This is an edited extract from Call It Home by Amber Lewis, published by Hardie Grant, $65. Photography by Shade Degges.
Designing a home for yourself and your family is one of those special milestones in life. It’s also one of the hardest and most stressful tasks to take on. But once it’s done and you see your vision come to life, it can produce the most rewarding feeling. Still, I never felt more tested than when it was time for me to choose the design elements for my own home. At so many points, I thought I would succumb to design decision fatigue. How on earth would I, someone exposed to so many design options every day, be able to choose elements I would like (and could live with) for a long while? Impossible!
I’m a pretty decisive person in general, but when it came to making decisions for my own home…well, the client name ‘Me, Myself, and I Can’t Make Up My Mind’ says it all. I wanted this house to encapsulate so much, yet I didn’t want much at all. Aside from the aesthetics, so much of this project was about creating a feeling.
Here, I break down the details of how I managed to design and create my very own home, despite having an over-abundance of choices at my disposal.
For my own home, I wanted to feel like I was approaching a ranch nestled somewhere between the Belgian countryside and
