Nagi Maehashi, the international cookbook author, has scrapped plans to sell her Hunters Hill home. She has instead embarked on $950,000 worth of renovations to the 1883 sandstone house that cost $7m last year.
The new garaging and rear renovations are by Cradle Design.
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The much-traded picturesque Victorian Gothic-style home was built for the Lenehan family. They held it until the early 1920s when it became the home of the Hayne family who renamed it Daybreak, dropping College View, which had been a reference to their local school Riverview.
The home, which featured in the 2000 Rachel Griffiths movie Me Myself I, sits on 1550 sqm parklike grounds, with a heritage Moreton Bay fig tree, a solar-heated pool, spa and studio.
Its previous owners include Jacob’s Creek winemaker Philip Laffer and wife Beverley, medico Paul Bannon and wife Erin, and the retired Saatchi executive Michael Rollins and his wife Pauline.
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Maehashi, a former Brookfield Multiplex executive, had previously resided in Mona Vale, where she sold for $6m.
Her latest book, RecipeTin Eats: Tonight has sold over 78,000 copies, which ranks as the highest first week of sales for a nonfiction title since Scott Pape’s The Barefoot Investor in 2018, according to Nielsen BookData.