The agent says “a home with incredible potential.” How dare you, sir or madam. How dare you. This house has no potential. Potential is what a house has when it isn’t finished yet, and 34 Penquite Road was finished in about 1965, with the olive carpet, the ship’s-hull ceiling and the reel-to-reel deck in its own little cubby all exactly where they were meant to be. The only thing this place could possibly “reach” from here is the Tasmanian heritage register. Anyone who walks through it with a tape measure and a paint chart should be escorted from the premises.
So instead of a review, we’re setting out the rules. Nobody else seems willing to lay down the law around here, so we will.
Clause one: the ceiling stays. The main living room is roofed in huge folded panels of figured timber veneer, joined by white beams that curve down the length of the room like the ribs of an upturned boat. It’s a ceiling you look at, not just under, and it’s the sort of thing an architect draws once in a career and then brags about at parties for forty years. Anyone found up a ladder with plasterboard will be charged, and the charge will stick.
Clause two: the carpet stays. All of it, and there’s a lot. The olive-green wool runs through the living room, the dining room, the family room and every bedroom. It climbs a two-tier curved stage up to the front door, where a grandfather clock stands like a bouncer. It is the thread tying the whole house together, and pulling it up for “engineered oak” would be like tearing the spine out of a book because you prefer the look of loose pages.
Clause three: the bar stays. Yes, there’s a bar. It’s a curved timber-slatted counter with a laminate top and two sculptural stools, backed by a mirrored wall of decanters, novelty bottles and a porcelain figurine keeping an eye on the whisky. It sits just beside the step down into the lounge, and some Friday in 1968 it was clearly the centre of the Newstead social calendar. Converting it into a “home office nook” is a jailable offence.
Clause four: the kitchen stays. Knotty pine from floor to ceiling. The cupboard knobs have been set right in the middle of the knots, which is either a stroke of genius or the most devoted bit of cabinetmaking in northern Tasmania, and we refuse to find out which. There’s a canopy rangehood with a clock and a vegetable still life fixed to it, a stacked wall oven, a lead-light door out to the courtyard and a hanging copper lantern. Stone benchtops have never looked this unwelcome.
Clause five: the pink bathroom stays. Wall-to-wall marbled pink tile, a grey bathtub, cross-head taps and diamond security mesh over the windows. It’s rosy, it’s sturdy, and it has outlasted every bathroom trend since. Leave it alone.
Clause six: the furniture stays. The brocade armchairs, the Louis XV side chairs, the pedestal tables, the gum-tree landscapes in gilt frames, the matching chevron bedspreads in the twin room, the diamond-quilted timber bedhead wall in the master and the mid-century tub chair in the timber-panelled third bedroom are all part of the exhibit. Anyone caught running a garage sale out of this house gets more jail.
Now for sentencing. Repaint, and it’s jail. Sell off the furniture, and it’s more jail. Touch the place in any way, shape or form and you’re looking at life, or at the very least a national ban on renovating any other house in Australia until a court decides enough time has passed. We’d suggest the new owner put the whole thing under a giant glass cloche, leave just enough air for survival, and charge admission at the wrought-iron gate. The courtyard, with its crazy paving, cherub fountain and white cast-iron lace chairs, already looks set up for the queue.
For the record, the paperwork says three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a long garage with room for two cars nose to tail, and 779 square metres in one of Launceston’s most sought-after suburbs. It’s the first time it has ever been sold. The agent suggests first-home buyers, investors and renovators should “bring your vision.”
Here’s a better idea. Leave your vision at the door, wipe your feet on the mat, and just look. Are we making ourselves clear?
