Vintage Splendour

Thrift-shop treasures abound in this cottage in a national park south of Sydney.

Inside thrift shopper Cassy Gilbert’s home

Acoffee table brought Cassy Gilbert and me together. The keen thrift shopper, and long-time resident of my neighbourhood, had listed the tile-topped piece on a local online marketplace, an activity she often does to keep her house decluttered and her collections under control. The coffee table was being replaced with one of Cassy’s recent highly prized finds – a table with a terrarium in its glass-domed undercarriage, filled with plastic plants and stale air from the 1970s.

After skipping over to Cassy’s house and being cheerfully greeted at the front door of the white weatherboard home perched on the high side of the street, I stepped into the three-bedroom cottage and said the thing that most people say when they first visit Cassy’s house: ‘I can see right into your bathroom!’ The internal wall in-between the living space and the en suite bathroom is made up of glass panels, which means that the toilet and the raised claw-foot tub are in full sight of the living room and front door. It’s unexpected, but for Cassy, husband Gil and their young girls, Ivy and Gypsy, it’s no big deal. This is their home; it is a private space that they comfortably share with each other.

The house is vibrant with colour, pattern and a never-ending rotation of art, knick-knacks and furniture pieces. Storage space is limited in the home and the bedrooms are petite, hence Cassy’s discipline with her collections, but the idea of upsizing doesn’t make sense to her and Gil. The home in which they have raised their family has functioned perfectly for them over the years and continues to do so as Ivy and Gypsy grow up.

The small space brings them together, but each family member will retreat to their own corner, to work on their own thing, when a time-out is needed. Gil, who works in publishing, has set up a gym in a room under the house, while Cassy, currently building on her ceramics practice, has a studio space in a nearby suburb. Little Ivy, despite her sweet demeanour, is a fiercely talented and competitive mountain-bike rider with a strict training schedule, and level-headed Gypsy is an eager reader who also takes acting lessons in the city. If anyone feels too cooped up, the expanse of the national park is at their back doorstep and the waterfront is just one street away.

When Cassy bought the house at the turn of the millennium, before she met Gil, it was the water views and green surrounds that pulled her in. Her friends thought she was crazy to give up her inner-city life and move an hour away to a tiny, isolated town, but for Cassy it was a much-needed shift to a quieter life among the trees and by the ocean, with a stronger connection to nature. The house, one of the original shacks in the bay, was made up of dark, poky rooms, and the front verandah was covered in tattered lattice left over from the 1980s. Cassy moved in and, over the course of six years, the cottage was updated with more windows, glass-panelled doors and bigger rooms. The verandah was enclosed with large windows, which expanded the living room footprint. The kitchen was extended, the backyard decking was put in place and the en suite was installed. If the wall between the en suite and the living room wasn’t made of glass panels, both rooms would feel boxy and the incredible light that comes through this aspect of the north-facing house would be lost. Each family member is drawn to the dining table that sits next to the front windows, and a variety of activities play out in this space. The table is the place for meals, for homework and paperwork, for art and craft; it’s the hub of the home, bathed in light and freshened with sea breezes. Here, the light shifts over the course of the day, hitting the stained-glass windows in the en suite and bouncing off the mirrors, making the family feel as if they are in an old-school kaleidoscope. The bath sits on a platform that is elevated to the perfect height for watching the sailboats bob across the bay, and it is positioned so that you can soak in the sun as you soak in the tub. Cassy has no regrets or apologies about opening up the en suite to the living space, as the pay-off is too great. When guests do visit, they can always use the other bathroom located off the kitchen and close the door behind them. I often see Cassy, Gil and the girls out and about in our neighbourhood, riding bikes or swimming off the jetty. Cassy and I catch up and share our latest thrift-shop finds, as she, like me, is addicted to the thrill of the hunt and is the kind of persistent shopper who reaps the rewards of never walking past a secondhand store without doing a quick scan of the shelves. For this book, the photography of Cassy and Gil’s home occurred over two sessions, with quite a few months’ gap in between. It was no surprise that in that time, new artwork had been put in place and rugs and decor had been switched up. Little things had shifted but, overall, the feeling of a perfectly functioning space remained.

Bloomin’ gorgeous Above: Cassy Gilbert covered the living room wall with wallpaper she found in her parents’ attic. The matching lampshade came three years later, a serendipitous side-of-the-road find. A retro terrarium coffee table is filled with its original faux plants, while the new sofa is layered with cushions made from vintage Finnish fabric. Below: A Fler dining chair, awaiting new upholstery, sits next to a stunning second-hand china cabinet in a corner by the kitchen.

Above: The double doors from the kitchen to the backyard open up the space and let in even more light. Below: Stained-glass windows in the en suite look out to the water.