In search of a new challenge, Olympic gold medallist Eric Murray turned a fast-flip house into one worthy of being a forever home
Meet & greet
Eric Murray (business development manager and two-time Olympic gold medallist), his girlfriend Thea Lyle, and his son Zac, 10.
When you’ve already conquered the world, where do you look for your next challenge? For two-time Olympic gold medallist rower Eric Murray, the answer was in the area of home renovation. It’s not quite in the same league as elite sport, but as any DIY renovator will tell you, it can be just as all-consuming.
Prompted by a “change in circumstances”, as he puts it, Eric started looking for a project that would secure the future for himself and his son Zac, as well as giving him something to focus his considerable energies on.
Project found
The three-bedroom 1950s red brick Cambridge home he settled on was solid, if not much to look at. Eric, who wowed on the most recent Dancing with the Stars, has a more colourful way of describing the state of the house when he first bought it, but it comes down to this: “It was an old rental, cold, with the original sash windows and plain crappy wallpaper on the walls.”
The aluminium windows used to rattle in their frames whenever a truck went past and would let in shockingly cold air in winter, but the house had the foundations of a solid family home. “I never used to understand what people were talking about when they said a place had ‘good bones’,” says Eric. “But it’s got native mataī and rimu timber flooring through the house, which I discovered as I was pulling up carpet, and all the framing inside is native timber, so it’s solid as.”
Also among the home’s pluses was its 850sqm section on the edge of Cambridge’s green belt.
As well as offering plenty of room for Zac to run around, it has a view across to an athletics track. It’s arguably the perfect situation for a sportsman.
Good, better, best
First on Eric’s to-do list was making over the long, skinny garage, turning half of it into a separate room, which can serve as an office, studio, gym, storage space or sleepout, as needed. Practicalities covered, he turned to the fun bit, exploring how he could transform the house itself. “That was where the planning stage started. What needs to be done first? Do we want to add an extension? I don’t know how many hours I spent on Pinterest.”
While there was definitely space for a big extension, Eric eventually made the smart decision to concentrate his energies on the smallest change that would make the biggest impact, adding an ensuite. He did this by moving the main entrance of the home to the living room and turning the entrance hall space into a bathroom connected to the main bedroom, so the footprint of the house remains the same.
“It’s now a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house, so for the expense of chucking in an alcove shower, wall-hung toilet and a vanity, the house jumps into another bracket of pricing.”
Though resale value was his initial motivation, it has also made the house far more comfortable to live in – plus it gives Eric’s girlfriend, Thea, a clean and serene bathing space, leaving the main bathroom to be a boys-only zone.
Man of action
Though he had made small changes in previous properties, this was his first hands-on reno. “This is my little baby.” Doing the lion’s share of work himself was a cost-cutting exercise, naturally – par for the course when you’re planning to flip a property – but, more than that, it was about rolling up his sleeves, taking on a new challenge and ultimately basking in the satisfaction of a job well done.
Eric’s top tips for learning on the job? Watch loads of instructional videos and don’t be afraid to pump the pros for advice. “I’m lucky, I play golf with my builder, so I’d just ask him, ‘How do you do this?’, says Eric. His builder mate, Marcus Grayling, would tell him the pressure points – the parts that could trip him up if he didn’t get them spot on – and checked the work if needed. His advice also gave Eric the confidence to dive head-first into the unknown, tackling everything from installing new windows to knocking through walls, lifting tiles off the timber floorboards and constructing a flatpack kitchen.
Fast flip or forever home?
Even 2020’s Covid lockdown was a boon. “When Jacinda said we’d go into lockdown the next evening, I drove past Countdown, which had cars coming out every exit, and straight to Mitre 10, where we filled two trolleys with paint, paintbrushes, caulking – basically everything I needed to redecorate the house.”
Instead of using that odd Indian summer to lie indolent, as many of us did, Eric (with enthusiastic help from Zac) used the free time and heaven-sent hot weather to busily strip wallpaper, skim-coat walls and paint almost the entire house in one epic effort. But Covid also brought uncertainty and a subsequent shift in focus. Instead of viewing the home through a lens of what would appeal to a future buyer, Eric started to question whether he’d be moving on after all, and asking himself, if he had to stay, what did he want it to look like?
“When you’re renovating to sell, you look at what’s most economical, but with all the uncertainty, I decided, no, I’m going to do this how I want it,” he says.
So the kitchen ended up being constructed with higher-end finishes, better appliances and
a wine fridge. Instead of leaving everything white, Eric splashed around cheery colour – blue in the kitchen and a bold olive green in the bathroom. And then he asked himself, what else did he really want from his house? The answer: a pool.
Gentlemen’s club
To turn the house into his dream home, Eric made over the backyard to be the ultimate play space. He brims with boyish enthusiasm as he describes its highlights: an in-ground pool heated by a solar-powered heat pump, a spa pool for colder nights and, best of all (although his girlfriend Thea is less enthusiastic), an artificial turf putting green.
Now it’s all done, the house is a delightful family home and a place Eric would be happy
to live long-term – though it remains to be seen how long he’ll actually stay, now he’s caught the renovation bug.
“I’ve never really been a creative person, but this became my hobby and turning the house from what it was to what it is now has been so much fun,” he says, adding that he now finds himself walking into other people’s houses and imagining what it would look like if they knocked out a wall or similar.
But until the next project lures him in, the sun is shining on this Cambridge home, the water’s fine and it’s hard to think of a nicer place to wait.
Words by: Shelley Tustin. Photography by: Alice Veysey. Styling by: Sjan Johansen.
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