Inside Heatherly Design founder Georgie Leckey's renovated Toorak apartment

• Owner: Georgie Leckey
• Project timeline: About four months, completed December 2020
• Project manager: Design + Diplomacy
• Most expensive cost: Bathroom (trades and finishes $25,000)
• Where you saved the most money: Gas-lift bed (from $3600)
• Most unexpected cost: Wet-area preparation (labour $5000)

Georgie Leckey is a creative force who knows her strengths.

The founder and owner of custom bed company Heatherly Design had the stylish nous to renovate her petite Melbourne apartment, but says outsourcing the project management was the best decision she made.

“I am geared to soft furnishings, but I am not familiar with the finishes in kitchens and bathrooms,” she says. “I did not know where to go to source well-priced, good-quality finishes, and so the project manager was a pleasant surprise.”

Leckey and husband Will purchased the two-bedroom, art deco gem in Toorak in 2013 as a city base for them and their two adult children. Home is otherwise in Alexandra in Victoria’s high country.

The family leased out the apartment before moving in, so it was ripe to be personalised. Its classic character had been muted by dated colours and fittings.

“It was in very good condition, but because I am so attuned to design and aesthetics, I wanted to somehow upgrade it,” Leckey says.

She engaged Design + Diplomacy, an interiors firm specialising in prep-for-sale and Airbnb renovations, to steer a largely cosmetic update.

“The project manager came in with the plumber, painter and builder, and quickly we were on the same page as to how to do this economically,” Leckey says.

The kitchen was a priority because it is in full view of the entry.

Despite the dramatic change, it was not the greatest expense. Time and money were saved by enhancing what was already there.

The original timber veneer cabinetry was solid, so it was kept and coated in fresh, baby blue 2pac.

The old Laminex bench was removed and replaced by marble-look quartz, the existing wall tiles were painted, and gleaming brass handles and tapware were added.

A small but effective touch was extending the quartz bench up the wall, to create a 120-millimetre lip where a splashback would otherwise start.

“This particular stone doesn’t mark and it looks incredible in there,” Leckey says. “The brass semi-circle handles elevate it to be that bit edgier.”

The floors throughout the apartment were whitewashed to cool down the orange-leaning Baltic pine.

Built-in banquette seating in a sunlit corner of the living room provides dining for up to six people.

Leckey elected to cover it with her company’s own trench coat-tone leather.

“Moving around six chairs was not going to work in that space,” she says. “I have always found that when you go out to dinner at a restaurant, you request the banquette seat, so that is where that idea came from.”

Confronted with a lack of storage, Leckey looked at how it could be incorporated without the time and cost of more construction.

A gas-lift bed with a smoky-blue boucle bedhead, from Heatherly’s own collection, was chosen for the main bedroom, providing storage in the base.

Without this, Leckey says, the only option to add storage was to spend money fitting out the garage with joinery.

“There was nowhere else, besides a couple of built-in robes, for us to store linen and suitcases, et cetera,” Leckey says. “That is all hidden under the gas lift. It is a lifesaver – it is astounding what you can fit under it.”

The bathroom was the largest – and most expensive – portion of the project. Rising damp, rotted timber and poor sealing from decades ago needed rectifying.

The labour cost to fix this wet zone was the largest unanticipated outlay, Leckey says.

The overall outcome is an elegant second home, which family and friends love to visit.

“You don’t often hear people say a renovation can bring great joy, but there was an adrenaline rush doing this,” Leckey says.