39 146
SAI KUNG SHOWCASE
39
Aug-Sep15
The Sheldons bought the house in
2011; it had already been renovated,
but with cheap tile floors and an
unattractive, dark brown kitchen. Alex
pulled everything out, enlarged the
French windows, installed a quirky dog
door (hounds Wallace and Gromit are
much loved fixtures chez Sheldon), a
huge Corian breakfast bar/work surface
veined to look like marble, and a sweep
of modern kitchen cupboards. “I had
to go cheap on the kitchen cabinetry
because I was running out of money,
so they are only MDF plywood sprayed
with piano paint, but it doesn’t look
like it,” confides Alex. “And there’s no
extractor, but I do have an overhead fan,
and the dogs get the air flowing through
the dog door!”
Alex commissioned a steel easel for
the corner of the living room, and she
rotates paintings when she feels the
need for change. The artworks on the
walls are all about memories for the
Sheldons; there’s a painting the couple
bought on a tenth wedding anniversary
trip to Mougins, near Cannes, framed
lyrics in the downstairs cloakroom from
humorous anthems friends sung to them when they left and returned to Hong
Kong from New York, and a couple of eye-catching artworks in the dining
room by a friend in the UK, Nic Joly. Most arresting is the large perspex case
by the front door, containing three ceramic poppies – one for each of the
children – from the recent installation at the Tower of London, “Blood Swept
Lands and Sea of Red”. Fittingly, Alex has had a World War I poem engraved
on the back of the box.