Tenants give dated Hong Kong house a no-expense-spared facelift to transform it into a home

Renovating a rented home is all about making the biggest impact with the least work. Take this 4,500 sq ft, split-level house overlooking Deep Water Bay. It ticked a lot of boxes for financier David Solloway and his wife, Sabrina. The house had a fabulous view, five good-sized bedrooms, a large terrace and plenty of space for entertaining. Plus they liked the area, having lived nearby for five years.

But the 32-year-old property was start­ing to show its age, with ugly yellow wood floors, dreary kitchen cabinets and a main suite on the wrong floor – a storey below their young children’s bedrooms. The house had good bones, but it needed a facelift.

Before the couple signed the tenancy, Czech-born Sabrina asked an old friend from Prague, interior designer Radovan Macak, for his opinion. “I liked it,” Macak says. So he and Sabrina set about coming up with some quick and easy fixes.

“I go all in,” Sabrina says. “I don’t care whether we’re here forever or just a year, I want it to feel like home.”

With the agreement of the landlord, Macak had all the woodwork repainted, including the balustrades, doors and built-in cabinetry. The walls were also given a fresh coat of paint or papered and new flooring was installed.

“We laid vinyl flooring on top of the wood so it’s easy to remove, like lifting carpet, as we have to reinstate the floor when [the Solloways] move out,” Macak says.