How a $1 million makeover brought this decaying 1880s terrace back to life
It's a historic part of Melbourne known for its stately terraces and wide, tree-lined streets.
But buying a house in elegant South Melbourne also usually costs a pretty penny … unless you buy the worst house in the street, or possibly even the entire country.
That's the mammoth challenge Paul and Jess Roche decided to take on when they snapped up an old — very old — weatherboard terrace in 2020, in their dream location.
Barely standing
Described by Restoration Australia host Anthony Burke as "$930,000 worth of overgrown ruin", the once-resplendent cottage built by a well-to-do Scottish baker in the 1880s had slipped into ruin, with an alarming tilt to boot.
"The house is falling over. The floor's rotted out in places so you're actually walking on dirt," Paul told the show.
"There's some sort of vine growing throughout the whole house, in the walls, in the ceiling. There's not one piece of plaster that doesn't look like it's got a crack through it.
"The place is literally falling apart."
Jess said the timber house was a deceased estate that had been passed down through the generations of one family. No one had called it home for about half a century, and the neglect was showing.
"I think it was a bargain because no one wanted to tackle the project," said Jess.
A slice of history
However, the opportunity to snap up one of the last two-storey timber weatherboard terraces in South Melbourne was too good to ignore.
Having moved to a local rental, the couple initially had grand ambitions to carry out much of the restoration work themselves.
However, with Paul running his own insulation business, Jess teaching at a school a couple of days a week, and both running their three kids around to soccer matches all weekend, reality soon hit.
So they persuaded builder mate Ross McCulloch to come to take a look.
Ross's first, rather honest appraisal was: "You're shitting me, aren't you?"
"My biggest concern was the lean on it, the big lean-to and how we were going to straighten everything up," the builder said.
"But I saw through that and saw all the unique features of the skirting boards, the stairwell, the architraves … and I just fell in love with it straight away, and I thought I've got to have this job — I've got to do it."
Ross said he knew it was going to be a major challenge and cause sleepless nights, "but that's what life's about."
Prime real estate
The house, and the mid-Victorian period terraces around it, aren't short on history. In the 1850s, with the gold rush kicking off, the area became a tent city.
Soon after this population explosion, city planners decided that underused South Melbourne should be repurposed as prime real estate.
Swampy land, briefly used as a racecourse, became Melbourne's newest dress circle — St Vincent Place, featuring a central, crescent-shaped garden. It was all terribly British.
Principal heritage advisor for the City of Port Phillip, David Helms, said the new estate was very aspirational, populated by those who weren't afraid to flaunt their good fortune.
"As the area developed, you find the really, really wealthy people, the men and women who own factories in Port Melbourne and South Melbourne start to build the very grand terraces that we see around the square today," he said.
Many of the streets in the estate, and the park itself, were named after notable members of the English navy.
Jess and Paul's street was no exception. Gazetted in 1866, Martin Street was named for Captain John Martin, whose overloaded ship capsized earlier that year, losing 220 souls.
When they bought their faded beauty, it had 1880s weatherboards, bricks from the 1970s, and an outdoor dunny that needed knocking over. To add to the challenge, Paul said there was a special interest heritage overlay on the property, with the main stipulation to "keep it original".
'Nothing is level'
One major fear was that by jacking the fully detached house up to pour a slab underneath, the whole thing might actually tip over.
"We've realised the house has been crooked, so nothing is level," said Ross. "We've been trying to level one side but then it pushes the other out."
To get the house even reasonably level, a plan was formed to almost entirely rebuild the ground floor with new timber.
Salvaging original decorative features, such as fibrous plaster ceiling roses, original curved skirting boards and mid-19th century cornice work, also called for an extremely delicate plan of attack.
Even before the project could get off the ground, objections from neighbours, council red tape and heritage hoop-jumping delayed work by months.
And when things finally got going, the hurdles, including COVID hold-ups, labour shortages and logistics issues, just kept coming.
A budget blow-out
Jess and Paul, who figured that $500,000 and six months should do the job, soon found their timeline and budget being severely tested.
Plans were also becoming pliable as the old house called the shots. For instance, plans to remove the entire staircase to prevent it being damaged — then reinstall it once the walls were straightened — were abandoned after it became clear the stairs would fall down if removed.
A plan to restore the original 1880s fireplace in the only downstairs bedroom also had to be shelved, proving a major disappointment to the couple.
"I really tried to keep that fireplace and the chimney in the house, but we just couldn't lift it and straighten it with that staying there," says Paul. "It was completely pushing the house over or holding the house up, I'm not too sure but it wasn't straight."
Some creative thinking led to an original fireplace upstairs being pulled out, restored and then reinstalled downstairs.
A result worth forking out for
In the end, the cost of resurrecting this South Melbourne home to its former grandeur cost about $1 million — double Jess and Paul's initial estimate. The six-month timeline ballooned out to 14 months.
Some of the features, such as the problematic staircase, survived. It's now standing up straight.
"I remember this being so rickety … I felt drunk, I think," says Restoration Australia host Anthony Burke. "Now I'd have to say it's a sober staircase."
The retro kitchen also got a major modern upgrade, with a benchtop and splashback Burke described as less polite Victorian, more "a bit disco".
"This is a little bit more of our personality, I think, coming through," said Jess of the blue Roma quartzite stone from Brazil which has copper running through it.
The family spends much of its time in the now open-plan kitchen and living area, which has also proven a hit with the kids.
"One of the favourite parts of the room is the concrete floor. They rollerblade and skateboard and do all the things you shouldn't do in here," Paul said.
"It's nice and warm with the hydronic heating — it just really makes this area quite liveable."
And while some of the original features wound up in the skip bin — including some of the ceiling roses and rotting timber beams — Jess and Paul are happy they've managed to keep some of the old, and introduce some beautiful new features too, such as tessellated tiles on the front porch.
"We did try and keep as many things as we could and even little details like the doorknocker and the door handle ... and all the skirting boards," said Jess.
"So we've had to replace some things but we've at least kept it in the same style as what it would've originally been."
As for the cost?
"You know, COVID came along and we had a few delays with a grumpy neighbour, which probably cost us a little bit, and then we've added in quite a lot of high-end features into the house — the slab heating, all the cabinetry, the benchtops — so we've ended up around that 950 to a mill finish," Paul said.
Not appearing particularly concerned, he noted with a laugh: "We're going to have to keep working for a few more years to pay it off."
Stream the new season of Restoration Australia on ABC iview.