Cover story

Featured on the cover of the SPRING FLING edition of VISI is an old farm near Graaff-Reinet that Charlotte Daneel of La Grange has brought back to life. The transformation is even more awe-inspiring when you see these before pictures. Below is an extract from the interview with Charlotte in the magazine. 

What condition did you find the house in? 

Not much had changed over the years: a bathroom had been added and electricity was installed only in 1985. But as with most old houses, a warren of rooms had accumulated around the kitchen, in which an ancient Aga was still serving the family. 

What did you do to it?

The biggest change was in the kitchen area. Luckily none of the walls were load bearing so we opened it up to create the dining room. The cold room and scullery we combined and extended to create a new kitchen. We enclosed the south side of the roofed stoep, unusable because of the wind, to create bathrooms for each of the bedrooms. The glazed double doors opening off all the main rooms onto the stoep also made a huge difference. Outside, the slaghuis became Derk’s archive and library, and the sheep-shearing shed, with its vast tin roof and old rafters, became the pool house. Everything in it is original apart from the pool in the middle.

For the full article and photoshoot, get the new SPRING FLING edition of VISI magazine. Read more here.

---

More from the SPRING FLING edition of VISI

• New and second-cycle
  Renovation and interior design is seldom a stagnant, once-off affair. The best spaces grow into themselves. See the before pictures of the houses featured in the magazine.

• Deft blue strokes
  Fabric, surfboards, shacks… Something is afoot, and not just in South Africa! From Babylonstoren to Russia, browse our full Delft trend report.

• Popcorn architecture
  We have inspiration from the Architecture ZA 2012 Biennial Festival to share. Watch our online film festival and read our report back. 

• Mechanical futurism
  Some say steampunk is what happened when Goths discovered brown. Others say it grew out of a literary genre. Explore our steampunk trend report.

• Joburg Art Attack
  For at least one week in September, Joburg was hit by an art attack. Read the post-mortem and our guide to starting an art collection, written by the experts. 

• Winning wishes
  In October, Warren Lewis will be giving away four paintings. Up for grabs over the next two months is a Bodum Bistro Coffee Maker from Banks Kitchen Boutique. Enter the competitions here.