Glass House 1

The Glass House

Victorian homes are beautiful, filled with character and soul, and ones like this are few and far between. The tricky thing with that is retaining those qualities while making them suit today’s way of life.

Located in Vredehoek
Built by J3 Construction
Photography by Henrique Wilding
281m² in size

Featured in Home magazine, March 2021

I remember the first time I visited this home. I was struck by how well the original features had been preserved. The stained glass windows and doors, the teak woodwork, the brass detailing to the front door, the picture rails, the floor tiles to the veranda, the pressed ceilings- I could go on and on! And I remember being in awe of the generous central hall with its striking series of archways and high ceilings. I fell in love with this home.

Typical of Victorian homes, the rear was a series of poorly laid out rooms and long dark and narrow passages, the type that you get lost in. At one end was the kitchen- a large room, but somehow with no space for a fridge and freezer. You had to walk two rooms away to get your ingredients when cooking, not fun when you forget something. The house was dark; so all of the beautiful detailing was hard to see. The lounge fireplace, though beautiful, was unusable. The roof to the rear leaked. And the only view of the mountain was through a sliver of the en-suite window.

All the architectural features made the home special, but challenging to renovate. Older homes in this kind of condition come with a high heritage status. This meant that some of the things we had hoped to do weren’t allowed. So we said goodbye to the idea of an attic main bedroom and a roof deck over the garage.

Contradictory as it may sound, restrictions often make a design even better. We actually decreased the footprint of this home, but through clever design, every room is now 100% functional; so it feels larger than before. 

For instance, a surplus bedroom was re-imagined into a guest bathroom and en-suite. Stealing a little space from the main bedroom and building into a side alleyway created space for the main en-suite and dressing room. 

The most striking design element is the wall of glass at the far end of the wide passage. It’s the first thing that you see when you enter this home and an entirely modern element. It brings in loads of light and draws your eye out to the greenery of the courtyard. This and the main bedroom’s oversized window are part of why this home has been dubbed ‘The Glass House.’