Made To Order

With plenty of experience renovating older homes, a Melbourne family was excited to tackle a new project.

- Shelley Tustin

Seasoned renovators Rachael and Alex have had plenty of practice turning ugly ducklings into beautifully refurbished swans, but their latest project, a new build in Melbourne’s bayside area, was a fresh experience for the design-savvy duo. Building from scratch provided different challenges but, most excitingly, it gave them the chance to create a truly bespoke home, designed to fit seamlessly in with the way their family lives. “We’ve done a few houses before, so I had some strong ideas about what I wanted,” says Rachael.

The first challenge for the couple, parents to daughter, Georgia, 15, and son, Charlie, 14, was finding the right block, which proved far from easy. The pair wanted something close to the water (as expat Brits, it’s important for them to enjoy the laid-back lifestyle of Australia’s seaside suburbs), with rear-lane access for parking, on a block big enough to subdivide and without a heritage overlay – a house that they could demolish without any visual cost to the streetscape. Their diligent hunting was finally rewarded with the perfect place: a nothing-special California bungalow sitting on 600 square metres – a palatial site for this inner-suburban area.