At just 3.9 metres at it widest, Kate Challis’s home in the heart of Melbourne is far from palatial, but she’s used her knowledge as an interior designer to configure this awkward space, turning the 1892 building into an open-plan home.
Given its beginnings as a shop with living quarters attached, the house is a difficult shape for family living, with no hallway – you have to walk through one room to get to another. To combat this, Kate has created a new corridor at the centre of the house, designing a bank of dark wood doors – each with a hint of bronze – that conceal a series of utility rooms: a surprisingly spacious laundry, hot pink powder room and storage closet.
‘With a narrow house like this, you have to be really mindful of where to position the rooms, and how people will flow through them,’ explains Kate. ‘It’s harder to furnish a smaller space, too – ten centimetres here or there on a piece of furniture makes a real difference to whether a room works or not.’
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She decided to flip the layout of the house she shares with her husband, nine-year-old son and two cats, so that now the kitchen/dining room faces the street. It’s sheltered by double-glazed frosted glass, which adds some privacy, and mutes the rumble of trams and people outside. ‘We love having people over, so it made sense to make this our largest space,’ says Kate. A jewel box-like living room sits at the rear of the property, overlooking an internal courtyard with a spiral staircase leading to an evergreen roof terrace.
As befits someone with a PhD in art history, Kate has decorated the house with murals, noticeably Fornasetti’s ‘Nuvolette’ cloud wallpaper, which rises from the ground floor up the stairwell to the upper level. The walls in the kitchen are covered in a landscape of jungle foliage and tropical birds – a version of Melbourne artist Valerie Sparks’ ‘Le Vol’ wallpaper. The pattern was the starting point for the home’s palette: green walls in the living room with a distemper finish, hot pink armchairs and a blush pink chaise.
In the early 1970s, this building was home to Melbourne’s first feminist bookshop. It’s a history to be proud of, but this property’s latest incarnation, as a luxurious family home, is just as laudable. katechallis.com
This feature originally appeared in ELLE Decoration March 2019
