Here we go again. Another house, another full lap pool installed dead centre of the floor plan, another family who looked at “build a pool in the backyard like everyone else” and said no, put it in the living room. This is the second one of these we’ve found. We’re now fairly confident it’s not a trend, it’s a cult, and we would like to know where the recruitment meetings are held.
The pool at 14 Nicholson Avenue runs almost the full length of the house, flanked on both levels by glass balustrades, so the dining room, the living room, the family room and the upstairs hallway all get a water view whether they asked for one or not. There’s a retractable glass sky-dome overhead that opens at the push of a button, which is the one genuinely good idea in the whole arrangement, because otherwise this is just an indoor pool that’s occasionally willing to admit it’s outdoors. We have questions. Does the whole house permanently smell like a leisure centre? Is skinny dipping viable when your family room has a direct sightline to the water? Has anyone in this house ever, even once, had a quiet swim without an audience of throw cushions watching from the sofa?
And here’s the part that really gets us: they built the whole house around this pool, glass balustrades and all, and still didn’t put in a swim-up bar. There is a wet bar. It is right there on the floor plan, timber table and all, sitting metres from the water’s edge — and yet nobody thought to just extend the counter two feet and let people order a drink without getting out. No slide from the upstairs mezzanine either, which given the two-storey drop directly above the deep end feels like an opportunity someone actively chose not to take.
Underneath the pool obsession there’s a genuinely well-specced family home — five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a study, a sauna, a Koi pond out back for when the indoor water feature isn’t enough indoor water for you. Walk to the station, walk to the shops, walk past the living room and get misted by chlorine on your way to bed. Sydney’s north shore, doing what it does best: enormous discretion on the outside, and something completely unhinged happening in the middle.
