Stunning Style in Stone

Click photos for hi-res versions

93 The Boulevard Doncaster

Here is my mothers beautiful stone house in Doncaster.It is a unique modernist four bedroom home built almost entirely from stone in the late 70's, recently revived by my brothers, friends and myself to it's former glory.

Needless to say I had a great time dressing up the house after we had completely cleaned it out.

The fireplace in the living room

5 minute video tour of the house

My mother bought the house around 13 years ago after selling the family home she and my dad had built together. She was an artist and enjoyed eccentric and beautiful things and this house really hit the mark.

Details about it's origins are pretty sketchy. The story goes that it was originally built by a stone mason who apparently spent seven years constructing it. I think it would have taken that long just to amass such an amazing quantity and variety of stone to start with.

We fortunately had a special visitor to the house during the open for inspections and he was actually friends with the builder and spent many hours watching the construction and lending a hand. So now finally we have the real story of how the house came to be.
The stonemason who built the house was John Cern. He had a stone yard in Doncaster just where the bus depot is, next to the freeway and a quarry near Castlemaine. The house is built from a collection of favourite stone John had specially put aside. The majority came from his quarry. It was built during the 70's over many years and was a labour of love. Very sadly he never lived in it as apparently those close to him didn't share the love.

The actual approved building plans are from 1979 and I believe the overall design of the structure is pretty typical of Merchant Builders homes from the 70's. The exceptional nature of the house is in the materials used to build it and the incredible use of a huge variety of stone in the interior surfaces. It is also unusual that many of the window frames and even the sliding door are made from stone too. There are black, grey, pink, cream and green marble walls and floors,sandstone walls,travertine walls and others that contain beautiful fossils.

Marble and travertine staircase

Foyer detail

Family room

Stone Detail

The Family room has a stone sliding door

This image gives you a panoramic view from one end of the house to the other

Kitchen

I can't resist the Corningware

Granite Bench Tops

Bar and Dining Room panorama

Archway leads in to the Bar and Dining area

Inside the Bar

Looking in to the Dining area

Lazy Susan

What I love about the home is that to me it was obviously a labour of love to create it and the material used are really beautiful and chosen and placed so carefully with an artistic eye and desire to build something special. You can see that he has saved his favourite pieces of stone for the most prominent settings and some walls have themes, either pictures, swirls or mirror split stone set together for a bigger impact. He also built soaring ceilings so some walls are more than 6 metres high which gives the rooms tremendous sense of light and space.

Front window and fireplace in the living room.

There is new carpeting throughout the house and fresh paint on the few walls that aren't stone.

 The house has 4 bedrooms, they are all peaceful spaces that look out onto a marble paved side garden. The master bedroom has a delightful cream marble dressing room and en-suite.

     

Master bedroom

    

The master bedroom has a lovely feature wall with a handy mirror insert

The large windows have a door that leads out onto the side patio

The amusing tap in the ensuite is currently being enhanced by some ancient A

von perfume bottles

Floor to ceiling mirror doors give you a top to toe view

The second bedroom

It has textured wallpaper

Cases at the ready

The third bedroom

A bit of metal wall decor

Fourth bedroom

This room has the least stone

Stone Detail

Stone detail

Stone detail

  

Garden leading to Conservatory

Your comments are welcome.