Narrabeen House

This one sits right on Narrabeen Lake, one of those rare briefs where the site does half the talking before you've drawn a wall. The owners bought it years ago as an investment, moved in a decade later, and always planned to sell. That changed. This became their forever home, and the brief shifted from renovating a house to designing one that could hold the rest of their life.

The floor plan was too tight for how they wanted to live. Rather than following the architect's original drawings, we positioned a new fireplace on the opposite wall, opening the room for a large dining and lounge area, and we extended the kitchen with a custom bar and matching joinery. The old black splashback became green Igus tiles, a Japanese glaze that shifts colour across each tile. At the back, an enclosed verandah extends living toward the lake with a raked ceiling, a second fireplace in Valencia Bianco limestone, and lounge seating flowing out to a firepit.

The real brief underneath the brief: a home that opens up for a full house at Christmas and still feels like an easy, unpretentious cottage on a Tuesday night. The result is modern, airy and coastal, never formal. It simply works, for a relaxed couple who wanted their forever home to feel exactly like them.