When Eamonn and Kerry Fox married in the early 80s they couldn’t afford a mansion with all the bells and whistles.
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Instead they settled on a beautiful acre of land on the side of Saddleback Mountain and began building their family and their castle.
Mr Fox heard a nearby dairy farm, owned by the Wilson family, was getting rid of an old “slab hut”. Made of ironbark slabs and dating back to the 1800s, it would be perfect to use as the Fox’s nest.
“A friend of mine helped me take it down and we numbered all the bits and pieces then rebuilt it back at our place,” Mr Fox said.
He said the only difference was the addition of weatherboard for better insulation and a couple of extra rooms.
“We lived in there for eight years, we had our three daughters there. It was only classified as a storage shed as such at the time, but it was lovely,” he said.
Mr Fox spent at least five years collecting building materials from around the Illawarra in preparation to create their dream home on the same block.
Being “time rich and money poor” led him to make some unique finds of all sorts of building materials.
“I pulled down a few old buildings, including a few in Wollongong,” Mr Fox said. “I fell in love with timber and getting good quality things."
He recalls buying priceless lead-light from dozens of homes set to be demolished to make way for the Northern Distributor.
A QLD maple staircase, plus architraves and skirting boards, was acquired from an old guest house of 16 bedrooms which used to sit on Smith Street in Wollongong.
While he found eight cedar panel doors up for the taking from the former St Antony’s Private Hospital on Regent Street, and other “bits and pieces” came from the School of Arts in Kiama.
“It’s been hard on my wife, she freed me up in order for me to be able to spend so much time [on the house],” Mr Fox said.
Now their three daughters have grown up the family’s four-bedroom, two-bathroom house in a “magical and mystical spot”, along with the historic cottage, is heading to auction on December 5.
Building houses has become quite the hobby for Mr Fox who’s also completed a home at South West Rocks where he and his wife will eventually retire.
93 Williams Rd Kiama will go to auction on December 5 by Ray White Kiama.