House of the Week: Slice of heaven in Clifton Hill

31 Fenwick Street, Clifton Hill
$1.45 million-$1.5 million
2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom
Auction 11am, Saturday, March 18
Agent Roland Paterson, Nelson Alexander 0417 367 997
Inspect on Saturday, from 11.15am-11.45am

Some of the houses we feature here are grand and glorious. Some are quirky and cute. This small, attached terrace house in Clifton Hill is as beautiful as any of the houses we have seen for some time.

Of course you’re not going to get the scale and scope that comes with a big pile, but what you will get is a brilliant primer for an urbane and sophisticated renovation on a smaller scale.

Swinging open the front door you’re immediately impressed by the light that’s filtering throughout the interiors – an attached single-front really has no right to be this bright.

It’s when you plunge deeper into the home, beyond the lovely front-facing first bedroom, that you get to understand the brilliant work of the architect here.

Fiona Dunin & FMD Architects deserve their shoutout as the authors of this Cross Stitched House, so called because one of the owner’s requirements was accommodating three tapestries of houses her mother had made. This is a great piece of work.

As you wander down the hall towards the bright light of the westerly rear, you pass a house-shaped mirror on the northern wall.

Similarly, in the main bedroom – a magnificent suite of luminous space where a glassy corner lightwell rises up to illuminate the entire area – there are terrific angles to underscore the house motif.

The ensuite has a brilliant wedge of a vanity that inverts the house shape while above the splashback and mirrored storage combine to create another excellent triangle. Small, round grey mosaic tiling covers floor and glass shower that looks out too to that little lightwell garden.

The rear section’s footprint remains largely untouched but the application of a series of pressed ply timber beams that spread across the ceiling at angles like a glorious open fan gives the entire space a brilliant definition as well as neatly framing a sliver of skylight.

The kitchen is a terrific, no fuss white affair with the floating bench another heft of attractive ply fashioned into another wonderful wedge.

In front are the dining and living areas, those fans above drawing the eye across the peaked ceiling to the stunning wall of floor-to-ceiling glass at the rear. Beyond here the timbers continue to provide the brilliant frame for the thriving green courtyard with water feature. This is heaven. This is inner-city living writ large on the smallest of spaces. Bravo.

Need to know

Built circa-1910 and renovated in 2014, the house was last traded for $715,000 in 2011. The highest recorded house price in Clifton Hill (for the last 12 months) was $3,020,000 for 6 The Esplanade in October 2016.

Recent sales

$1.43 million for 20 Gordon Street in February 2017

$882,000 for 200 Alexandra Parade East in February 2017

$1.29 million for 40 Myrtle Street in December 2016

What the agent says

“There is an extremely strong buyer demand for highly finished architectural homes like this one in the area of Clifton Hill.” Roland Paterson, Nelson Alexander