago is now taken up with the new swimming pool.
‘The pool came during the build,’ explains Vince.
‘We had to basically do our slab first, and then the pool. We had to get the pool shell in prior to us building from the slab up, so the build process was interlinked.’
It turns out that one of the hardest tasks on this build was removing the original small studio.
‘The biggest concern was demolishing – I knew how well we built it, and we had a large excavator on site breaking up the old slab and it took a lot longer than we’d anticipated. The demolished concrete was sent away for recycling into crushed concrete – and there was plenty of it.