From The Farm to the Beach

Yesterday at the crack of dawn I headed out to the newly renovated beach cottage trio to oversee the final stage, the fixing up of two more bedrooms.

I have to say, the drive from the farmhouse to the beach, which takes about half an hour or so, is quite lovely. Yesterday as I drove down my driveway the sun was coming up and the second day of winter put on a spectacular display of low-lying clouds which looked like glaciers dripping down the mountains.

The trip takes me across an old iron bridge over a wide blue river, though the edges of "fibrotown" and down winding country lanes that mark the borders of the emerald green paddocks of dairy farms. It occurred to me that early morning building inspections were really not all that bad as the dairy coast was looking particularly crisp in the early morning light after a week of torrential rain.

In the third stage of the drive the landscape turns into bush where you have to be on the look out for darting kangaroos and doddling echidnas and wombats before the bush thins out into salty coastal scrub and wetlands then finally sand dunes.

Anyway, I share this as it is all part of my daily experience and I must say it takes the stress out of the renovating day.

Back to the cottage. So here are some pics of the as yet slightly unfinished interiors of the biggest cottage where I found myself going instinctively with a taupe and white palette with a few injections of bright colour, without really thinking too much about it.

My favourite architectural detail is the cantered ceiling, quite a folly for such a humble, early 20th century beach cabin. To finish off the decorating, I have some old surfboards and some retro hawaiian fabric which will inject some much needed spot colour and add a bit of casual beach funk to the rooms which were starting to look a bit polite for their context.

The few pieces of vintage furniture like the grey dressing table and the aqua painted seagrass table also add a bit of quirky retro charm.

I'll post the new bedrooms in a week or so, if and when they finally come together!

Seafarers Cottages: All In The Details

Now that the Seafarers Cottages renovation is almost at the finish line, I thought I'd share a little about the story behind the project, some before and after pics as well as some of the tricks of the trade.

History of the cottages:

These three cottages, built in the 1930s are the original "beach shacks" in what was a fishing camp that became a village on a remote peninsula jutting out into the Pacific Ocean, about 2.5 hours drive from Sydney. Very little had been done on their upkeep over the past 20-30 years and they were in a pretty shabby state.

Why did we buy the cottages?

Though they were identified as heritage items, they like many other gems in this part of the world, remain unprotected. We are quite passionate about preserving some of the beach shack heritage here and love the challenge of turning them into stylish beach getaways for people wanting a break from their busy city lives.

The village of Currarong is just about our favourite place. It remains a rare time capsule of beach village chic and is in a stunning, unspoilt area surrounded by nothing but rugged coastline, deserted beaches and national parks. So we went out on a limb to buy them so they wouldn't be demolished to make way for a quite probably ugly, unsympathetic juggernaut.

What did we do to update the cottages?

Almost nothing was done to the actual footprint of the cottages. Most of the work involved replacing bad improvements and upgrading the kitchens and bathrooms. There were cheap aluminium windows installed in the seventies which we replaced with reclaimed timber windows as close as possible to what would have been there originally.

One of the biggest changes was putting in a new picket fence to replace the old "hurricane" fence which was bent and twisted in parts. We put back lots of the architectural detail like architraves around the windows, fibro cover strips and picture rails.

We kept the old fireplace hearths. One now houses a TV, the other two now have kitchen cupboards in them. We turned the old shed that housed the generator into the laundry.

Reinstating and reinventing the period features gave the cottages back their soul and charm. It also makes a great backdrop in which to decorate!

Bye the way - please leave a comment as I love to hear what you bloggers out there think!

Live With What You Love

This post has been inspired by a wonderful comment made on yesterday's post by Pam at Red Ticking all the way on the other side of the Pacific in Seattle.

"Live With What You Love" and why not? Life is too short to live in an interior half lived. I love colour and have painted some pretty colourful rooms in my time and most people love it but say "oh I couldn't live with that, it's not practical!"

Why not paint a room in a colour you are passionate about? If you do tire of it it's only a coat of paint.

These photos are of our old beach house and are about 10 years old according to the date stamp. Go the feature wall - so nineties!

What are some of the things you would do in your decor if you were more daring? I'd love to hear.

BTW: Those floors in the top pic were a great success - they were a disaster to begin with but it goes to show how you have to persevere. The finish is Porters white Wood Wash, with a top coat of white vinyl paint watered down and finished with water based sealer.

Reclaimed Windows

While I'm in the mood for offering practical advice, here is another renovation post on windows.

My husband Rob collects old windows and doors. We have sheds full of them. It's quite overwhelming, particularly when I am longing to turn the old chook shed (hen house) into a Martha Stewart-style greenhouse but can't because it is stacked with old windows.

However, these old windows do come in handy with our renovation projects and if you ask me, nothing looks as elegant as an old casement window.

They also cost a fortune to get made up or to buy new and recycling an old window saves on land fill and saves trees from being cut down.

We will sometimes design a room around a fabulous set of old french doors we have found. In the old church hall we are renovating, we put some old casement windows in the laundry and scullery and they really add character to what would be fairly bland service rooms.

The pics above are some good examples of how we put old windows to good use. These beach cottages were given a new life thanks to these recycled windows.

Reclaimed Windows-Inspiration

A comment from Paula in the last post reminded me of an inspirational example of reclaimed style. Sue Southam, author of the book Velvet Pears, has a fabulous outdoor room that her husband Pete made from old windows.

Sue uses this "room", which is really just two glass walls and a roof, all year round as an outdoor dining space. The day bed is also a sunny place to curl up with a cup of tea and a good book.

I have been lucky enough to work with Sue in the early days on getting the book deal for Velvet Pears as well as on stories about her house and garden at Foxglove Spires (and here) for Country Style and South Coast Style. I am looking forward to what this talented and focussed girl does next!

Just What Is A Fibro Shack?

I often get asked by readers from the USA what a fibro beach shack is and today there was another query.

Fibro cottages date back to the 1920s and are the iconic Aussie Beach Shack. We bought our first beach fibro back in 1998 and got hooked on their quaint, retro holiday vibe and have been buying and doing them up ever since.

They have become very trendy with creative types from the city and where we live there is a kind of unofficial contest to see who does the best fibro makeover.

Some are done in a retro kitsch way, others in a more sophisticated "designer" way.

Some of them have great names like:

The Big Kahuna

On The Beach

The Fibro Majestic (after a famous old hotel called the Hydro Majestic)

Life's A Beach

Gidget Goes to Culburra

Summercloud

The Riverboat Queen

Duz Us

Back On Board

Day bed in a garden bure at LikuLiku

The Malolo bures above, have a "plantation" feel to them.

View from the hammock at Malolo.

Infinity pool at Likliku.

The lagoon at Likuliku with over-water bures.

I have just returned from just over a week away photographing houses and holidaying in beautiful Fiji.

The houses belonged to some very talented Brisbane girls and they will hopefully be appearing in some of your favourite lifestyle magazines soon.

I did get to stay at the Malolo Island resort in Fiji which has just been redecorated by Gold Coast designer Vanessa Wood. She has done a great job with the bures and the resort has a lovely restful, tradtional vibe.

We also got to pop over to the couples only resort next door, LikuLiku, which is just stunning. The over water bures are the only ones in Fiji and they even have glass floor panels so you can look down into the water.

I can recommend both these resorts - Malolo if you have kids and Likuliku if its just you and a special someone!