‘IT WAS A GREAT BUILD, WITH GREAT CLIENTS AND A GREAT ARCHITECT’ Beautiful design brought to life with technical precision and a keen eye for detail: soak up the laid-back luxury of the 2018 HIA–CSR Australian Home of the Year. From the rustic sandstone sea wall to the the home epitomises easy-breezy luxury coastal towering palms swaying in the breeze, living. But it took 18 months of highly technical every part of this seven-bedroom, absolute construction to achieve such laid-back beauty. waterfront holiday home is picture-perfect. The waterfront block, originally part of a larger Outside it’s all about tactile white-on-whites, property, was empty save for a one-bedroom weathered timber and succulent greenery. The boat shed, which has been retained and modified. interiors are awash in space, light, and the laid-backHowever, the extreme proximity to tidal water perfection of a palette of marble, linen, oak and necessitated some fairly intense site preparation. rattan. ‘There was an existing sea wall, but it was Gracing a 2500-square metre patch of prime real dilapidated, so first we had to get in and build a estate at Wagstaffe on the NSW Central Coast, the new sandstone sea wall … we had to work with the Australian Home of the Year was constructed by tides which made things quite challenging,’ explains Hunter region builder and HIA member Construct Daniel Syddall, owner of Construct Central Coast. Central Coast to a design by Dennis Rabinowitz The second stage of preparation was dewatering at JPR Architects. With its resort styling and views the site and encasing an existing sewer main that across the sparkling expanse of Brisbane Water, ran beneath the footprint of the house and pool. 18 HOUSING SEPTEMBER 2018