Inside the eclectic holiday home full of vintage treasures and Gumtree bargains

Annie Price and Jamie Paterson have turned an original beach shack on the Mornington Peninsula into a celebration of all things vintage. The shack, a short walk from Flinders beach, is a holiday retreat for the Melbourne couple and their daughter Dot, but it’s likely they have just as much fun mixing up colours and prints in the shack’s interiors as they do having a dip in the surf. 

The family are collectors and thrifters by nature – which Price jokes might be a nicer way of saying “hoarders” – and their love of rummaging through country markets and op shops, and picking up gems from nature strips does mean they accumulate a lot of cast-offs that need a new home.  

Those salvaged pieces sit in the shack with family heirlooms Price received when her mother downsized, as well as gifts from friends who know the couple’s style well. The glass top of their cane coffee table, for example, had a previous life as a vintage glass door, donated by a friend who saved it from her renovation. 

“We like things that make us happy, things with a history and a story or a sentimental value,” Price says. 

Price and Paterson also really enjoy turning up the colour wherever possible. During lockdown, one of their projects was covering the “dull grey” kitchen bench with burnt-orange laminate paint.

For the front door, rescued from a salvage yard, they went with hot pink, which also helps highlight an etching of a squirrel in the door’s glass. (The house is named Flinders Nuthouse for the squirrel, but Price acknowledges “the Nuthouse title also suits our family’s nuttiness”.) 

“I think it’s better to be brave with colour choice rather than hold back,” Price says, explaining their plan of attack.   

Visitors to the shack tend to agree. One piece that attracts a lot of admiration is a cane lounge suite, a garage sale find that the couple bought for $100 and reupholstered in chartreuse fabric that was left over from a set of curtains, “like Maria from The Sound of Music”. The yellow-green hue contrasts against purples and pinks on the “granny chic” floral rug below it.  

“[The suite] always gets a lot of lovely compliments,” Price says, “and we’ve never seen another one like it”.  

The bedrooms are full of colour too, reflecting the fearless “pure intuition” that guides the couple’s choices; if their gut instinct doesn’t work out, “we will paint or wallpaper over it”. 

In the main bedroom, the standout is a collage of striped wallpaper pieces, made from leftover bits of different rolls, and crowned by a shaggy-carpet banana wall hanging from Kip&Co. For Price, the gold velour bedhead is one of the best furnishings in the shack. “It was $50 from Gumtree and I up-cycled it with some handmade pom-poms.”

The second bedroom is Dot’s room, a whimsical blend of rainbow wallpaper, rugs and a red tubular bunk bed from the ’80s. 

Deciding what to do next at the shack is an endless source of discussion for Price and Paterson. 

“One of us will get fixated on a certain project and for a few months, it’s all we talk about till we move to the next thing. Most recently, we wallpapered the laundry and choosing the wallpaper kept us entertained for a few weeks.” (They settled on a vintage caravan motif.)

Price’s connection to Flinders is longstanding – as a child, her family loved exploring different areas of the Peninsula. Her father loved to paint, and his affection for the region is reflected in the shack’s living room where Price has created a midnight-blue gallery wall as a dedication to her late dad.

“He was an artist and painted many Mornington Peninsula scenes so we thought it was only right to feature a whole wall of his work,” Price says. “I think he’d approve.”

When they’re not down at the shack doing home improvements, the family live in a 1960s home in bayside Beaumaris, another wonderfully curated property but more mid-century in style.  

The shack is available for short stays, and guests should find more than enough to entertain themselves with by delving into the extensive collections and curios. 

“It’s only a small house … we do need to curb our enthusiasm sometimes or it will get too cluttered,” Price says. “The struggle is real!”