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  • Your Home and Garden

    DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

    Sep 22, 2021 5 minutes
    Text Bea Taylor
    Photography
    Rachel Wybrow

    When Brydhi Williamson first spotted this Alexandra home online, she was sure it was a diamond in the rough. Beneath the burgundy walls, crazy cottage wallpaper, dark wooden panelling and cluttered interior was her and husband James’ forever home.

    James, however, needed a bit more convincing. Both 25 at the time, the hairdresser and then professional cyclist, had been slowly saving to purchase their first home together. But a forthcoming change to how much a home buyer needed as a deposit (an increase to 20 percent) in 2013 made them shift their house search up a gear.

    “We started looking with urgency and came across this one. It looked terrible, but I could envisage us stripping it back to its beautiful bones,” says Brydhi. “James, who was in England at the time, could

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