Mornington meets MIAMI

Designer Kate Walker allowed her imagination to soar when reinventing this family home, creating the vision of her wildest dreams

Being able to envision and conjure a bold new identity for a 40-year-old property requires imagination, which was in ample supply when Kate Walker reimagined this residence as her own family home on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula in Australia. Drawing on her love for ‘Caribbean Colonial’ homes, she remodelled a well-preserved, two- storey 1980s dwelling into a glam palm-fringed tropical beauty that would look at home in the Bahamas.

When Kate bought the property in early 2020, it had been languishing on the market. ‘People couldn’t see beyond the tired interiors,’ she says. As soon as Kate viewed the property, she was buzzing with ideas. ‘I had an immediate vision for the place. It was electric.’ She could see it as a perfect nest for her ‘Brady Bunch’ – her partner Anthony’s two children and her own to kids.

Built as a builder’s own home, the house sits on a glorious 2 000m² block a few hundred metres from the beach with views of the tennis court and water. ‘The build quality was outstanding and it was in great condition,’ says Kate, founder and director of design company KWD. She could look beyond the salmon-coloured carpets and polished black granite, but the floor plan felt back to front. ‘The house was oriented to face the view – which is understandable – but there was no sense of entry at the street frontage. You walked in the front door into a corridor leading to the laundry. It needed some articulation.’