Suzie Wilks

She may be the First Lady of Do-It-Yourself Television — whose shorts from Changing Rooms were auctioned for a diabolical sum a couple years ago— but when it comes to designing her dream home, Suzie Wilks calls on Archicentre Managing Director Robert Caulfield and Janusz Kowal from CK Designworks to help translate her the architectural dreams on paper. At her favourite Melbourne café, Suzie sets the scene, describing a block in Red Hill she saw for sale in the Melbourne Times recently.  “There were stables, white fences, a ménage…it had all the good bits but no house,” she says dreamily, her eyes lighting up with possibilities…“Let’s pretend I have all the money in the world, shall we?”

She pauses for a drink from her third latte, before continuing. “A beautiful country property is my absolute dream and always has been since I was a child. I see a beautiful house, pitched roof, dormer windows, up on a hill with wonderful views, not necessarily of the ocean, though that’d be nice, but of trees and grass and a lake with ducks and lilies. A wide, return veranda furnished with these really wonderful white wooden chairs that I picked up in a junkshop in Healesville for twenty dollars!”

A horse girl (“showjumping is the only extreme sport I do”) and animal lover in general, Suzie trains dogs to do tricks and is about to depart for L.A. to make some instructional DVDs. She envisages her dream home a utopia for rescued or orphaned animals. “There’s going to be horses, at least four, of all shapes and sizes and I want a baby cow, a baby sheep, a baby deer and I would like to have a foal and I would like to raise them all together and they will be one big, happy family. And for the house, I want a Border Collie Kelpie cross or a Nova Scotian Duck-tolling Retriever.” “Will the Retriever create a problem with the ducks?” Robert asks. “No, we’ll train it to fetch Frisbees instead”.

In addition to the animal sanctuary, Suzie has designs on revolutionising the dinner party, prolonging it by at least 48 hours, making it a weekend marathon of gregarious good times and degustation pleasures with the odd bit of horseback riding thrown in to keep guests fit for the next feast. “You know how you catch up with friends for dinner and before you know it you’ve had you’re dessert and that’s it? Well how nice would it be to bond with people the next day, breakfast lunch and dinner and then repeating it all over again? You really connect. So you sit around and get in that big kitchen together and you cook something nice. I love that.”

As for the garden, when it comes to flora, Suzie knows what she likes. “Anything with dark green foliage and white flowering,” she says. “I hate natives. I also hate bristles that look like toilet brushes. No acacias. Gardenias smell nice. Let’s have gardenias everywhere!”

“It would be a warm, loving home that beckons you in for a cold drink in summer and a hot drink in winter. You could sit out on the veranda and watch the sunset or feed carrots to the horses wandering up from the paddock.”

Janusz has one final question. How much did those shorts from Changing Rooms go for anyway? “Two-thousand five-hundred,” Suzie said. “You know,” he says, “if you sell a few thousand of them, you could buy this property.” Everyone laughs.

After a couple of weeks researching and developing Suzie’s country utopia, Janusz completes the Archicentre Design Concept. “Suzie’s house is designed in the American Country Style of architecture,” says Janusz, “with wide country steps and verandas reminiscent of Victorian country properties. Picture a steep, sloping site. In one direction you have the sea and in the other there’s the farm with panoramic, 180 degree views from every ground-floor window.”

The steep site enabled the guys to put a 4-car garage underground, making access comfortable and convenient. After a quick powder, a grand staircase would lead visitors up to the two main floors. Flanking the basement staircase is a wine cellar and a home theatre.

In her brief, Suzie had declared her love for classic stables. The one that the architects have come up with is architecturally compatible with Suzie’s dream home, with aspects of a traditional American Midwest farmhouse.

Suzie had wished for a big, rambling country kitchen with a long island bench that everyone can collaborate on and that’s exactly what she got.  Around the corner is a  walk-in cool room, accessed through a big, recycled barn door and filled with an assortment of cheeses.

Clever design allows good zoning between the three main living areas (the family/meals area, the 28-seat dining room and the salon) with the kitchen easy to access from the two meals areas, making the salon an obvious candidate for pre and post-prandial ports.

Guests could reach the first floor by either the main staircase or the spiral stairs that will deliver them right to the Philosophy section of Suzie’s cherry-wood panelled library. The main corridor — doubling as a painting gallery — leads to seven bedrooms, six of which are doubles, two that have dedicated en suites and four that share two private bathrooms between them. The master bedroom has its own spa bath and private balcony overlooking the great estate.

The exciting mezzanine view from the library overlooking the ceiling void with its exposed timber beams and fireplace is a highlight. “With the spacious foyer, grand staircase, impressive fireplace and cathedral ceiling,” says Janusz, “we have aimed to create a stunning visual entry with amazing views from every aspect.”

Story — Shane Moritz