House of Riverstones Don and the Burke’s Backyard team visited a fascinating house which was built thirty years ago using local riverstones, and extensively renovated by the present owners. The original exterior walls look particularly attractive with...
Kitchen Design Kitchens can cost anything between $12,000 and $50,000 to install or renovate. They are also the most used rooms in the house so you really want to get it right. The wrong decision can be costly both financially and structurally. There are some kitchen...
Metal Art Man Ten years ago when Tony Gray started buying up scrap metal, glass and bakelite, he had no intention of becoming an artist. He originally planned to resell the parts, but the more he looked at the various bits and pieces, the more he recognised their...
Don demonstrated how to transform a large courtyard into a stylish entertaining area using blue metal dust, an inexpensive but very classy looking material. A site analysis revealed several problems which needed to be addressed during the makeover: the white buildings...
In the winter when the garden is looking drab, camellias come to the rescue with their beautiful flowers and glossy green foliage. It’s natural to want to bring them inside and use them in flower arrangements, but the problem is they have very short stems and...
Cliffhanger House Imagine how hard it would be to build a house on a very steep site. Don visited an amazing cliffside house and chatted to the owners about some of the challenges they faced. As well as the difficult situation, they also had to cope with a partial...
Colour Combinations There’s no such thing as a bad colour but there are some bad colour combinations. Tracy Marsh shared a few tips and basic rules on using colour to decorate in your home. Simply stick to one colour theme; reds (pale pink through to crimson),...
Courtyard The owners of a newly renovated Melbourne house called in landscape designer Jim Fogarty to transform their garden into a modern, contemporary courtyard. This posed a few problems, because the area was only about 6x6m (20×20′), the side fences...
Cutting Edge Design For many years house design in Australia has been predictable, straightforward and frankly ordinary, but in recent times all that has changed. The Burke’s Backyard team visited a wonderful house designed by Frank Macchia, an architect from...
Designing for the Future Queensland architect Gabriel Poole is passionate about improving the quality of housing in Australia by designing for our climate and building houses that everyone can afford. He believes that the houses people live in should enrich their...