There’s a running joke in the Grantham household that Denise purchased sprawling Woodend icon Maloa House unbeknown to Michael, who was interstate for work at the time.
“I remember, vividly, coming home one Friday night in 1993, and … Denise said something along the lines of, ‘The kids are in there; I’m heading out. Oh, and by the way, the real estate agent is coming around to sign the contracts because we bought that house,’” he says with a laugh.
The truth is, Denise had been eyeing the property at 64 High Street – originally the local doctor’s surgery and residence and reincarnated many times since it was built in 1906 – ever since the family moved from South Australia to country Victoria two years earlier.
“The house is situated on the railway line and, as you come into town, it’s a major landmark in Woodend township – everyone knows it,” Denise says. “I walked past it with the children most days and just fell in love with it.”
The property was in desperate need of some TLC and had been up for sale for some time.
Seeing its potential as both a family home and business, Denise was keen to throw herself into life in the small town at the foot of the Macedon Ranges.
The early years, however, required some gumption.
“The first night after we moved in, there was a torrential downpour,” Michael says. “We had water leaking through our roof, pouring into the kitchen, every fireplace had a waterfall. I came back into the bedroom at about midnight, and I just put the pillow over my head and I said, ‘We’ve bought the money pit!’”
Certainly, the incredible transformation of Maloa House has been the result of an investment in both time and money. In their almost 30 years at the property, the Granthams have returned the Tudor-Federation homestead to its former glory. The finishing touch was the recent painting of the exterior to restore the original white of more than 100 years ago.
Given the extent of the renovations required, the couple began in stages, taking on much of the work themselves in those early days – pulling up carpets, polishing the pine floorboards and painting the walls in rich heritage colours.
Later additions included a modern extension, a stunning entertainment area with an indoor swimming pool and the conversion of servants’ quarters into a commercial kitchen.
As the couple’s family grew to include four children, Denise trained to become a caterer and began hosting weddings and filling converted rooms with restaurant guests on spare weekends. Michael would return from work in Melbourne or straight from the airport (a reliable 30-minute drive away) to man the bar or look after the children bouncing in the beds upstairs.
For eight years, business boomed, an exciting and busy time for all, until Denise moved her work into town to have more space at home for family life.
While the Granthams never ran the property as a bed and breakfast, with six bedrooms, five bathrooms, eight toilets and five fireplaces, it could easily manage to take in guests.
It has been important to the couple that they retain as much of the original feel of the house as possible, not least because of its significance to the wider community.
“Over the years, we’ve had people drop in. We had a man in his late 80s knock on the door one day and say, ‘I grew up here; just returned to see the house.’ Other people have said, ‘We were here when it was a boarding house.’ It’s just great to be a part of that history.”
A local builder known to share their passion helped source heritage timbers to match existing ones, and window and door frames in the modern extension mirror those in the older part of the house.
From the ornate verandah with its fretwork and mosaic tiling to the tongue-and-groove ceilings, stained-glass windows and marble fireplaces, every detail has been saved or reinstated with the utmost care.
“A lot of thought has gone into it,” Denise says. “We really have done everything we could have done.”
Now, with their children grown up and scattered around the globe, it’s time for a change. The property is for sale by expressions of interest with an asking price of $3.9 million to $4.29 million.
“We have this huge, magnificent house and there are only two of us living in it,” Michael says. “It’s been wonderful, but it’s time for someone else to enjoy the property [and] leverage the opportunities that we were lucky enough to have.”