When Katina Astles and Simon Scoullar-Greig sought to have the ocean on their doorstep six years ago, they turned to Arieys Inlet, taken by its secluded beaches and artistic community.
During their search for a home for their family of five they came across a beach shack tucked away off the Great Ocean road toward Sunnymeade beach. ‘Down a quiet street… nestled amongst a stunning native garden was our dream home,’ says Katina.
The shack had ‘seen better days’ but thanks to Simon’s experience in carpentry, the couple only saw opportunity. ‘We had plenty of ideas and Simon had the skills to do the majority of the renovation work himself’, Katina explains.
In order to fit five people comfortably in the two-bedroom home, Katina and Simon turned to Scandinavian design for inspiration on maximising space.
They reconfigured the kitchen, living, dining, bathroom and laundry and replaced all the doors with custom-built sliding ones to create a more ‘open’ feeling inside the home.
Determined to bring it back to its former glory, they also stripped all the paint and pulled up the Lino to reveal beautiful timber underneath. Katina chose green mosaic tiles for the kitchen, bathroom and laundry to complement their verdant surroundings and Simon built a new deck with an outdoor kitchen so the family could enjoy outdoor living in their beautiful location.
The final pieces of the renovation were designed to embrace the home’s beach-shack roots with handles and balustrades made from driftwood and the northern side of the house clad in rusted corrugated iron upcycled from a local sheep farm.
Life in their cosy Aireys Inlet home has been everything they’d imagined it to be; walking to the nearby beaches for a morning swim or surf, reading on the deck, listening to the native birds in the trees, but the family is now off to travel the world and ‘find new surf breaks’, so they’ve decided to put their beloved home on the market — with the hope that it will be the next owner’s dream home too.
30 Aireys Street, Aireys Inlet, VIC 3231 is listed for sale with James Worssam and Liz Currie from Great Ocean Road Realestate.
