Grounds of Cabarita: How a couple's renovation dream turned into a lucrative business

When Sophie and Nick Pearce finished renovating their beach-shack-turned-luxury-home earlier this year, they jokingly referred to it as “Grounds of Cabarita” among friends who loved the place so much that they wanted to pay to stay there.

It wasn’t long before they actually started offering accommodation at the property, and the name stuck.

Of course, Sophie and Nick always had it in the backs of their minds that they might end up listing the place as a holiday rental. The couple, both originally from Melbourne, met while studying on the Gold Coast.

In 2015 they purchased the humble 1960s beach cottage in the small town of Cabarita Beach on the NSW coast, and quickly got to work transforming it into the home of their dreams.

“Soph and I had a long-term dream of having a small boutique hotel slash bnb set-up,” says Nick. “When we were designing the space … we took a commercial approach – we wanted it to feel homely, but we also wanted it to be an environment to make guests feel special. And to celebrate the old style of the house as well.”

While Sophie is a doctor and Nick owns hospitality businesses, both have always had an interest in design.

They started by removing the walls and creating an open-plan kitchen, and then installed bifold doors that open out to a concreted alfresco dining area complete with a pergola and woodfire pizza oven.

The master bedroom is also fitted with bifold doors and looks out on to the backyard, which features a luscious green lawn, beehive, chicken coop, four large veggie patches and hanging cane chairs.

• Related: The couple living in an old school bus
• Related: Meet the couple restoring a 103-year-old home
• Related: How a couple created their dream home

They will soon be adding a pool to the list.

“Because the weather’s so nice up here we wanted to make the inside and outside feel really fluid,” says Sophie. “And the footprint of the house isn’t that big but it’s on such a large block that we wanted to make the most of that space without having to do an actual extension.”

Cabarita Beach is half an hour’s drive from Byron Bay, and the Pearces’ home is walking distance to several secluded beaches. With plenty of white paint, pale timber, soft furnishings and natural light, the three-bedroom, two-bathroom weatherboard home is now a stunning tribute to the relaxed vibe and carefree lifestyle of the northern New South Wales coast.

A big inspiration for Sophie and Nick was Cabarita Beach’s own uber-fashionable Halcyon House.

“We went for more of a minimalist approach in our style but we do love the fitout and the feel of Halcyon, and it fits in well with the area,” says Nick. “It’s really luxurious but laidback at the same time. You don’t have to feel like you’re wearing shoes all the time but it still feels special. We call it ‘barefoot luxury’.”

The renovation was completed two days before their wedding day in September 2016.

Needless to say, Grounds of Cabarita has been a hit on accommodation websites. Sophie and Nick say that offering accommodation at the house has had the added benefit of motivating them to cull any unnecessary belongings to make moving in and out of the house easier.

It’s also meant that they’ve had to take themselves off on camping trips whenever they had guests staying, which they’ve loved.

Yet since having their baby Poppy in February this year, the couple have taken some time to enjoy the property themselves.

They’re now renovating a second property, also in Cabarita Beach, which they purchased in November last year and which will become their permanent home.

While Nick has just opened his second cafe (in nearby Casuarina) and is enjoying providing trendy eateries to an underdeveloped region, Sophie is at a juncture where she’s deciding whether she’ll return to being a doctor after her maternity leave, or dive deeper into the accommodation business. Both say they’d love to open a larger-scale hotel.

And though Sophie and Nick agree that they’re living the dream, they say their philosophy is pretty simple.

“We just kind of roll with it,” says Nick. “We do really appreciate that we have an awesome life but we both like to make smart decisions that are not necessarily based off money but what we want to do, and working towards what we love.”