The owners of a Gordon miner's cottage cannot believe the tiny timber relic of the 19th century gold rush is their home.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Jess Wootten and Krystina Menegazzo restored the cottage and built an extension, mostly on their own, over 26 months.
Transforming the cottage resulted in a showpiece of sustainability and craftsmanship, which runs through the couple's veins.
![Krystina Menegazzo, Quincy Wootten, 2, and Jess Wootten with their dog Hunter outside the restored miners cottage in Gordon. Picture by Lachlan Bence Krystina Menegazzo, Quincy Wootten, 2, and Jess Wootten with their dog Hunter outside the restored miners cottage in Gordon. Picture by Lachlan Bence](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/HGEQmb32Jrb7fFYffAPJvy/c65f33b9-bb10-419d-8495-55a88a69a9b9.jpg/r0_173_4872_2912_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The artisans moved from Melbourne to Gordon more than 10 years ago, and in 2019, they moved their business - Wootten - to a Delacombe warehouse, handmaking leather shoes and boots, and leather products.
Mr Wootten is one of few young cordwainers and leather craftsman practicing in Australia.
After living in the cold and wonky Gordon miner's cottage for eight years, Mr Wootten and Ms Menegazzo started the restoration project by stripping the house back to its frame.
They restumped, reroofed, laid bricks and clad the timber, and sourced recycled materials from the Gordon and Ballarat areas.
They milled their own timber for the internal lining boards and weatherboards, using Otway blackwood.
"We didn't use any plaster in the house. We used timber because we don't know how to work with plaster," Ms Menegazzo said.
"That's something we can do and the tools we have on hand so it's about understanding what our capabilities are and working to that."
The cottage has no heritage overlay and little is known of its history, but it was important to the owners to retain its original features, with the floor, timber shingles and front facade cladding all retained.
Mr Wootten said the cottage's design incorporated old-fashioned methods of building houses.
"The old school method of lining the cottage included using hessian, and then they would put wallpaper on the hessian. When we were pulling the plaster out of the cottage we found bits of old hessian stuck to the plaster and old newspapers," Mr Wootten said.
"In the old part of the cottage we lined it with timber lining boards and above the picture rail we upholstered the wall in hessian, and the timber shingles are lining the ceiling. That's the original roof and we put a new roof on top of that."
Mr Wootten and Ms Menegazzo spent 26 months and 6000 hours of work on the cottage and extension. The restoration was finished in June 2022.
!['Amazing' restored miner's cottage a showpiece of craftmanship 'Amazing' restored miner's cottage a showpiece of craftmanship](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/HGEQmb32Jrb7fFYffAPJvy/60d95bf0-e4d1-4abb-82b2-ebc25be3854f.jpg/r190_0_4630_2497_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
"It's pretty amazing. There's a lot of technology in the house as well. We have super insulated the house and (used) double glazed (windows), solar panels and batteries. The house is basically the same temperature all year around with any temperature influence, which is pretty extraordinary for the climate we are in," Mr Wootten said.
Mr Wootten said he still could not believe the miners cottage was his and his family's home.
"The first few two-three months we moved in I was waiting for the owners to turn up and kick us out and say this is not really our house," he said.
Aside from the required tradespeople, members of the Lost Trades Fair helped with the restoration.
"There were a few really great people involved. We did a lot of the design work over five or six years developing the floor plan," Mr Wootten said.
Having lived there (in the miner's cottage) for such a long time we really knew what was necessary in order to make it work for the environment it was in.
- Jess Wootten
"In the end we used an architect to draw up the final plans and he had really great input into the last five to 10 per cent which was really important, so he made the design way better than it would have been if we hadn't used him.
"We had a bunch of really great craftspeople that did some of the final work, like the metal work and windows, that really made the cottage sing."
The couple said they were delighted with the final result.
"It was a lot of work and I don't know how long we will be exhausted for. We're delighted because it's comfortable," Ms Menegazzo said.
The miners cottage will feature on ABC's Restoration Australia on Sunday, August 6, at 7.30pm.
All up, the restoration was filmed for one month, mostly by one cameraman who was also the producer.
"You can't pay a professional camera crew or photographer to shoot you and this journey you went on yourself," Ms Menegazzo said.
"I like to document stuff. This could be a fun way of what we looked like, what we sounded like or what we did at that particular time and we will always have that to look back on."
Reading this on mobile web? Download our app. It's faster, easier to read and we'll send you breaking news alerts. Download in the Apple Store or Google Play.