Couple fall for Mid Century home and sympathetically restore it

Unbeknownst to Nicole Farrell and Aaron King, they’d both fallen in love with this Mid Century gem when driving past it and hoped it might one day come up for sale. So when it did, they jumped on it. And five years on, it’s been sympathetically renovated after Nicole joined an online membership for female “buildhers”.

Husband Aaron was working in commercial construction in the city and Nicole was working as a GP, and they were ready to move somewhere new. They were overseas when covid hit and decided to move to rural Victoria, specifically to Aaron’s coastal hometown, Portland.

“We rented initially,” Nicole says. “I thought we would build a house so I kept looking at land and I joined Buildher Collective to try to wrap my head around the building process. Their course and community was fantastic.”

She adds: “There was a Mid Century Modern house two blocks away from where we were renting. One day we laughed when we both realised we were (independently) specifically driving past the house because we liked the look of it! We considered dropping a letter in the mailbox to say “in case you are interested in selling”, but we thought that was too far-fetched. As luck would have it, the house went on the market a few months later and we became its next loving owners.”

With Aaron a carpenter by trade and Nicole having always loved design, it was a fun ongoing collaboration between the pair.

They knew that one of the bathrooms would need to be fully renovated as the shower was cracked and leaking. Nicole was pregnant and really wanted a bath for the growing family; something neither bathroom had. So what started as renovating one bathroom soon became the whole three-bed, two-bath house, originally designed by Melbourne architect Ian Burch.

“Every time we did something, the house just shone more and more. It was a labour of love as we brought the house back to its former glory, and then some. The brief was simple: keep the Mid Century aesthetic while restoring and refreshing inside and out.”

What made the biggest difference was also the biggest bargain: tearing up the brand new carpet to reveal Tassie oak floorboards underneath. They now set the tone for the whole house.

Nicole says: “It’s a small town and when we uncovered the floorboards, we learned that my husband’s parents had actually had a few wedding photos taken on those very floors by their photographer, who lived here! If walls could talk!

“We loved the original timber veneer kitchen, so that had to stay. The bathrooms were the biggest splurge and underfloor heating is not something I have ever regretted!

“The home still has those design principles that we were drawn to: natural light, glass walls, exposed timber beams, and indoor/outdoor living. Now it also has all the mod-cons: new bathrooms, new laundry, timber floors (freshly insulated underneath), fresh paint, LED lights and updated gardens. It has been so wonderful for our growing family (there are now two kids running amok).”