Builder’s Daughter

A Builder’s Daughter

I have a memory of being ten or eleven, sitting in the front seat my dad’s work van, helping myself to the black percolated Tim Hortons coffee from his classic green Stanley insulated bottle. I’d pour it into the cup, add mounds of sugar to make it palatable, and sip it, bewildered as to why adults enjoyed the taste. To me, it tasted like hot burnt water. But if adults drank it, then I was sure to drink it as well.

With my coffee in hand, I would pull out the paint fan deck from the pile of tools and study all the colours, feeling very mature and sophisticated for my age.

I would also spend long hours poring over floor plans in his home plan catalogues, tracing my way through rooms. At the time, it just felt like something to look at.

Growing Up On Site

My dad learned how to build houses in Sydney before taking the opportunity to move our young family to British Columbia. Some of my earliest memories are of visiting his job sites, watching houses rise out of the ground, from foundations through to framing, lock-up and final finishes.

One house in particular stands out. A Spanish Mission style home at lock-up stage. The windows were in, the roof was on, but the framework was still exposed. My brother and I spent a happy afternoon crawling through the rafters, watching the workmen below. It was the 80s. If kids were out of sight, they were out of mind, and we made the most of it.

Speaking of the 80s, there was a period when Tudor-style homes had a revival. I remember sawhorses set up under industrial lights, helping Dad late into the night, painting the external boards.

You could always tell what stage of a project dad was working on by how he looked and how he smelled when he came home.  Foundations had a very distinct scent; the formwork was coated in diesel so the concrete wouldn’t stick to the timber. If he’d been framing, he’d come home with a head full of sawdust. Painting was obvious too, fingers and clothing covered in drips of paint.

Finding My Way Into Design

As children, we were often taken along on errands to building showrooms, playing with light switches, snickering at bidets, draping ourselves across rolls of carpet, and eventually declaring, “I’m bored.”

Dad built all our houses growing up in Surrey, BC. I have fond memories of Saturdays on the Summerhill job site. Mum would walk to the bakery and return with all manner of baked goods. We would sit on overturned paint cans, working our way through Matterhorn’s — spiral, buttery pastries topped with a thin glaze and finely chopped nuts —  discussing what colour to paint the interior. As a family, we settled on Banana Split, a soft yellow.

As I said, it was the 80s.

As a child, I didn’t respond well to change. I remember coming home from school to see the “For Sale” sign on the first house Dad had built for us. It was a shock. I didn’t want to move. But he involved us in the construction of the next house, and by the time it came to move, I was ready.

A few years later, it happened again. Dad bought another property and planned to build our third family home. Again, I resisted, and again he involved me, this time in the design of my bedroom.

By then I was a teenager, spending far too much time in the bathroom, which caused all manner of fights with my brothers. Dad came up with the idea of adding a sink into my bedroom. It came complete with Hollywood lights down the sides, and I spent hours in front of the mirror, playing with my hair.

I chose the paint colours for this bedroom myself, peach on top and mint green below, separated by a chair rail. There’s a photo of that room somewhere, with a carefully styled IKEA bookshelf, not unlike a retail display, already leaning into my styling tendencies.

The sink was such a success that when we moved again, he added one into my room in the final family home. This time it had a black and white benchtop with shiny black laminate doors, set against a red bedroom. We had clearly moved on from 80s pastels into the early 90s. When I couldn’t find the polka dot bedspread I had imagined, I made one myself, stamping white paint across black sheets with a sponge I had cut into a circle, and then sewing the sheets into a duvet cover.

At the time, I didn’t think of it as design. But I was already paying attention to how spaces were used and how small decisions shaped the way a room felt.

So with that history, it makes sense that I studied drafting, working in the engineering sector across mechanical, electrical, structural and piping drawings, and eventually moving into a role as a swimming pool designer.

It was a different lens on the same world, one that gave me a deeper understanding of how things actually come together.

Coming Full Circle

Dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at 60, which gradually slowed him down. By this time, I was at a crossroads in my own career and increasingly curious about interior design.

I began to think about what might have been. I envied how my brothers had worked alongside him on site, in physical labour, while I had remained on the edges, sweeping and cleaning for pocket change, quietly taking everything in.

By the time I recognised I could have worked with him in the design phase, working through layouts, making material selections and assisting with quoting, his condition had deteriorated.

Moving to Australia meant many things, but among them was the opportunity to follow my design curiosity. As Dad moved into care, I returned to study, focusing on colour and design.

And on day, it suddenly all came together.

I remember exactly where I was standing in the corridor of the design school when it clicked. The drafting, the years of observation, even Dad’s entrepreneurial spirit.

It had all been there, shaping how I approach design long before I called it that. I had the realisation that I could actually do this.

I think back to those sneaky mornings in the van as a child, coffee in hand, flipping through the paint fan deck, trying to make sense of it all.

In some ways, not much has changed. I still sit down at the table, coffee in hand, reviewing samples and floor plans for my projects.

Long before I was a designer, I was a builder’s daughter.

April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month. This piece reflects on my dad’s experience with Parkinson’s disease and the impact it had on our family.

In memory of my dad.