The Making of MP Cottages Part #1

If you’ve been following our blogs, you’d know that we are trying to bring our Humble Beach Shack back to glory. We had researched in depth before we came up with our design and a plan for its execution. In this blog post we tell the stories behind our decor.

When we were property hunting in the peninsula for this holiday accommodation project, we saw many run down houses. Many of them were vacated by their retiree occupants before they headed to the nursery homes. Entering these houses is like stepping back in time. For many of the retirees, their children had left home for years. They lived in the same house with their partners until they were the last one to go. We saw rooms that hadn’t changed a bit since their children departed in the 80s, or even 70s. The beds are always neatly made, sometimes a bit dusty, frozen in time. The pictures on the walls tell their family stories.

These experiences added to our determinations to maintain the neighbourhood characteristics, and their stories. It is unfortunate that the property we have doesn’t come with its original decor nor furnitures. We therefore had to source them piece by piece. Ebay, Gumtree are often good sources; and of course the local antique shop. Sadly we cannot afford most antiques in the shop. We also don’t like the cheap remakes from Asia neither. Luckily we found some good offerings online, with lots of driving to many corners in Melbourne, we got a few good pieces. They were as humble as our old beach shack, all needing our tender love and care.

Here are a few pictures of us cleaning, polishing and preparing these items for display in our cottages. Enjoy.