Ask Sara Taghaode if the space she shares with husband Andrew Crane and baby Sonny in Brisbane’s inner north is a home, a rental or a business and things start to get a little confusing. “It’s kinda all of those things,” Taghaode says.
“Colab is a creative co-working space in Albion. It’s a warehouse filled with natural light, plants and art, with private studio spaces, a co-working room and our own little loft on a mezzanine within the space.
“We bought the place back in 2016, [and] some tenants quickly joined us to help cover the mortgage. I run my film production business from there and we live upstairs.”
The all-in-one affair was affordable, Taghaode says, because the property was deemed to have “some flood risk”. Last year the couple learned what that meant when the warehouse flooded twice daily at high tide for three days. (They’d also just found out Taghoade was pregnant.)
Ten months on, the place has been dried out, rebuilt and baby-proofed – with a lot of help from their mates.
“There is a core team of friends who deserve a medal for holding me together while we rebuilt from the flood, renovated the loft and tried to keep our businesses and lives on track,” Taghaode says.
“I was essentially a basket case, with a lot of big pregnancy feelings. We almost flooded again from all the crying I did.”
Names: Sara Taghaode and Andrew Crane
Live: Mostly in a little loft in a warehouse above a co-working space in Albion.
Since: 2016
With: Bowie the rescue dog and the newest addition, Sonny, our four-month-old baby boy. We also share the space with somewhere between eight and 12 co-working tenants.
Have you made any changes architecturally since you moved in?
Crane: Just a few, hey! Originally it was just an open-plan warehouse. I got a shipping container the day after we got the keys and started cutting. We had an engineer design supports for the container so the front sits cantilevered out into the main space.
The additional office spaces were built almost as required. I found a second-hand mezzanine on Gumtree for cheap, so now we have an office space above and below.
We ticked along pretty nicely from there until the 2022 floods. They did a great job demolishing our old kitchen, alongside testing our flood-resilient building choices in other parts of the warehouse.
While every wall had to be stripped out, cleaned and dried, we were able to re-use form ply as it held up really well in the water. We’ve avoided plaster as much as possible in the rebuild and reworked our electrics and plumbing so the next flood event is a much easier clean-up.
The new flood-resilient concrete kitchen was made by one of our co-working tenant’s partners. Ken is a formworker and he built us this incredible concrete kitchen. All the cabinetry within the concrete bench and island is on castors and can be moved to a safe height if another flood hits.
Getting upstairs ready for a baby was a huge task. That area had always been filled with natural light, and keeping that light felt so important even though we needed to make the place much more enclosed. We spent hundreds of hours on the ply ceiling, and I found huge windows on Facebook Marketplace and planned the build around them. Our friend Sander built most of the framing for the plywood ceiling, and he built the gorgeous skylight boxes around the existing Laserlite panels in the roof.
I’ve still got a huge list of small tasks to finish the place off, but it feels like a home now.
What made you fall in love with the house in the first place?
Taghaode: I fell in love with the idea of doing something different and the opportunity the warehouse represented for us to do that. The things I remember loving that first time we walked through were the natural light, the central urban location and the huge amount of space it gave us to play with.
Can you describe the house’s vibe?
Taghaode: This house is playful but practical. I’ve really tried to embrace a sense of fun in how I have decorated, with a big focus on art and random objects that reflect our life and adventures. A lot of the furniture is Ikea or Marketplace or second-hand. I like to save my pennies for art purchases that mark certain milestones in our life. For example, the mirror-ball work in the kitchen was commissioned during Covid as a reflection of the good times we’d been having with a bunch of legendary mates.
What is the neighbourhood like?
Taghaode: When we moved in six years ago the neighbourhood was still really industrial, but it reminded me of Bushwick in Brooklyn. Well, Brisbane’s version. And sure enough we’ve seen the area really start to gentrify in a positive way. We have wine bars, distilleries, breweries, cafes, restaurants and boutique stores all within a 10-minute walk.
Crane: The warehouse was built in the ’60s. It’s had quite a few different businesses in that time. Mechanics and cabinet makers, and before us there was a courier company. The neighbours definitely don’t miss 30 vans coming and going all day.
Favourite room?
Taghaode: My favourite space is the kitchenette upstairs and the interplay between that space and our bedroom. While having a kitchen and bedroom so close to each other isn’t for everyone, I’m loving how it works for our new little family. I can be breastfeeding Sonny comfy in bed and still chatting with Drew while he makes toast and coffee. Adding a mirror ball in there has been the icing on the cake.
Crane: The main downstairs kitchen. I feel like it represents us as a couple. It’s always been fun and a bit different, with the mirror balls and other artwork. Since the flood and the other surprises of 2022 it has grown up. Matured and solidified. It’s still a lot of fun, but it’s more sophisticated now.
Favourite item in the house?
Taghaode: The alcove bed we had built in Sonny’s room. It’s still a work in progress as it didn’t quite get finished before Sonny arrived, and it’s tricky to get in there now it’s his bedroom! Our talented friend Sander is a carpenter and boatbuilder who originally trained in Holland, where alcove beds are quite a popular option. He and his partner came up with the design after I said I liked the idea of making Sonny’s room into a bit of a “womb room” – a quiet, calm, cave-like space we could all retreat to.
Crane: My Makita track saw. It’s just been such a handy tool. Almost every piece of plywood in the place has felt its caress.
Favourite homeware stores?
Taghaode: A lot of the objects in our house are from our travels. I have a habit of buying impractical and difficult-to-transport items in faraway locations. In Australia I really like Third Drawer Down for homewares. There is a real sense of fun in their pieces.
The house features art from local artists like Degoey Planet, Prue Stent and Honey Long, Dana Lawrie, Kinly Grey and Gerwyn Davies. I also find a lot of furniture through Instagrammer @midcenturyjo. She shares stylish Marketplace bargains alongside lots of ideas of how to style them.
See more in Broadsheet’s Home Visits series.
