'People thought we were nuts': How this couple transformed a big old boat shed into their family home

In a striking home accented with feature brick walls and polished concrete floors, arguably the most eye-catching feature of Helen and Nathan Reedy’s new Sunshine Coast house is the exposed wooden framework visible in most rooms. 

Plywood beams soar above the living area, highlighting the spaciousness of the 300-square-metre build, yet it’s unlikely the man who built the framework ever envisaged anything quite like this. It started life as the skeleton of a humble boat-building shed, which was on the 0.4-hectare block in Diddillibah when the Reedys bought it in 2020. The previous owner was a keen sailor.

The Reedys intended to create their “forever home” there and chose to use the shed as a building block to extend into a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home. “We’ve tried to honour the bones and story of the old building while still making something that will stand the test of time as a family home,” Helen says.

Completed in late 2022, large parts of what the family fondly calls The Ark House (in homage to its boat-y beginnings) are elements of the 1990s-built shed, after a glow-up. The polished concrete floor is the decades-old original slab, and the roof was patched up and painted. The outdoor decking is reclaimed hardwood, and, fortunately, the plywood framing only needed small infills of new ply to take centre stage.  

Having the existing structure to work with helped Helen and Nathan narrow down the mind-boggling number of decisions. “I actually enjoyed the restriction of designing around the portal frames and existing footprint,” Helen says. “It gave some constraint.”

The house is designed to embrace the family’s future needs. Daughters Olivia, 8, and Ivy, 5, have large bedrooms upstairs with built-in wardrobes and a second-storey loft space each, accessed by a narrow staircase that Helen remembers “took a lot of phone calls to find someone to build for us”. 

After

Before

The lofts were an afterthought, created from large ceiling voids left over from rejigging the design to reduce costs – a boon for the girls, as it turns out. 

“It was important to me that they had a place that was theirs that they’d never grow out of,” Helen says. “We plan to be in this home for a long time. We planned rooms that adults could fit comfortably in – not just children.” The home also has a purpose-built office and a separate self-contained guesthouse. 

The Ark House is the third renovation for Helen and Nathan, both physiotherapists and allied health managers, after first transforming a “seven-acre renovators delight” that Helen loved, then a beachside home that was more to Nathan’s liking. 

“We went looking for the compromise,” Helen says, and the acreage in Diddillibah is just that. It’s close to Maroochydore and iconic Sunshine Coast beaches, but with a semi-rural feel and the undulating green hills and mountains of the hinterland to the west. 

After 18 months of work, it’s a beautiful setting to relax into, though there’s still fencing and landscaping to be done, and plans to ultimately go off-grid. 

It was tricky at times for the couple to maintain confidence in their vision while the pandemic delayed trades and materials. “It was excruciatingly slow,” Helen says. But they also did plenty of work themselves – Helen doing design, sourcing fixtures and fittings and conquering IKEA flat packs, while Nathan carried out the demolition and built the front fence. 

Friends and family members were a little mystified. “A lot of people thought we were a bit nuts to be talking of turning [the shed] into a family home,” Helen remembers, though she acknowledges the first inspection was like visiting a jungle. Dense bushes and bamboo blocked out the light, and the shed had only the most basic of living facilities.

Yet Helen and Nathan always saw potential, tossing around the phrase “like on Grand Designs” between themselves. 

“We were buying the possibility of what it could be, not for what it was,” Helen says.  

The Ark House isn’t quite home to animals two by two, but beloved dogs Rufus and Bella are onboard, as are chickens, a rooster and pet goats (referred to as “the boys” and with their own residence in a repurposed water tank). Helen would like some ducks to grace the small dam, while Nathan has floated the idea of a pet pig. “I’m not convinced,” Helen says. 

And has the sailor yet seen what’s become of his old boat-building shed? Helen doesn’t think so. 

“He no longer lives on the [Sunshine] Coast, and according to locals is sailing around the world somewhere.”