At Home With The couple behind design studio Koskela turn a tired little shop into a beachside haven.

The couple behind ethical design business Koskela took a dilapidated shop and residence in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and turned it into a stunning near-the-beach pad.

Russel Koskela and Sasha Titchkosky bought their home for a very good reason: no one else wanted it. “It was the ugly duckling and almost uninhabitable,” says Sashaofthethree-bedroomresidence/ shop in Sydney’ s east. The couple were well qualified to transform it. Russel is a furniture designer and Sasha is a lawyer/accountant. Together they run Koskela, a retail business they founded in 2000, known for its amazing sustainable Australian-designed and -made furniture and products, as well as collaborations with artists from remote communities.

Sasha says the main attraction when they bought in 2008 was the suburb, with its diverse mix of houses and apartments flowing down a hill to the beach. “The area was originally working class and there are a few of the original dwellers left, but mostly it’s a lot of families and young couples.” And, of course, a large influx of visitors on sunny days, when families treat the beach and adjacent park like their own backyards.

Describing the 155m2 home as “pretty compact”, Sasha says making it feel more spacious was crucial. But there were many other challenges for the two-level abode, which has all the living spaces and two bedrooms on the ground floor, and the bathroom, laundry and a spare room below, level with the garden. “It’s part of an early 19th-century building,” she says. “At some point it had been dodgily renovated and stripped of its original period features.” She and Russel and their sons – Anders, 12, and Mika, 10 – lived elsewhere during the structural part of the renovation, enabling the builders to work quickly restoring some of its charm.

To start with, the kitchen, bathroom and stairs were replaced, along with many of the windows, mainly at the north-facing rear of the property. “We installed new louvre windows everywhere and bifolds at the back of the house to capture the cooling sea breezes,” says Sasha. “The kitchen window now looks directly out onto a large bottlebrush tree that attracts every type of bird you can imagine. It’s amazing to sit at the table and watch them.”

Much of the original Baltic pine flooring was retained, while areas that needed replacing were matched with reclaimed Baltic timber of a similar vintage. The exposed ceiling beams upstairs were restored and painted Dulux Chalk USA, a warm white. New skylights have contributed to this level’s loft-like ambience. “The one we put in the boys’ room has brought in the natural light and makes the room feel so much bigger,” says Russel.

As is often the case with designers’ homes, Russel and Sasha decorated over time. They’ve used natural, tactile materials, and a lot of indigenous art, in the form of wall-hung canvases and printed cushions. One of Sasha’s favourite features is the stair wall in the living room, which was perfect for hanging some of their much-loved Aboriginal art collection.

Having a garden in this part of Sydney is a precious thing, and enabled the boys to have their own outdoor play space and pet: a mini lop-eared bunny named Mr Softy. Russel added another outdoor space upstairs off the living room and main bedroom. “It has lovely french doors and is a great addition in terms of light and airflow,” he says. “We wanted to look out onto a green wall so we trained ivy there and installed deck lights to illuminate the surface at night. It’s great for entertaining.”

So, what started as “a horror story”, according to Sasha, turned into a beautiful home the family was happy in for 10 years. She refers to it fondly as their “stepping-stone home”, and says its recent sale has enabled them to move to a cottage on a large block near the water on the lower north shore, where they are busy planning the next stage of their lives…

Koskela, 1/85 Dunning Avenue, Rosebery, NSW;

(02) 9280 0999 or koskela.com.au.