A home with a heart
‘Are you up for the challenge?’ reads the real estate brochure. It depicts a badly framed photo of a dilapidated, old house surrounded by overgrown shrubs. It’s the same Willunga cottage I’m sitting in, eating waffles and drinking tea at the kitchen table, but it’s almost unrecognisable, after an epic transformation by owners Kerstin and Jay Holata.
Kerstin has detailed the labour of love in a scrapbook, which opens with that somewhat ominous real estate ad. ‘It was just so rundown,’ Kerstin explains. ‘When we rang the agent about it, he told us he wouldn’t even speak to us until we’d called the council and found out everything that was wrong with it.’
The list of problems was jaw-dropping: an incorrect boundary dissecting the house, a local heritage encumbrance, an asbestos lean-to, no foundations and a veritable possum graveyard in the ceiling. But Kerstin and
