Room to GROW

For two wedding and event planners, a century-old barn in Wellington, South Africa, provided the perfect setting for raising their young family

- JESSICA ROSS

With the all the requisite characteristics of a modern-industrial barn, from lofty pitched ceilings and corrugated roofing to solid raw brick walls, Hannes and Tina Maritz’s home has been brought to life out of a former dairy. ‘Old buildings have fascinated me ever since I can remember,’ says Hannes, who, together with wife Tina, owns Kraak, a South African wedding and events company. ‘When our relationship was still in the early stages, I remember telling Tina that I wanted to live in a barn one day,’ he says, ‘where I could pull my car right up into the living room and get onto the couch. It was the ultimate bachelor vision.’

After trawling through property sites to find his dream barn, Hannes soon landed on this storage facility — a century-old dairy in the small agricultural town of Wellington, located 45 minutes outside of Cape Town. The building’s bones were in good nick, but it was desperately lacking infrastructure, so the couple set out on a nine-month-long renovation, installing plumbing and electrics and building a bedroom. While this reno didn’t include Hannes’s bachelor-fantasy car hatch, the simple yet effective configuration was perfect for the two of them: one long, open-plan ground-floor living space with their bedroom - a peaceful whitewashed space - upstairs.