Houzz Tour: Family Has Room to Spare in New Rural Home

When Howden Homes builder Shane Howden and his wife, Kristie, designed their dream house in a small town southwest of Melbourne, it wasn’t an arduous task. “We knew exactly what we wanted,” Kristie says. In addition to Shane’s experience as a builder, the couple had just gone through a renovation on their California bungalow in the nearby coastal city of Geelong, all the while gathering ideas for their next home and planning it meticulously. Building from scratch and moving out of town would give them the room they needed to really spread out. “Our biggest challenge was that we wanted our new home to have wow factor, but we didn’t want it to be in any way over-the-top,” Kristie says. Keeping detail to a minimum and streamlining the interior turned out to be the key.



Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Shane and Kristie Howden, with kids Thomas (age 11), Charlotte (8) and Max (5) and Mick, their Staffordshire terrier
Location: Batesford, Victoria, Australia
Size: 6,025 square feet (560 square meters); 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms


One of the best things about moving to Batesford for the family was having the space for a vegetable patch, fruit trees, a playground and plenty of grassy expanses for the kids.



The first purchase the couple made for the build was a set of recycled veranda posts rescued from an old pier in Cairns, in northern Australia. “These were to be our feature posts around the house from front to back,” Kristie says.



“The space is big enough for us to spread out but not so big that it rules our lives,” Kristie says.


Houzz Tour: Family Has Room to Spare in New Rural Home



Houzz Tour: Family Has Room to Spare in New Rural Home

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