Homebodies
Annie price and jamie paterson spend holidays with their daughter dottie at a vintage-filled beach shack on victoria’s mornington peninsula.
When you find the beach shack of your dreams, it doesn’t matter that the ceilings are sagging, or there’s a great big hole in the floorboards where the termites have been munching away. That was the case about six years ago, when Annie Price and Jamie Paterson first clapped eyes on the little 1960s twobedder they now call ‘The Nuthouse’ in Flinders on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. “It was so light and bright with all the windows along the front that it just gave you a lovely feeling as soon as you walked in,” says Annie, who grew up in the area.
“It was like we knew straight away that this was the one.” “The house really reminded me of my grandparents’ place in northern New South Wales, where I spent all my childhood holidays,” Jamie adds. The fact it was filled with ‘nanna furniture’ belonging to the old lady who’d been living there only added to that effect. Tiptoeing around the dodgy floor, they quickly discovered the pink bathroom, and that was it: they were sold. “Even before we found this house, we’d been following a site, Retro Renovation, that had an ongoing thread with people sharing their pink bathrooms,” Jamie says. “This had a pink bath, a pink sink, a pink terrazzo shower floor – everything!” For a couple of years, Annie, Jamie and their daughter Dottie, now 10, did the one-hour drive from Melbourne every weekend to fix the place up. “We like a bit of DIY,” Annie says. “We’ve both had a crack at doing various bits and bobs over the years.” One of the first tasks was to rip up the “horrible old ’80s carpet” in the living area, and, with some help from a local tradie, replace the missing floorboards. As the old and new boards didn’t quite match, they wound up painting the whole floor white. “It suits the beach house look, but takes cleaning to a whole other level!” Jamie says.
The couple installed plywood ceilings in place of the sagging ones, and moved the front door to its current spot to give them more room in the open-plan living area. It’s that front door, with its etched glass porthole featuring a little squirrel and oak leaves, that gives the house its name. “We found it at a huge renovation store,” Annie says. “It’s a bit funny, because squirrels are obviously not native to Australia, but we thought he looked pretty cute.” As Annie and Jamie were keen on original features of the house like the kitchen and bathroom, most of the changes they’ve made have been purely cosmetic. “We didn’t want to overhaul the whole place,” Jamie says. “We wanted to keep it close to its original intent.”
They’re both massive fans of vintage and retro, and spend loads of time going to op shops and garage sales, trawling the ’net and sifting through hard rubbish in search of treasure. “We often say things find us and need to come home with us,” Annie says. “It’s not that we go looking for a particular thing.” The pink stripy wallpaper in the bathroom, for instance, was found in hard rubbish in immaculate condition, and was soon put to good use. “You can never have too much pink in a bathroom,” Jamie says. He’s the wallpaperer in the family – “I don’t touch it, because I think it’s all going to fall,” Annie says. He also decorated the kitchen divider with seagull wallpaper bought online, and livened up Dottie’s room with some retro rainbows – but his wackiest project is on one wall of the couple’s bedroom, and features a whole load of different papers mashed together. “We had all these single rolls and thought we’d put them together,” Jamie says. “It worked out pretty well, I think.”
Another spot that gets a lot of attention (and one of Jamie’s favourite things about the house) is the dark blue wall at the end of the living area. They chose the deep colour partly to make the fireplace look less obvious, but also to act as a backdrop for Annie’s collection of her father’s paintings. He died just before they bought the house, so sadly didn’t get to see his artwork take pride of place. “He would have loved it,” Annie says. “Mum’s
tickled pink that we made a bit of a gallery for Dad.” It’s also lovely that some of the furniture in the room, including the wooden dining table, was passed down when Annie’s mum moved to a smaller place. “We’re so grateful we could make use of it,” Annie says. “It would have had to have been sold, otherwise." Most of the rest of the furniture and decorative bits came from Annie and Jamie’s vast collection of secondhand finds (they’ve still got a full shed out the back). Stuff like the cane lounge suite they picked up at a garage sale for 100 bucks, and near the front door, the amazing room divider, which was once owned by a psychologist, but Annie snapped up on ebay. “We think he must have brought it over from Eastern Europe,” Jamie says. “A lot of our friends are into Australian furniture and have never seen anything like it.” One of Annie’s favourite pieces is the old velour bedhead in the main bedroom. “I gave it a bit of a clean-up and thought it needed something, so went on a pom pom-making frenzy.” She also jazzed up the chest of drawers in Dottie’s room. “It came with ugly metal handles, so I got hold of some beautiful, bright ’70s ones instead, but didn’t have enough – one’s a different colour.” Annie and Jamie are both pretty keen on their garage-sale stereo and collection of vinyl, which always gets a good workout. “We’ve got everything from Motown soul to classic ’80s that we both grew up with,” Annie says. “This is embarrassing, but I’m a massive Wham! fan. Then there’s Queen, a bit of Bowie, James Taylor, movie soundtracks… it’s really eclectic. We rent the place out on Airbnb and Riparide when we’re not there, and have had some lovely comments from guests who say it’s inspired them to start collecting vinyl again.”
About the only extravagance in the whole house is the floral rug in the living area. “I’ve always loved those granny-pattern carpets and dreamt of having one of my own,” Annie says. “We didn’t want to have wall-to-wall carpet as it’s a beach house, so I had it cut into a circle and made into a rug – that’s a bit of a treat.” An offcut sits by the front door. “Waste not, want not!” she adds. Another clever bit of flooring is the crazy strip of lino just near the kitchen, made up of leftover tiles from their Melbourne house. “It was bare concrete there, which was pretty ugly,” Annie says. “We all did lots of drawings of what the pattern should be, and Dottie ended up being the winner – she was pretty rapt.” Dottie’s also designed the cubby house Jamie’s nearly finished building, which is big enough to sleep in – it features multi-coloured carpet squares found in hard rubbish and plenty of secondhand shelves for all her books.
Though the house is more or less done, Annie and Jamie still have a few projects on the go. “We’re a bit hopeless; we can’t sit still,” Annie says. As well as the garden, there’s an open annexe underneath the cubby house that they’re planning to turn into an outdoor room, with swing chairs and maybe a pizza oven. A 1958 Sunliner caravan-cum-spare bedroom in the driveway needs fixing up, too. They still find time, though, to do the sorts of things you’re meant to do when you’re on holiday: have barbeques on the front deck, walk to the beach with the dogs, go paddle-boarding and bike-riding, or run through the sprinkler on the sprawling front lawn. “One day we’ll move to The Nuthouse permanently,” Jamie says. “We get such a feeling of peace and tranquillity from it. As soon as you drive in, the weight lifts off your shoulders and you totally forget about what happened during the week.”