A home with a heart

‘Are you up for the challenge?’ reads the real estate brochure. It depicts a badly framed photo of a dilapidated, old house surrounded by overgrown shrubs. It’s the same Willunga cottage I’m sitting in, eating waffles and drinking tea at the kitchen table, but it’s almost unrecognisable, after an epic transformation by owners Kerstin and Jay Holata.

The elegantly designed extension gives a new lease of life to this historic cottage.

Photo by Jason Porter.

Kerstin has detailed the labour of love in a scrapbook, which opens with that somewhat ominous real estate ad. ‘It was just so rundown,’ Kerstin explains. ‘When we rang the agent about it, he told us he wouldn’t even speak to us until we’d called the council and found out everything that was wrong with it.’

The list of problems was jaw-dropping: an incorrect boundary dissecting the house, a local heritage encumbrance, an asbestos lean-to, no foundations and a veritable possum graveyard in the ceiling. But Kerstin and Jay were ‘up for the challenge’.

They’d been living in Melbourne, and after the birth of their third son, they were looking for a big backyard and a slower-paced life. ‘We’d owned a vineyard at Blewitt Springs and we loved the Fleurieu,’ Kerstin says. ‘We looked and looked for something with a decent amount of space, but we just couldn’t find anything.’

Then Jay stumbled across the Willunga cottage. ‘I turned a corner, parked the car at the top of the drive and saw the view and it was love at first sight,’ he tells me with a smile. ‘The views were breathtaking and I thought, “I can do this”.’

That was six years ago. Today the property is a warm, light-filled, family home, that seamlessly blends old with new. The asbestos addition has been replaced with an elegantly designed extension that gives a new lease of life to this historic cottage.

I flip to the next page of scrapbook photos and find a picture of Kerstin’s father and Jay carefully taking off the enormous slabs of slate from the floor. They numbered each piece in position before removing it, levelling the dirt and then replacing the slate. It’s just one example of the energy and care they put into preserving as much of the original building as possible.

Lovebirds loving their new home.

Kerstin is in the midst of creating a lovely mosaic design on the stairs leading up to the road.

Kerstin and Jay have applied the same mix of hard work and tenacity to the exterior of the home, including the garden.

The cottage was built in 1847 by the Rielly family, Irish labourers who’d fled the potato famine. It had stayed in the same family for generations, until Jay and Kerstin bought it.

The Holatas are erudite, hardworking and intelligent, but they admit that when they were given the keys to the cottage, the task ahead was daunting. ‘The only thing I liked about the place was the kitchen fireplace,’ Kerstin says. ‘The bedroom was still full of the furniture of the old lady who lived here, including her slippers under the bed.’ Every piece of wood or slate in the cottage was covered in layers of paint, which Kerstin painstakingly scraped off, while her three young children played at her feet. ‘We couldn’t live in the cottage so we rented and any spare minute we had, we’d go there and work on it,’ Kerstin says. ‘It was like an archaeological dig — we pulled back the carpet and underneath it there was lino, and then magazines from the 1950s and finally the slate.’

When they cut back the overgrown shrubs and brambles they uncovered an old, stone shed, which Jay rebuilt by hand. They learned to create dry stone walls and discovered the best way to apply a lime render. ‘I’m a scientist so I researched everything,’ Kerstin tells me. ‘I looked at every type of lime until someone told me to use French lime, which actually self heals.’ It’s given a softness and fluidity to the building, imbuing the walls with humanity.

Jay and Kerstin made only two major changes to the original structure. They knocked out a wall dividing the kitchen and bedroom, to create a larger kitchen. They also took apart a small slate wall at the back of the house. ‘When we did that I was very mindful of the hands that had built it in the first place,’ Kerstin says. ‘It gave us a real understanding of how the house was made.’ When the restoration was finally complete, Jay and Kerstin were rewarded with a heritage award from the Onkaparinga Council. ‘It was actually a huge thing for us, because it had been such an enormous amount of work, over such a long time, and it was really wonderful to have acknowledgement of that,’ Kerstin says.

But there was little time to bask in the glory; they now had to turn the 170-year-old cottage into a comfortable family home for their rapidly growing boys. ‘We had to have a house that would accommodate five adults, because we planned to be here for the long haul,’ Jay says. The cottage is perched on the top of a sloping block, with a winter creek at the bottom of it. Jay knew at first glance that the only way to extend would be to build down the hill. But how to do that, while safeguarding the integrity of the cottage, posed a problem.

The Holatas sought advice from Council’s heritage advisor and then went to local builder Bailey Homes with a challenging brief. The extension had to be modern and big enough for their large family, but it couldn’t detract from, or overshadow the cottage. Jay and Kerstin were clear that the cottage had to remain the ‘heart’ of the home.

The large deck is oriented northwest and captures views of the townships of Willunga and Aldinga – all the way down to the coast.

The outdoor area behind the old cottage is full of charm, with a beautiful little garden and sheltered seating area carved out of the hillside.

The upstairs bathroom is an exercise in elegance, with floor-to-ceiling travertine tiles.

The earthiness of the old cottage wall on the right in hand-rendered French lime transitions well to the new build through careful use of colour.

The old cottage houses the kitchen and a quaint eating area. Kerstin carefully selected the materials, appliances and furnishings to sit comfortably in the the earthy interior.

A room with a view.

The new living space transitions into a large balcony that makes the most of the sweeping views that first captured Jay’s imagination.

It was like an archaeological dig – we pulled back the carpet and underneath it there was lino, and then magazines from the 1950s, and finally the slate.

‘I was really proud that they felt confident in us, because it was such a complex project,’ Managing Director Don Bailey explains. ‘We hadn’t worked on anything like this before and I was really excited about it.’

The new addition is connected to the old cottage in a feat of engineering that’s all the more impressive because you barely notice it. Before building could begin, tonnes of rock had to be removed from the hillside below the cottage. ‘There were a few hold-yourbreath moments,’ Don says. ‘We couldn’t use big machinery because of the risk of causing damage to the walls, which are basically just made of mud-pie.’

Using just a small jack-hammer and an innovative chemical rocksplitting technique, Don and his team were able to complete the excavation without a single crack in the walls. They then installed huge concrete pylons into the hill, on which the extension is built. Thus, by a combination of clever planning, careful work and a bit of good luck, the floor of the new building meets the level of the original slate slabs within a millimetre.

Step through the kitchen door and you enter a light-filled corridor, which opens out into a generous living space. Recycled messmate floorboards span the length of the room, and bring a complementary warmth to the slate floors of the cottage. The walls of the new building aren’t uniformly at right angles and the different facets are a nod to the irregularity of the old walls.

The roofline of the extension is broken up into similar, small angles. It’s the joint brainchild of Council’s heritage advisor Andrew Stevens and Don Bailey, who both recognised the importance of a roofline that didn’t ‘swamp’ the cottage. ‘It was quite an unconventional project,’ says Don. ‘Kerstin and Jay were great to work with and we shared a lot of ideas.’ Every obstacle became an opportunity for ‘out of the box’ thinking. The result is an abundance of beautiful and creative features in the home.

The new living space transitions into a large balcony that makes the most of the sweeping views that first captured Jay’s imagination. In the main bedroom, double-glazed windows, imported from Europe, frame the tapestry of green vineyards rolling into a blue-grey ocean. The upstairs bathroom is an exercise in elegance, with floor-toceiling travertine tiles. ‘I do love this bathroom,’ Kerstin admits. ‘Everyone told me we couldn’t use travertine because it’s too irregular, but I knew we could.’ The end result is spectacular; more rustic than marble, but with similar colouring and concentric lines. Down the timber stairs are another two bedrooms, a bathroom and a living space, where the boys are lounging during the school holidays.

Kerstin and Jay have applied the same mix of hard work and tenacity to the exterior of the home, including the garden. Brambles and weeds have been replaced with lawn, flowers and veggie beds. The creek bed has been cleverly defined with native plants and rocks from the excavation.

We’ve reached the end of the scrapbook, but I flick back to the beginning; the real estate ad where it all began. Underneath Kerstin has scrawled: ‘This is the beautifully presented property that made us think ‘yes, we’ve found our dream home.’ It’s a bit of a joke, a light-hearted remark about the derelict state of the house they bought. But the comment also encompasses the couple’s ability to see beauty where others see despair. ‘We really hope to inspire people to preserve these old homes,’ Kerstin says. ‘With a bit of work and creative thinking they can be really liveable.’ With the help of a clever builder, the Holatas have put the heart back into a forlorn little cottage, and in doing so, they’ve created a family home filled with warmth and love.

Story by Esther Thorn.

Photography by Robert Geh.

Styling by Little Road Home.