LANTANA AND ASBESTOS MAKE WAY FOR A WORDS CATHARINE RETTER PHOTOS LISA HAYMES
Charming Beach Cottage
M
itch Giffin and Chanelle Gillespie hadn’t intended to buy a rundown cottage in Forresters Beach but after visiting a friend one weekend, they fell in love with the area and thought they’d ‘just take a quick look at houses for sale online’. And that’s where they fell in love with a two-bedroom, 1950s’ fibro beach house on a good-sized block in a lovely street … in Forresters Beach. They bought the cottage, moved in and chose their builder friend to help with the major makeover. The cottage may have been small, but it was no small undertaking. Asbestos meant all the outer walls were torn down, to be replaced with James Hardie cladding , then painted white to suit the beach cottage look. With the first good downpour of rain, it became evident the roof needed replacing, too. While the renovations on the house were awaiting approval, Chanelle and Mitch cleared the big block that was almost entirely overgrown with lantana. A deciding factor in buying the house had been that there was room for a granny flat for Chanelle’s mum. So work also got under way in planning a generously sized, two-bedroom granny flat at the rear of the property. Chanelle and Mitch didn’t want to increase the footprint of the main house and were able to reconfigure the interior walls to make the space much more liveable. The entry door and lounge
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area became the master bedroom, keeping the open fireplace that had been the cottage’s main heating source in winter. And a third bedroom found a home where the kitchen had been. ‘We didn’t want to borrow too much to cover the cost of the renovations,’ says Mitch. ‘We both have full-time jobs so our weekends were spent making the interior more liveable and doing what we could ourselves. ‘The floors were all at different heights,’ says Mitch. ‘So Frank from Narara poured concrete with a polished epoxy finish over the top of the floors to level it all out.’ The result perfectly suits the clean and simple style throughout the cottage.
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