“I’d driven past this place so many times and I’d spoken to the owner, but I couldn’t make it stack up,” he said of the two-storey warehouse in Lilyfield. “I knew what the potential was, so when I figured out a way, I knew it would be the best decision I’d ever make.”

With the help of an accountant, the comedian and radio show host found a tax rule that enables the cost of GST to be deducted off the sale price of commercial properties if the ultimate aim is to use the property as a home.

Watts put in an offer to the vendor and let him know his plans to convert the factory into a home for his young family, which lowered the GST burden the vendor would have had to pay.

They struck a deal, and less than three years later, he and wife Georgie and their young family have the four-bedroom, sustainable home of their dreams with the help of architect Virginia Kerridge, who transformed the space using a series of internal courtyards, leaving the bottom floor for sleeping and the upper floor for living.

While wife Georgie was happy to take a back seat in the design process, Watts took over and treated the home as his passion project. He even took up an office in an artist’s studio around the corner so he could visit the site multiple times a day to check on the build, and to be on-site when the big decisions needed to be made.

He grew up in a mud-brick home in Melbourne’s Eltham, and the experience forged in him an appreciation for natural, reclaimed materials that tell a story and change with time. So when it came to the interior, he opted for a rough hewed take on an industrial aesthetic, using worn, reclaimed timbers, burnished copper and steel alongside polished concrete and golden-hued plywood to create a warm and enveloping space.

Big decisions included whether to give in to Kerridge’s plan for a near 15m reclaimed jarrah kitchen bench, so long it almost stretches half the length of the second level.

Another heart-stopping moment came when Kerridge told Watts of her plan for a monument of an open-backed staircase made of steel that gives visitors glimpses of deep green courtyard the moment they step through the rusted metal door.

Kerridge also came up with the idea to peel back a portion of the sawtooth roof on the second floor so that the kitchen and living room walks out onto a sprawling outdoor deck, replete with a vegie patch and a pool.

“We’re pro drinking in the pool here. It’s actually a house policy,” Watts laughs on a sunny Spring day as he walks across the deck to the pool that can be observed from the kitchen bench.

The pool, which was hastily decided upon after a particularly trying trip to the beach one summer’s afternoon, is one of the masterstrokes. The others are two triple height internal courtyards on either side of the home that act as its lungs, feeding fresh air and light throughout, and providing a green outlook from almost every room.

One courtyard is a lush tumble of prehistoric cycad plants, while the other features Watts’ valiant attempt at growing a lawn. After more than three years, Watts is at the end of his tether and is now trialling Corsican mint as a potential ground cover.

Forget the lawn, the kids don’t use it anyway, he says.

“I always thought that every house with kids needed a lawn — I based it around what I did as a kid running around on grass all the time, but modern kids use spaces differently,” he said. “When they’re here, they’re indoors. When they want to go outside, we go to the park.”

The upstairs pool remains an exception. We aren’t yet halfway through spring and the kids have already been in for the first dip of the season. It makes Watts happy, given that all he wanted was a home that worked year round, that people felt comfortable in and felt compelled to use it.