By Ally Giovine.
Havana House is a 1970s residence in Ashgrove, Brisbane, that I renovated for an owner who had never lived with colour. The home was photographed by The Design Files in October 2022 and selected for their Best Before + After 2022 list. This piece is a longer companion to the project page. It's about what the home asked of me, what I kept, what I changed, and what I'd repeat on the next Queenslander brief.
The brief
Michael had owned the home for years and was clear about two things on the discovery call. He didn't want to move. He didn't yet know what colour could do for a room. The second thing was the more useful piece of information.
The home was structurally fine. The bones were honest, the light was generous, and every surface had drifted past its useful life. The original kitchen had been added to a Queenslander frame with a pragmatic 70s eye that was no longer pragmatic by 2022. The living and dining ran into each other without a deliberate edge. Storage was inadequate for the way Michael actually lived. He was a confident cook, hosted often, and the room he was hosting in didn't show up for him.
The brief shaped itself across two more conversations. Three things were non-negotiable. The 35-square-metre kitchen-living-dining sequence had to become the hero of the home, with no extension. The original timber floorboards had to stay. Whatever I did, the house had to feel more 70s, not less. Rebuild around what's right rather than scrub it.
That third instruction is the one I bring to every Queenslander brief now, almost word for word. It's also the thing that's hardest to commit to, because every contemporary stylebook tells you to lighten, neutralise, and modernise. Havana House did the opposite, and it worked.
What a Queenslander asks of a designer
A Queenslander, properly defined, is a pre-1940s timber residential building on stumps with verandas, casement or sash windows, VJ wall lining, and a tin roof. Many homes in Queensland-broad usage of the word are not actually Queenslanders; they're post-war timber-and-tile, brick-and-tile, or 1970s-80s timber on a slab. Havana House sits in the broader category. It has the pitch of the ceiling and the timber floor of a Queenslander but the floor plan and the windows of a 70s residence.
What both ask of a designer is the same in spirit. Respect the era of the building. Find the things the building was originally right about. Modernise around those, not over them.
For Havana House, what the building was right about included the original timber floorboards (a satin oil finish, never re-laid), the fluted glass at the front of the home (kept and extended in spirit), and the proportions of the front verandah (untouched). Everything else was on the table.
The kitchen-living-dining decision
The hero room was 35 square metres before the project started and 35 square metres after it finished. I didn't add a single square metre. Every gain came from rebuilding the storage, restating the joinery, and pulling the perceived edge of the room outward.
Three storage moves did most of the work.
A built-in pantry on the east wall, full-height, with shark-nose handles routed into the joinery rather than added to it. Shark-nose detailing is one of those joinery moves that disappears at first glance and earns its keep when you live with it for a year. No knobs to clean around, no hardware that ages out of fashion.
An island bench that ran longer than the previous configuration but wasn't deeper. Useful surface, not bigger volume.
A floor-to-ceiling stack of cabinetry hiding the appliances on the south wall, with the splashback running across the cooking zone uninterrupted. Visual quiet behind the cooking, visual loud at the cooking.
The result was a room that read as twice the size it had been. Same square metres. Better square metres.
The yellow checkerboard
The kitchen splashback became a yellow checkerboard. It's the most photographed surface in the project and the move that made the broader stylebook decision obvious in hindsight.
Two things made it work. First, the building wanted it. A 70s residence has a vocabulary of geometric pattern and warm primary colour that the building's bones already accept. Putting checkerboard tile against the original timber floor wasn't pastiche; it was the building telling you what it always wanted to be, on a brief that was finally listening. Second, the rest of the palette was disciplined enough to hold it. The kitchen joinery went a soft olive green, the dining went dirty pink, the living went mustard. Each room read as a deliberate move with a deliberate companion. The checkerboard didn't have to carry anything alone.
If the rest of the home had been beige with a yellow checkerboard splashback, the splashback would have read as a feature wall. Because the rest of the home pitched at the same energy, the splashback read as the highest note of a song that had been written deliberately.
The lesson for the next Queenslander: the bold move only works if the rest of the home is paying attention. One yellow checkerboard splashback in a beige house is decoration. One yellow checkerboard splashback in a fully-considered palette is architecture.
What I kept
The list of things I deliberately did not change is shorter than the list of things I rebuilt, but it's the more important list.
The original timber floorboards stayed and were re-finished, not replaced. Living with a 50-year-old floor is one of the privileges of a renovation rather than a rebuild: the grain, the wear pattern, the small marks that history put there before us. Replacing them would have removed the only piece of the home that was older than its owner.
The fluted glass at the front stayed too. It filtered the morning light into the front room beautifully on the day I first walked through, and I extended its rhythm vertically with a striped curtain. Two visual languages, one continuous gesture.
I held the casement window proportions on the back of the home, even though it would have been easier to swap them out for sliders. The casements are part of why the room reads as 70s deliberate rather than 70s incidental. The roof line I didn't touch at all. A renovation that adds a clerestory or pulls the roof up makes a different kind of building, and Havana House didn't ask for that.
The lessons I bring to every Queenslander brief now
Eight, in rough priority order.
Find what the building is right about before you decide what to change. Spend a week walking the home at different times of day. Photograph the things that work; that's the list of things to keep.
Don't extend if storage will solve it. A 35-square-metre room that's properly resolved feels bigger than a 50-square-metre room that's poorly resolved.
The original floor almost always stays. Re-finish, don't replace.
Keep restraint inside the joinery and put the opinion in the palette. Shark-nose details, shadow lines, and built-in detailing are quiet. Colour and tile do the talking.
Pitch the palette to the era of the building, not to a contemporary stylebook. A 70s home wants 70s primary tones. A 1900s Federation cottage wants Federation tones. Doing 70s palette in a Federation cottage looks like fancy dress.
One bold move per room, maximum. The yellow checkerboard works because nothing else in the kitchen is fighting it. The dining gets its own move (dirty pink walls), and they don't compete.
Original glass, original tile, original anything stays where it earns its place. Salvage everything you can.
Trades who've done a Queenslander before are not optional. A finish carpenter who's never lived with VJ wall lining will produce a result that looks like VJ wall lining was an afterthought.
What I'd do differently next time
Truthfully, not much. Havana House is the project I'm most often asked to talk about and the one I'd recommission tomorrow. The piece I'd push harder on, given a second chance, is lighting. The original brief left lighting as a late-stage decision. With more runway, I'd have integrated the lighting plan into the joinery design from week one, rather than catching up to it later. The room reads beautifully now; it would have read 10% better with the lighting drawn at concept.
If you have a Queenslander brief
Studio LaLa continues to take Queensland projects from a Cabarita Beach studio, 1.5 hours south of Ashgrove. Full design from $12,000, three to six months end to end. The first step is a 15-minute call or a written brief. For more on the published project itself, the Havana House page has the visuals.
The home you're holding probably has more in common with Havana House than with whatever's currently on your moodboard. Worth a conversation.