EXCLUSIVE Andy Lee's mega-mansion causes division as neighbours complain of constant noise and no parking while years-long construction continues on three-storey Melbourne home
Andy Lee and fiancée Rebecca Harding may be on the verge of overstaying their welcome in Hawthorn as construction continues on their three-story mega-mansion.
The funnyman, 43, and his partner, 35, have spent the last 18 months restoring a 150-year-old derelict home by the Yarra River in Melbourne.
With huge plans to connect a modern build to the Italianate manor, and years longer to go, Daily Mail Australia can reveal the disruptive build has divided neighbours.
'It's noisy. It's been noisy... It's frustrating because it's been going for a year and we've still got a couple more years to go,' one disgruntled person said.
Though they went on to add the 'earthworks' was the noisiest portion of the build, the neighbour said nowadays it has 'actually settled down quite a bit'.
From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop.
The funnyman and his partner have spent the last 18 months restoring a 150-year-old derelict home by the Yarra River in Melbourne
'Any building site is noisy... It's hard with parking. The parking is difficult, but any house renovation does that,' they continued.
Another neighbour agreed, saying: 'There was digging every day between seven and three. That's ceased.
'At the moment it has quieted down. We've just accepted that it's happening.'
Someone else took umbrage with how frequently builders were working on the site, and wondered if Andy knew how noisy the construction was.
'I will say they start at about 7.15am and finish at 5pm and it's been six days a week... It's been continuous noise,' they said.
'Now that they've started on the build, it's a lot of hammering and the builders do like their loud music.
'And of course the parking. It's wasn't considerate to the neighbours in that it was six days, not five days. I'm not sure Andy Lee is aware of the continuous noise.
'I think there could have been more consideration to the neighbours... I didn't realise it was three stories.'
The source went on to say the radio star and his partner invited all the neighbours over to the home before they began renovations in 2023.
'We had a meet with him at about Christmas before last. He did show all the drawings,' they said.
'We had champagne and canapés, but I don't think we were aware of the disruptions it would cause... It's certainly changed the street the last 18 months.
'It doesn't bother me too much, but I can understand everybody else's problems. I don't know how the people right next door to it can stand it.'
Others said while construction has certainly been noisy and disruptive, they have grown used to the sound as there are often renovations happening on the street.
'We're going with it. It's been really noisy today. I don't know what they were doing. It changes all the time. We don't really have a complaint,' one person said.
'We know it's going to go on for years... We've had other builds go on in the street and they've taken years. We're used to that. I'm not going to complain.
'I can't understand why they're doing what they're doing. Why didn't they just live in the old house? Fix it up.'
They added: 'The construction and the digging up of the ground, there has been big trucks... We're used to it.'
Despite the constant noise and disruption to parking, other neighbours are glad someone has swooped in to fix up the old rundown home.
'It had gotten into a terrible state of disrepair before [Andy] started doing renovations. So it's actually looking better than it has looked for the last ten years,' one said.
'There were squatters there before. I think it's great that he's doing it. I wish it would be finished already.
'I think he's doing a great job. He's obviously not scrimping on costs... It's going to be better than the decrepit house that was there before. I think it's going to be beautiful.'
Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Andy and Rebecca for comment.
Andy and Rebecca have grand plans for their Italianate manor, with the planned renovation worth an estimated $5million having begun in 2023.
The comedian has been hard at work on the derelict Melbourne mansion, called Ravenswood, he bought for $8.5million in 2021, in a Block-style rebuild.
The couple won council approval for their development application back in June 2023.
Plans for the site include adding a second building which will be connected by a tunnel to the original Italianate mansion, which was built around 1876.
Other highlights planned for the 1,950 square metre holding include a home theatre, a gym, a swimming pool and a 'mega bedroom'.
In a statement to the Herald Sun, Boroondara Council confirmed it had issued a notice of decision to grant a planning permit for the Yarra Grove address.
One neighbour told the Sydney Morning Herald in December the construction cacophony had caused the couple to lose 'a lot of community goodwill'.
'The noise is just horrendous,' the disgruntled neighbour told the publication.
'Some residents just leave—they go away for a week at a time and come back on the weekend.'
The publication also reported residents are angry over construction noise which had continued for 26 weeks.
The noise was due to piling reinforced steel pillars and it was also reported dust from 'constant' rock breaking, had coated the solar panels on nearby houses.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
When did ‘feminist critique' of celebrities become nothing more than a snide telling-off?
Sabrina Carpenter was accused of dragging women back into an unenlightened past last week, as the controversial cover for her new album was met with (apparently) feminist furore. It's ironic, then, that the past is precisely where Carpenter's most outspoken critics could do with looking. It's clear that the general consensus is lurching grimly to the right when it comes to gender, and a new generation of young, female critics should be wary of falling into step. The debate about how we look at women, and what they want, risks limply missing the point. In the past few weeks, Sydney Sweeney has been chastised for selling sexy soap, and Addison Rae scolded for dancing in her underwear on stage. It's odd that the backlash has been so immense, given the celebration of Halina Reijn's Babygirl film just a few months ago. The SheEO Nicole Kidman slurping milk out of a saucer? Hot. Sweeney's dirty bathwater? Degrading and vapid. Seemingly, Kidman's age made the former radically feminist, and by extension, permissible in the eyes of the kink police. It is relevant that these debates now take place on online platforms. At their best, these spaces could provide a rare forum for popular culture to be taken seriously. From uses of the 'sexy virgin' trope to golden-age glam fantasies of whiteness, to the transformative influence of a queer audience, there are so many interesting things to say about women such as Carpenter, Sweeney and Rae, and how we are encouraged to read them. Instead, the conversation is dictated by sexist algorithms, financially rewarding those with the most extreme views. Liberation no longer brings clicks, and so to open TikTok is to fall headfirst into a sea of diatribes so puritanical they'd bring a tear to Oliver Cromwell's eye. None of this is to say that to criticise the pop girlies is blasphemy, but vitriolic chastisement is no substitute for meaningful critique. One TikTok user, priding herself on inspiring tellings of 'Herstory', asserts: 'Sabrina knows nothing … [she is] a disgrace to every woman that has ever lived.' Oddly, accounts like this have a fetishistic preference for girlbosses centuries dead, happy to build a brand around celebrating 'first' women (authors, chemists, queens, you name it), while throwing abuse at those making headlines today. If only, the inference usually seems to be, young women such as Carpenter could be as good at feminism as Jane Austen or Anne Boleyn. In fact, the real lessons are to be learned from histories a little more recent. These critiques seem largely ignorant of the 'sex wars' of the 1970s, which saw militant feminists such as Andrea Dworkin argue that whatever the context, pornographic imagery was hateful, exploitative and male. Against her were sex-positive feminists such as Angela Carter, attempting to think generously and with complexity about desire and domination in women's lives. If anyone could be bothered to dig it out, Carter's 1978 book The Sadeian Woman might turn the argument about Carpenter on its head. There, she historicises the 'good bad girl', 'blonde, buxom' with a 'childlike charm', suggesting the impossibility of writing about power and sex without writing about capitalism too. For Carter, pornographic imagery, playing on domination and subordination, wasn't to be straightforwardly judged or disregarded, but might instead be seen as 'a critique of current relations'. For all that the sex wars were aggressively fought, they were also full of rich argument, breadth and a long-lost awareness of economic forces. One thing Dworkin did get right was pornography's grim realities when constrained to a ruthless commercial sphere. When it comes to the multibillion-pound porn industry and the world of pop, those with the real power, much like the anonymous, suited man on the cover of Carpenter's album, rarely appear in frame. It's ironic, then, that in January, no less than the record producer Pete Waterman singled out Carpenter as a small blond symbol of sexism. She was, he claimed, setting women's rights back years, adding: 'If you're asking to be respected, don't come on in a G-string.' I'm not sure Carpenter needs to beg for respect from those cooped up in the retirement home for pop producers presumably still profiting from Kylie's hotpants, but those comments serve to remind us that little has changed when it comes to raking in the cash. That latter-day Pete Watermans are still those benefiting, in this case from charged debates about violence against women, is what socialist-feminists would have been pointing out decades ago, and precisely what we should be talking about today. If images of sexual subordination make some feminists uncomfortable, we should talk about that too. Instead, we're reverting to ironically paternalistic tellings off. Of course, it should come as little surprise to find the parameters of feminine sexuality being policed under the patronising pretence of concern for women's safety. It's precisely this logic that has been weaponised against transgender women for years. The result? A feminism that packs women into smaller and smaller boxes with every convenient transgression that comes along. We might ask questions about the unhappy marriage of capitalism and kink, but suggesting that women who want to experiment consensually with images of domination should in some way take the blame for male violence is dangerous, distracting and ignorant of history. Decades of work (against, for instance, the so-called 'rough sex defence') have been spent protecting women's right to express themselves sexually without fear of harm – it isn't 'choice feminism' to try to hold that ground. 'I can't escape your history,' sings Carpenter on a 2022 track. If only those attacking her felt the same way about the feminism they invoke, they might see what's really going on here. It's not so much a return to sexy pop that is restricting women as the censorious criticisms that pop's profit-driven branding seems perfectly calculated to provoke. Jennifer Jasmine White is a writer and academic
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Georgia Love and ex Lee Elliot reunite at their Hampton house auction and enjoy a trip to their local cafe - just a few months after their shock split
Georgia Love and Lee Elliot may have shocked fans with their split, but they proved on Saturday there is no bad blood between them. The former couple appeared very friendly with each other over the weekend as they attended the auction of their Hampton East love nest in Victoria. And they had plenty to be happy about as the 'SOLD' sticker outside their marital home proved they managed to off-load the $1.35million property. The exes were all smiles as they then went out to a local cafe together to celebrate the sale. Georgia, 35, was rugged up for the occasion, wearing a thick jumper and grey skirt over opaque black stockings. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. The former couple appeared very friendly with each other over the weekend as they attended the auction of their Hampton East love nest in Victoria And they had plenty to be happy about as the 'SOLD' sticker outside their marital home proved they managed to off-load the $1.35million property The former Bachelorette star, who met Lee, 44, on the 2016 season of the show, covered up her ensemble with a black puffer jacket. She added a pair of matching ankle boots and pulled her brunette tresses back from her face, at one point accessorising with dark sunnies and a nude handbag. Lee also opted for a casual all-black look on the day, as he was spotted blowing leaves out of the yard ahead of the auction. He slipped on a pair of tights beneath running shorts before adding a puffer vest over his jumper. It was revealed earlier this month Georgia and Lee were set to put their marital home in Melbourne under the hammer this weekend. The high-profile pair, who announced their split in February, listed the spacious Hampton East pad with a price range of $1.5million to $1.58million. Georgia and Lee paid an estimated $1.35million for the chic ultra-modern two-storey townhouse in 2021. Located 17km from the CBD in the upmarket Bayside area, the property boasts a thoughtful open-plan layout and an alfresco dining area with a BBQ kitchen. Highlights include a main bedroom with a private balcony, a fitted dressing room, and a dual vanity ensuite. Design features include double-glazed windows and doors, Caesarstone benchtops, Tasmanian oak flooring, hydronic heating, and reverse-cycle air conditioning. Georgia and Lee fuelled rumours they had split for some time as it had been more than four months since they were seen together. The pair spent Christmas apart with their respective families before Georgia jetted off to New York City for a holiday without Lee. They were also both spotted without their wedding bands, which led to a wave of speculation online suggesting they had ended their relationship. The pair met and fell in love on the 2016 season of The Bachelorette, which saw Georgia, a former TV news reporter, choose tradie Lee as her winning suitor. They married in 2021 at the Frogmore Creek Winery outside Hobart, followed by an outdoor reception at the Shene Distillery. The lovebirds had been due to marry in Italy the year prior, but were forced to cancel due to Covid travel restrictions. The following year, they moved into their townhouse in Hampton East.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
How TV host EMMA FORBES transformed her multi-million pound listed home with the help of a celebrity interior designer
Renovating any property can be daunting, but it's rare to make over a historically listed building that was once home to a design icon. Yet that was the situation TV presenter Emma Forbes and her husband, banker Graham Clempson, found themselves in after buying Glebe Place in London 's Chelsea, the former studio home of architect and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928). Mackintosh lived at Glebe Place with his artist wife Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh from 1915 to 1923, when the space consisted of a simple one-bedroom cottage and two adjoining artist studios. The property fell into disrepair and had been empty for 20 years when Forbes and Clempson bought it in 2015. 'There were mountains of trash mail in the hallway, a gaping hole in the floor and everything was dark. It felt overwhelming,' says Forbes of its original state. The couple enlisted the help of American interior designer and friend Andrew Torrey, who creates star-worthy spaces across the globe. They had worked with him before and he has subsequently designed their other homes (they now live in New York). 'We were among Andrew's first clients,' recalls Forbes, who was introduced to Torrey through a mutual friend years previously, when he was starting out. 'He designed our first rental in New York. I loved that he didn't do it by numbers. Each of his spaces is unique.' The transformation of Glebe Place, which is featured in a new coffee-table tome covering Torrey's favourite projects, took the designer four years to complete. 'It was a huge renovation job,' Forbes says, referring to the new open-plan layout, lofted beams and Mondrian-inspired bathroom. Hero elements of the design included custom-made lightbox ceilings to create pools of light, the faux 'living' wall in the hallway ('No one could tell it wasn't real') and Forbes' favourite feature: the couple's secret bedroom, accessed through a hidden door in the kitchen that opened to reveal a staircase up to the master suite and bathroom. 'It was like a jewel-box moment,' she says. 'Not showy on the outside, but beautiful on the inside.' One of the most striking parts of the renovation was the sprawling basement extension, which Torrey created by digging down by more than three and a half metres. Yet there was nothing to indicate to the casual passer-by that such a cavernous space existed on the other side of the front door – a deliberate choice by Forbes, who wanted to save the 'wow factor' moments for inside. It's what is called an 'iceberg house', with most of the structure below ground, often exceeding the footprint of the upper levels. 'There was a basement already in place, but it was tiny and mainly used as a dumping ground,' says Forbes of the space that came to encompass two new bedrooms, two bathrooms and a home gym. Despite the huge renovation, elements of Mackintosh's signature style remain – not least the art nouveau ironwork framing the exterior. Other features have been introduced in homage: steel strips were used as marble 'piping' in the master bathroom and monochrome flourishes were added to the ceiling beams. 'The idea was to acknowledge the building's history while reworking it for how we lived,' says Forbes. The kitchen was a case in point. 'I love to cook and entertain, so I wanted an open-plan area to host family and friends.' As such, the kitchen featured a large island with an integrated oven that also served as a communal seating area, and units were fitted with deep storage drawers that open to reveal further storage drawers. The decorative finishing touch of a neon Tracey Emin artwork made the space feel relaxed, rather than one dictated by practicality. 'It's where we spent most of our time as a family,' reminisces Forbes. 'It'll always hold a place in my heart.' Private Spaces by Andrew Torrey, with text by Gay Gassmann (Rizzoli, £58) is out now. To order a copy for £49.30 until 6 July with free UK delivery, go to or call 020 3176 2937
