Mornington Beach House

The house arrived exactly as the 1970s had left it. The timber walls and ceilings still wore their orange stain, the original toilets were still in place, and the original boards were still underfoot, as though someone had locked the door one summer and never come back.

The client gave us free rein, with a single request: push the boundaries a little further than usual. Their city base was already settled. The beach house was the place to take a few more risks.

The orange timber stayed, painted over in a crackle finish from Porter’s Paints that breaks into a web of fine lines as it dries, so the walls read as older still and entirely new at once. The fireplace is tiled in volcanic rock and framed in Aquarzo Chiaro, a pale quartzite, dark stone and light meeting at the hearth. In the kitchen, a stainless steel bench sits on two-pack joinery. Engineered timber floors, laid in chevron, run underneath all of it.

A full renovation, we took it from architectural review to the final styling, with interior design, lighting, window treatments, joinery, material specification, loose furniture and project management in between.