High gloss Geoshine™. White Quartzite with off white base. Angela’s Kitchen.
Northcote extension’s epicurean flavours
A retro-chic renovation featuring white polished concrete creates an inspiring space for culinary learning in cosmopolitan Northcote.
Hidden behind a traditional Northcote Californian bungalow is a light-filled, contemporary extension, where Angela Nicolettou hosts her popular “Angela’s Kitchen” cooking classes. A passionate cook, Angela draws on her Mediterranean heritage to share her culinary skills and love of Hellenic and Spanish food with her budding Melbournian students.
The renovation fuses the building’s heritage with cutting edge architecture. It retains the charm and heritage of the original home, which is typical of many dwellings in heritage-listed Northcote, an area steeped in Italian and Greek heritage. The double story extension is an ultra-modern, light-filled space that includes a state-of-the-art kitchen with a huge marble benchtop where Angela and her students work their foodie magic. The open plan design, coupled with retro-chic details in the tiling and lighting, creates a beautiful space for collective learning.
A marvellous mix of old and new, the renovation incorporates in one of its walls a huge, original red brick archway, created from clay bricks from the old Northcote brick factory, which has now been closed for more than forty years. The archway allows lashings of light to flood the interior and illuminates the glossy beauty of the Geoshine™ polished concrete floor. A highly polished concrete step is a lovely threshold between the new extension and the house’s original timber flooring.
The floor itself is an absolute knockout, made from a concrete mix of off-white cement with a Bacchus Marsh quartzite. Geocrete’s Paul Warner, Victoria’s premiere polished concrete specialist, ground the cement deeply to reveal a very even full stone exposure and finished with a classy high gloss.
“The colours and gloss of the floor are simply stunning. The white mixes are some of the most expensive and luxurious on the market; while most concrete costs around $250m3, white cements go upwards to $600m3. I brought prospective clients to view Angela’s floor and they were so impressed that they used it as inspiration for a magnificent high gloss Geoshine™ floor in their home at Kangaroo Ground, using Creswick white quartz and off white cement with white oxide.”
Apart from being one of the first times that Paul polished white concrete, it was also a memorable project as it was only one block from where he lived for two years upon first moving to Melbourne. “My old Weimaraner dog knew exactly where he was and decided to go back for a visit one work day without my realising it. After a frantic search and drive, I eventually found him on the front porch of my old house, resting in the shade and wondering about the panicky look on my face!”
