A 1920s Queenslander in Paddington reimagined for family life

After living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment during an 18-month work secondment in New York, more space was high on the agenda for Louise and Andrew Newman when they returned to Brisbane in 2006 and started house hunting. But while they wanted plenty of bedrooms and a backyard, they weren’t keen on being in the suburbs to achieve it. “In Manhattan, you can walk everywhere, so we didn’t want to need the car for accessing shops and restaurants,” explains Louise.

The couple also hankered for an area with heritage houses, and finally found what they were looking for in the hilly suburb of Paddington. They snapped up a 1920s Queenslander and, later, when their two daughters joined the family, enclosed the lower level to add a laundry and playroom.

Upstairs, the house had a traditional layout with three bedrooms in a straight line on the western side, and the living, dining and kitchen spaces on the other. That configuration worked well when their daughters were younger, but as they got older, the bedrooms opening directly onto the living spaces became more problematic. “I’d get comments like, ‘Mummy, who won MasterChef last night?’ because they’d been peering around their bedroom doors watching TV while they were supposed to be sleeping,” Louise recalls with a smile.

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