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HOMEmade recap: Simeon and Lorena’s super storage solutions

01 Nov 2018

Simeon and Lorena bought their 1960s weatherboard bungalow eight years ago to house themselves, their two daughters and a number of orphaned animals that come home from their vet clinic. They intended to renovate, but Simeon works long hours as an on-call vet and Lorena is busy as a stay-at-home mum for their newly adopted son.

When the HOMEmade team paid the family a visit, they were in desperate need of storage as well as extra space for the all the kids and animals.

Inside, designer Melissa Greenough wanted to give the family a relaxed living space with plenty of functional storage. The first step was decluttering before adding a built-in shelving unit across one wall. The unit was painted in Resene Black White, with Resene Triple Black White on the walls for an open, bright space. She even added a pet bed painted in Resene Wax Flower and Resene Half Surrender.

In the dining room Melissa added booth seating around the dining table with hidden storage spaces inside. The ceilings, window trim and door surrounds in both spaces were painted in Resene Alabaster.

Lounge before

Dining after

Dining before

Outside in the garden, the HOMEmade team decided to carefully shift a derelict playhouse closer to the house, making it bigger and building a deck along the front. It was then painted in Resene Black.

Garden designer Dan Mackay also added a vegetable garden and a pebbled courtyard to create a space that the children can use year-round, which helps free up some of the house interior from their toys. The washing line was also relocated and the area around it was pebbled so there was no more trudging through mud to reach it

Garden after

Garden before

Catch episodes of HOMEmade on TVNZ1, Thursdays at 7.30pm. If you missed last week's episode, you can watch it at www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/homemade.

Published: 01 Nov 2018