From hovel to high-end Queenslander

WHEN Helen and Craig Seitam moved north from Sydney, they set their hearts on living in Brisbane’s quaint inner-city suburb of Paddington.

Yet it was far from love at first sight when they came across a rundown 1920s cottage at 64 Alma St.

“This was a shocker of a house,” Mr Seitam said.

“The irony is, it was so bad it turned us off buying a house two doors up. We thought we can’t live near this thing because it looked so horrible.”

For a man who has carved out a media career in sharing secrets on winning competitions, it appeared that Mr Seitam’s luck had run out.

Known as, “that competitions guy”, Mr Seitam has spent the past 14 years as the founder and editor of CompetitionsGuide.com.au.

“We took a rental in Paddington that first year with the idea of finding a place that could either be a project or the work had already been done,” he said.

“It had to have a panoramic city view but our luck ran out as there was very little we liked on the market. By chance, the ugliest house on Alma Street came on the market. Out of curiosity, we walked up the back and looked over the roof and thought, this could be something.”

The current two-storey building had been used as a boarding house, configured into four small bedrooms on the top floor with a separate flat containing three bedrooms below.

“It was a classic case of worst house, best street,” Mr Seitam said.

The couple decided to try their luck with a plan to maximise the elevated site and capture a spectacular uninterrupted vista, while retaining the original cottage and dealing with the hurdles of a steep slope and poor access.

This involved renovating and extending the existing structure, adding a third level, garage, pool and landscaping the site, all at the same time.

“To put that last storey on was the icing on the cake because that gave us views that will never be built out,” Mr Seitam said.

“What we didn’t realise at the time, was how difficult the access was going to be. We really had to go to not one, but two neighbours and get their permission to run all our earthmoving equipment through their yards. I don’t how many hundreds of tonnes of dirt we removed. So it was only possible because of our neighbours.”

Surprisingly, despite the barriers and scale of the transformation, it took the Seitams less than a year to create their much-loved tropical Queenslander home.

“We began building in August 2014 and moved in just eight months later,” Ms Seitam, a former Sydney Motorways communications manager, said.

“There are renovations around here that started before we moved in and are still going, and we were adamant that wasn’t going to happen which is why I took over the project management. I was here each day in my floral gumboots because the whole place was a big muddy hole. We punched hard and didn’t muck around.”

The result is one of the most impressive renovations in Paddington - a tropical twist on the classic Queenslander design so popular in our climate.

Functionality is such a rare commodity in older homes yet this property has been manipulated to embrace and enhance a busy family lifestyle.

Intelligent redesign has created an inner-city sanctuary, one of the few in this preferred pocket with a swimming pool, level lawn area and private self-contained guest accommodation.

“This home typifies some of the incredible transformations we’re currently seeing to the Paddington streetscape,” Ray White New Farm’s Christine Rudolph said.

“What’s very exciting about it is transformations like this are really satisfying buyers’ thirst for a beautiful lifestyle home already completed and so close to the CBD. There’s no doubt in the past 12 months we’ve really seen continued evidence of buyer demand for these types of homes, which has driven prices up by more than ten per cent.”

The five bedroom residence is in the heart of the quaint Paddington precinct, located in the prized Milton State School catchment and within walking distance of the CBD, South Bank and Rosalie Village.

“We love the area as it’s delivered everything we wanted it to,” Ms Seitam said.

“The car rarely comes out of the garage because we walk everywhere. It’s just a case of whether we go to nearby Rosalie, Latrobe and Given Terraces, Caxton Street, South Bank or into the city.”

The Seitams are downsizing so their beautiful Paddington home is scheduled to go to auction on Tuesday, March 26 at Ray White New Farm’s ‘Auction Under the Stars’ event.