Small Home: Pine

‍This is such a charming and characterful home. Who are the charming characters who live here?

Nicholas: Kirthana and Vicki both have a great sense of humour and a strong social justice lens in all that they do. Kirthana is an artist and academic and Vicki works in community development. They love art, making art, collecting art, enjoying music and the theatre. They especially love travelling and eating, and they love living in the inner west and their cute dog-park family made of neighbours and furry friends.

How did you all meet? And how did you come to be involved in reimagining their home?

Nicholas: The link dates back more than 10 years to one of my earliest projects. In 2014, I undertook a project – Kanimbla Hall – that then led to another for that client's friend. That client's friend was Grant and the project was The Warren. Vicki and Grant are pretty much besties. Needless to say, I'm glad I did a good job on that one and so got this gig.

Ah, The Warren … One of our all-time favourites¹. But back to this gorgeous place: tell us about the original apartment and the building it's in … What prompted the reno?

Vicki: We wanted to open up the space – we felt too closed in with the previous layout. We didn't have much storage space, and we wanted to update the kitchen and bathroom too. We wanted to live as big as we could in a smaller space and needed the design to get us there.

Nicholas: Vicki is forgetting one of the primary reno prompts – a pet-friendly (wee-tolerant) floor.

Okay, we'll come back to the wee-tolerant floor. What was the approach to solving the space and storage issues?

Nicholas: The first hurdle and most obvious manoeuvre was to remove the wall that separated the kitchen and laundry and the kitchen/ diner from the living space. Vicki had agonised over its presence (and yearned for its disappearance) for years. By default, a dining spot would have been created by removing the wall, but it felt too simplistic.

I wanted to promote an effortless circulation and double-down on their desire for openness. The result being the floating bench and dining table combo. I like playing into the realities of how we live nowadays, where dining tables are used sometimes rather than all the time. The bulk of the kitchen and laundry was then pushed to the flanks, which allowed us to overlap with and fulfil storage requirements.

‍What were the non-negotiables in the design?

Vicki: Trying to make as much floor space available and to bring both intentional and functional design into our little home.

Nicholas: And the wee-friendly floor. Vicki also had to have some terrazzo. So we stuck some in the bathroom.

There's that wee-tolerant floor again... Tell us about your dog and what you all love to do at home. What kind of life do you lead within these walls?

Kirthana: Our dog Oscar now lives with Vicki's mum because he has doggy dementia and was getting stressed in the small space. He is now enjoying a big backyard. The apartment felt weird without a dog so we added a puppy to the family – Bernie – who enjoys running around the apartment.

Vicki: Kirthana works from home so the study and the table on wheels in the kitchen come in handy. We spend most of our time in the lounge room as we love listening to music and watching films. Kirthana loves cooking too, so the larger kitchen and pullout pantry that houses her favourite spices are welcome additions. We also love pulling out a book from the window library if only just to admire all the spines. (I'm aware that sounds weird).

What kinds of questions did you ask Vicki and Kirthana to nut out your response to their brief, Nic?

Nicholas: I don't have to ask a lot of questions when people are honest and transparent about what and why. There was never any suggestion that this was a stepping stone for Vicki and Kirthana. It was simultaneously a project with a very concise brief and enough wiggle room to explore some tailored solutions.

Talk us through the choices of materials throughout and why these choices were made …

Nicholas: Vicki will tell you in no uncertain term that things have to be hard-wearing and easy to clean. We started with the floor and found the best possible option. The chestnut coloured timber was not what any of us had in mind but it was the pick of the bunch. It both paired and contrasted nicely with white, and we knew that plants and art would do a lot of the heavy lifting with respect to ambience. Targeted use of marble and terrazzo satisfied Vicki's "need for some stone". For high touch points, the white laminate is adhered to plywood.

Yep. The colour palette really allows Vicki and Kirthana's beautiful and colourful artwork to pop. So this idea for the plants and art to do "the heavy lifting" on the ambience side was always the plan from the start?

Nicholas: Yes. As much as Vicki loved what we'd done at Grant's place, something with a little more restraint was preferred.

The bookcase framing the window: it's such a hardworking and attractive storage solution. Is this an approach you've used before or did it emerge as part of this project?

Nicholas: We wanted to fashion some storage without compromising the opportunity for the studio to be converted to a second bedroom if needed. I have used a similar tactic in the past, whereby a white shroud frames the window and magnifies the intensity of the natural light. The view outside to the neighbouring buildings (and likely a future development site) was not a favourite. As such, the bookcase encourages eyes to linger inside instead.

The clever slide-away coffee table and kitchen table are such simple but effective solutions too. We've seen this move from Nic before, but was this something you requested from his previous work, Vicki? Or an approach that Nic brought to the table (ahem) himself?

Vicki: I'm not a fan of dining tables in smaller spaces as they take up too much space, so a table that could be rolled away when not in use was a very welcome solution. Kirthana loves a theatrical reveal and so tucking away the tables makes for some fun with guests, especially when they think they'll be eating off their laps.

How long did the renovations take? Was there a tight budget?

Nicholas: The renovation took 14 weeks to complete. And, yes. The budget was pretty darn tight.

How has the redesign altered the way you enjoy your home, Vicki?

Vicki: Everything we own has a place, which makes it easier to keep the apartment tidy. It also makes us appreciate what we do have and makes it clear what we don't in fact need for joy and comfort.

And if you had to name your favourite detail in the apartment?

Nicholas: The kitchen.

It’s a difficult space in which to reinvent the wheel. It’s suitably functional and gifts the area it needn’t occupy back to the space. The original relationship between kitchen and dining are reimagined but still intertwined.

Vicki: I love it all! I often find myself looking at different elements like the copper pipes under the kitchen bench. The cut out circles in the joinery, the curvy shelves, the bookshelf around the window in the second room. I really enjoy it all.

Kirthana: We love the little elements of humour, for example the boob lights in the kitchen. We also love the wavy shelves and the terrazzo tiles in the bathroom called 'Fatima's reflection'. A lot of reflection happens in there. And Bernie loves body-sliding across the pet-friendly floor with her toys.

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¹This fabulous 49sqm Sydney apartment featuring a distinctive golden mirror-clad central pod appeared on Never Too Small’s YouTube channel in 2019 and continues to be a major audience (and team) favourite. It also featured in our first book, Reimagining Small Space Living.