When Dave Hughes tackled the triumvirate of comedy festivals - Melbourne, Montreal and Edinburgh - he also added stand-up gigs in LA and London. It was an intense slog at the best of times ... and he had his wife and three small children on the road with him.
But ameliorating any stress was the thought of their brand-new house in Melbourne awaiting their return. "It was such a relief after months of living out of suitcases!" recalls Hughes' wife Holly Ife.
That was 18 months ago. However, their architect-designed double-storey, contemporary home almost didn't exist at one point.
To start with, a knock-down new build had never been part of their plan until Hughes accidentally bought a house at auction in St Kilda in Melbourne in 2011. "Th e agent selling the house followed me out, I think he could tell by my face that it wasn't a planned purchase and was worried I might do a runner," Hughes recalls.
Hughes had relied on the real estate grapevine and mistakenly thought he'd been bidding below the price the vendors had previously rejected. "I thought I would be safe having a few bids below that level," he says.
"I was shocked. I had to go out to the alleyway and call Holly. I remember saying 'Something really weird has just happened...' "
Fortunately, Ife loved the leafy and peaceful street and its proximity to the beach. The style of the brick house, however, was a different matter. With distinctive Spanish Mission-style dating back to the 1930s or 40s, it was "was quite dark and the floor plan was very unusual because it had once been subdivided," she recalls.
The couple had lived for seven years prior in a terrace - "It was beautiful and filled with history, Marcus Clarke lived there while writing For The Term of His Natural Life," says Hughes - but spread over three levels and with three young children? "That's tough," he says. "We knew we would have to move on when the children got older," he says of son Raff , 6, Sadie, 4, and Tess, 3.
Building hadn't been an option they had wanted to investigate. "Dave even baulked at potential homes that needed renovations," Ife says. "But suddenly we were in a position where we had to do one or the other."Initially, we weren't sure what we wanted and that made the design process difficult.
We actually went through the entire process with another very talented architect, but we weren't 100 per cent happy with the final design - it wasn't his fault, it was more that we didn't know exactly what we wanted."
Meanwhile, they had been renting it out (to her sister, then to Kate Langbroek while her family home was being renovated) and on many occasions they considered selling it. "It all seemed too hard," she says.
Enter Aimee Goodwin. While all this had been going on, Aimee was wrapping up her time in London and returning to Melbourne with life and business partner Louis Gadd to set up their practice Project 12 Architecture in Clifton Hill, Melbourne.
Goodwin and Ife first met in Grade Two at primary school in East Hawthorn and have been friends ever since.
Project 12 Architecture was looking for residential projects; Ife was seeking an architect and the pieces soon fell happily into place.
"I really trusted her vision for the house," Ife says. "She's always been a gifted artist andI knew that I liked her style."
They knew they wanted to maximise natural light and outdoor spaces, so their brief was for double-level home wrapped around a central courtyard.
"We did that by pushing the volume of the house as far back to the southern boundary as possible, so you maximise that northern aspect," says Goodwin, who worked with Solutions Three on construction and Katherine Rekaris Landscape and Ash Middlin Landscape Construction for the garden.
Hughes, who is the new host of 2016's Australia's Got Talent, and doing drive radio with Kate Langbroek on Kiis FM, will also be back at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Will going through this (building) process get a mention?
"I do have some material about building the house and about the neighbours reactions to having a big new house in an established street," he says. "Let's just say they weren't all thrilled, but judging by a few recent auction results of neighbouring
houses, it hasn't impacted on the desirability of the street.
"In fact, I think our beautiful modern wooden house has had a positive influence."
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is March 23-April 17.
