OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

When the house they had been coveting for years became available, this family saw the chance to create their forever home.

- Carli Philips

The owners of this inner-city Melbourne home needed two things when they engaged Frances Cosway, founder and design director of White Pebble Interiors: robust finishes and a house that could withstand their boisterous teenage boys. The materials needed to be heavy-duty with nothing too sensitive or delicate. This resulted in carefully considered surfaces like tough Dekton-engineered timber flooring and joinery that would be “dirty football-hands resistant” and ultra-hardwearing. The homeowners delivered Frances a succinct brief: “A casual, welcoming family home with a modern industrial design edge. Quality and beauty but nothing too precious or showy.”

Having lived in the same street for years, the owners coveted this house for about two decades. In 2019, when they were finally in a position to buy it, they knew it would be their forever home. Although it was fundamentally their dream home, it was in desperate need of renovation. It was cosmetically dated with a lean-to extension, and work needed to be done on expanding the footprint and adopting new fixtures, finishes and furniture. The front door, which was aqua when they purchased it, remained unchanged in a nod to its heritage identity.

The envelope of all four rooms at the front of the house was kept intact, but with modifications. In the guest bedroom and sitting room on one side of the passageway, the period fireplaces were retained. In the sitting room, a new opening was made with leadlight glass. “If we had left it as plain glazing it would have looked out of place,” says Frances. “You would never know the leadlight was new. It just felt right for the historical part of the home.”