Winter Wonderland

Set up an inviting home for good times year round

Bonnie Hindmarsh’s obsession with white weatherboards began as a young, beach-loving girl growing up in Sydney’s bushy north-western suburbs. “I remember driving to the coast and seeing white beach houses and thinking that they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen,” she says. “Whenever I envisioned my future home it always involved white cladding.” Fast-forward a couple of decades and Bonnie, who is co-founder and creative director of Three Birds Renovations, and her husband, former NSW Rugby League star Nathan Hindmarsh, have just completed their dream home for their four boys: Archie, 12, Buster, 10, Rowdie, nine, and Dodge, two.

Set on acreage in semi-rural Sydney, near where Bonnie grew up, it’s a sprawling one-level home that combines a vast central pavilion with a soaring 7m ceiling, a breezeway, walls of glass and lashings of light, all wrapped up in a white-clad exterior. It’s the type of dwelling you might expect to see perched on a coastal clifftop, but it looks perfectly at home here, settled into an ocean of green lawn. “I wanted a relaxed, beachy feel even though we’re 30km from the beach,” she says. “I love the rural setting, too, so I’ve mixed the coastal vibe with a barn-like space. I’m calling it our modern-coastal barn.”

Bonnie and Nathan bought the 2ha property five years ago and spent four years living in a 1970s-era home on the site. They had planned to renovate and extend, but when the house was declared dangerously termite-ridden, they had to demolish most of it, except for a fireplace and a couple of walls. “We basically rebuilt the footprint of the old house and then added to it,” says Bonnie. After the squeezy dimensions of their old residence, in which there was only one living area, Nathan wanted large, open spaces with multiple living zones and the option to close off some rooms. “We were lucky to have enough land so we could allow the house to sprawl,” he says.

The result is a four-bedroom home of super-generous proportions. There are formal and casual options for living and dining, and every space feels luxurious because of its size and detailing. Bonnie devised the entire scheme and engaged an architect to help nut out the structural technicalities.