When Lucy and her husband bought a gorgeous old Colonial home in Brisbane, they immediately fell in love with its Queenslander features and the way it sat so beautifully on the side of a hill. But, despite the stunning facade, a lot of love and attention were needed to reinvigorate this ageing beauty.

With a great builder on board and a willingness to learn and take on many parts of the renovation themselves (despite working full-time jobs), Lucy and her hubby transformed the Colonial home one room at a time across the span of six years!

It just goes to show that slow and steady wins the race.

Renovation Details

• Location: Queensland
• Builder: Hayden from Win Build and Renovate
• Budget: Less than $400,000
• Time taken: Six years of steady work, from 2016 – 2022

About The Project

Lucy’s renovation involved a complete interior and external overhaul of the tired two-story Colonial home.

This included knocking out walls, replacing the existing hardwood floors, relocating windows, extensive plastering and painting, fencing, landscaping … and more landscaping!

And that’s just the beginning.

“We created a vision board for the home – then one for each room. And essentially saved for each room and project at a time, hence it took six years.”

Biggest Challenges

Lucy explains that their biggest hurdle was actually the backyard because of its super steep slope and almost non-existent access.

No landscaper wanted to touch it with a 10-foot pole and gave us quotes well over $100,000 to try and price us out of using them. We ended up doing the whole thing ourselves – carrying each cement block down a steep driveway and staircase ourselves, mixing the concrete ourselves, learning how to build retaining walls properly etc. It took us eight months of working on it pretty much every day.”

Another challenge was finding good trades and having the strength to push back when tradies tried to talk them into doing things the same way they always did it, simply because “that’s how everyone does it”.

Quite often, suggestions by trades didn’t reflect Lucy’s vision board or the look they were trying to achieve. For example, trying to convince her to have chrome strips in the bathroom (they are a chrome-free house!) instead of a mitred tile finish.

Biggest Triumphs

Lucy explained that her biggest achievement hands-down was the landscaping. Tackling a steep slope that many trades didn’t want to touch, carrying concrete and leaning to build their own retaining wall was certainly no mean feat.

Another huge accomplishment was coming up with the design herself and having the willpower to stick to the specific vision for each room. (Any renovator knows how easy it is to be derailed by the huge range of fittings and fixtures available in Australia.)

Lucy also mentioned how proud she and her partner are of taking on all of the demolition and interior painting themselves. In fact, this couple took on a lot of heavy lifting, wherever safe and appropriate.

Advice To People With A Similar Project

We asked Lucy what advice she’d give to people taking on a similar project to hers, here’s what she said:

Stick to your vision board. Don’t let trades talk you out of things. Do what you can yourself. Identify red flags for tradies.”

See more beautiful photos and find out more juicy details of Lucy’s incredible Colonial makeover on her Instagram account: @_ourhillsidehome_

Images supplied by Lucy Smith.

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