Our house, at last completed; You Will Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties; Get the Party Started; Our House; Build Me Up, Buttercup; Roy’s baby; Art Deco upstairs; man cave moments; The Lift Girl’s Lament; Bed(s) of Roses; sounding the retreat; more stuff; as the stomach churns

Let me start on a celebratory note with some party pics, including my birthday and our housewarming party on 8 March. Otherwise, we may all glaze over at the seventh picture of tiling/paving, switch off and never get to see Roy and me thoroughly enjoying our long-awaited new home.

You Will Always Find me in the Kitchen at Parties – Jona Lewie (1980)

 

Moving In Day was 16 December 2024. By then, the house was completely liveable, even comfortable. There was still plenty to be done: gates, landscaping and the commissioning of the lift, for example. We were able to have family over on Christmas Day, basking in the twinkle of our first Christmas tree since we left Singapore in 2016.

And then again for my birthday on 17 January.

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Get the Party Started – Pink (2001)

 

Roy and I hadn’t been able to throw a house party since Roy retired in May 2016 and we left Singapore on our extended travels. So it was high time, and a joyful housewarming was the perfect excuse.

By the way, I highly recommended house parties, especially your own. They represent one of very few occasions when you don’t have to think about how many drinks you can have, or how you’ll be getting home.

As we had hoped, our new home turned out to be the perfect party house. We could even welcome neighbours Werner and Naudeen, because the newly commissioned lift is just big enough for his mobility scooter-thingy.

All in all, it was a lot of fun… so much so that I’m already plotting the next one.

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Our House – Graham Nash (1970)

Roy’s Baby

When I’m writing about us as a couple, it feels more natural to say “Verne & Roy”. That’s why it’s Travels with Verne and Roy, and my other blog is titled Living Long and Strong with Verne & Roy. But it wasn’t by accident that I called this current series This Is the House that Roy & Verne Built.

I had to be persuaded that we would build a house, rather than simply buy the far more modest, ready-built cottage that I envisaged. But Roy needed a project. So, much like the building of Karanja (the Dutch barge that we sold in May 2023; click here for more about that), this house-build was always Roy’s baby – something to keep him out of the pub.

(That’s a joke, by the way. If just one of us were a barfly, it would be me… given half a chance.)

Right from the start – well, soon after I’d given up the idea of a beachy sort of house in favour of one more urban in character, maybe Art Deco? – he had an incredibly clear vision of what the result would be. And ever since our benighted builder went under in April 2024, he’s been completely in charge of the build. (Click here for Part 3 of This is the House that Roy & Verne Built [published nearly a year ago], which tells that sorry story in detail.)

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Build Me Up, Buttercup – The Foundations (1968)

 

So, my clever, tenacious, hard-working Roy steered us single-handedly through the eight difficult months that followed the demise of our building contractor. Navigating the mysterious world of building insurance and related legalities was not the least of his challenges.

Even for someone as indiscreet as me, it’s clearly inappropriate to talk about the numbers, though I have a natural tendency to tell anyone and everyone anything and everything. (Perhaps fortunately, I soon forget details. The question is: do they?) It’s enough to say that we came through relatively unscathed financially, unlike many other unfortunate home owners around this time.

Apart from dealing with the original trades such as bricklayers, electricians, painters and plumbers, Roy somehow found sturdy Samoans to throw concrete; a terrific tiler to transform the kitchens, bathrooms and more into works of art; paving people; purveyors of gates and fencing, and many more.

Here’s the façade in April 2024. By the way, finding someone to correct and reshape those five rounded pillars that had been stuffed up by the original plasterers was no easy feat.

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 Our House – Madness (1983)

 

Yes, the façade is definitely Art Deco… the stepped pediment, the portholes, the corbel and so on. The interiors, however, were supposed to be only a nod to that stylish era, which ran from the 1920s to early 1930s. (We didn’t want to live in a museum, did we?)

Once we’d got started, however, the Art Deco thing seemed to develop a momentum all its own.

Take the stairs, for example. (Or the lift, if you like.) Glass balustrading can look lovely when it’s spotless, but who wants to spend their days polishing finger-marks off these unforgiving surfaces? These Art Deco-inspired wrought-iron balustrades, custom-made by an amazing Italian craftsman called Ivo, cost about the same as glass would have done. Best of all, they hardly show the dust!

Art Deco Upstairs

 

Here’s the main living room (below). The fireplace, mirror and coffee-table base are Art Deco replicas, and the cute cocktail cabinet in the top right-hand corner is a 1930s original. So is the dining-room buffet in the third and fourth pics down.

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Man-cave Moments

I love the fact that I never have to watch TV unless I really want to… and that is seldom. Though the wall above the fireplace is fitted with the necessary connections, the Art Deco fan mirror covers them. And Roy has his own beautifully designed and organised study/TV room located behind the dining room. (Plus another TV that lurks in the downstairs retreat.)

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The Lift Girl’s Lament – Jeremy Taylor (Ag Pleez Daddy, 1962)

 

Though surely its glory days will come in due course (and the later, the better), the installation of this lift has not been easy. For one thing, it was difficult to get the various technicians and electricians to talk to one another – delightful individuals though they are – and so the commissioning of the lift was one of the very last things to happen.

 

One day in late in February 2025, less than two hours after the worthy Darren had officially commissioned the lift, ceremonially handed the remote to my husband and vacated the premises, I arrived home. Roy and I excitedly got on board and pressed the button… without our phones, of course. The conveyance moved about ten inches… and then stopped in mid-air. Fortunately, thanks to the in-lift phone we were able to contact the emergency number, and the blessed Darren returned in short order. He shook the lift about a bit, possibly muttered an incantation or two and delivered us back to terra firma.

I do not like lifts at the best of times, and this was not the ideal introduction to the first lift I have ever owned. First World problems, I suppose.

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Bed of Roses – Jon Bon Jovi (1993)

Turn left from the entrance hall and you find the main bedroom, complete with en-suite and by far the biggest wardrobe I have ever been blessed with. (Pity I have to share it.)

 

Two guest bedrooms (also on the ground floor) share a large shower-room and a guest loo that can be closed off from the shower-room.

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Our House: Sounding the Retreat

I cannot remember what these spaces are called in other countries. Here in Australia, the retreat is  a living room associated with the main (master) bedroom, somewhere for the parents to hide from the rest of the family. Later, their teenaged children, or even grown offspring who refuse to leave home, may challenge their increasingly enfeebled parents for this prized territory.

The Alfresco

In Australia, again, the alfresco is an outdoor area complete with seating and the mandatory barbecue. Here’s our alfresco, on the other side of sliding doors from the retreat. (For retreat, see above.)

It’s time to confess that our downstairs alfresco has no BBQ. There is one, however, on the upstairs verandah that spans the front of the house. To get this ungainly contraption upstairs, we first had to wait for the lift to be commissioned… no one would deliver it up the stairs. (The same went for the main fridge, but we managed to sneak it up during the lift-testing stage.)

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More Stuff in Our House

Art Deco oils in the entrance hall, each with its own picture light!

 

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Next up?

Well, we are already on our big trip to Vancouver and the USA, on board the HAL Westerdam that departed Sydney yesterday, 30 March 2025, in stomach-churning seas. First stop, New Caledonia.

Already, to be honest, I can hardly wait to get back to the house that Roy & Verne built. Huge thanks to our family, friends and neighbours for guarding it in our absence!