Mexican Artefacts One of the best things about designing a house or garden is the excitement and the satisfaction of creating a look that’s new and different. Tuscan, Santa Fe and Mexican styles are all wonderfully fresh and vibrant, but there is a problem. The...
Mexican Style An extra dimension can be added both to your garden and home by the introduction of interesting artefacts. However in the past the traditional garden gnomes, columns and Greek statues have not always suited the Australian garden. Now there is a range of...
Home-grown Australian styles are hard to find. There’s the Queenslander house with its wide verandahs and stilts, and further south the Federation house. But Noosa, on the Sunshine Coast, is the birthplace of what may become Australia’s first...
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...
Fashionable Fakes There’s nothing quite like walking into a room and seeing a beautiful arrangement of flowers, but unfortunately most people can’t afford to have fresh flowers in the house every day of the week. Artificial flowers have been around...
Fibro Makeover – Tuscan effect Late last year Don and the Burke’s Backyard team transformed an ugly backyard into a spectacular, Tuscan inspired entertainment area. One of the problems they had to contend with was an old fibro garage with flaking, powdery...
French Riviera Carport Whether we like it or not, the automobile is an important part of our busy, everyday lives. When it comes to the problem of where to keep the car, we can either go for the traditional garage, or perhaps something a bit more stylish. Don looked...