The Design Files: The Mount Martha beach shack of Jeff and Mariko Provan

• Z-shaped Avalon Beach house a marvel of architectural creativity
• Tips to avoid pitfalls when revamping your home
• Most common building mistakes and how to avoid them

Who: Property Developer Jeff Provan and his wife Mariko Provan.

Where: Mount Martha, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

What: The quintessential Australian beach shack.

Jeff Provan has design and construction in his blood. As director of Neometro in Melbourne, a respected design, construction and property development company he co-founded in 1985, Jeff has an intuitive understanding of what makes a great home.

When it came to creating a beach retreat for his own family, though, Jeff found himself adopting a surprisingly hands-off approach.

After downsizing from their long-serving family home in Melbourne, Jeff and his wife Mariko were interested in finding a coastal retreat.

After a 12-month search, they discovered this two-bedroom fibro beach shack just metres from Mount Martha beach. They bought it on the spot.

Mariko and Jeff Provan’s Mount Martha beach house. Photo: Eve Wilson

Originally, the pair had grand plans for re-building on this generous site, but it wasn’t long before they reconsidered. Soon after taking possession, it was clear that this humble shack had a special charm worth preserving. ”Now, we love this place so much and it works so well as a beach shack, that we are keeping it exactly as is,” says Jeff. ”It’s not pretentious or precious, and has a great relaxed feeling to it.”

That’s the thing about beach shacks. They can be everything that a day-to-day home is not. As a temporary retreat, a weekender offers permission to be imperfect.

A holiday house also often becomes the receptacle of an ad-hoc collection of furniture and hand-me-down items, resulting in a relaxed and refreshingly frugal interior scheme that champions a “that will do” approach.

Photo: Eve Wilson

Jeff and Mariko have embraced this sentiment at Mount Martha, making only minor cosmetic changes since moving in. Walls have been painted, floors polished, and light fittings replaced. One of their first priorities, in fact, has been the garden.

Jeff is passionate about the connection between interior and outside spaces, and places great emphasis on garden design in all his projects. The garden here has been re-designed and landscaped in collaboration with Mud Design and Mowed in Australia, and pergolas and awnings added to the front and side of the home, offering protected lounging and dining spaces for friends and family.

Inside, the shack has evolved quite naturally, an accumulation of furniture and objects collected over Jeff and Mariko’s 40 years together. Favourite pieces include the couple’s collection of various dining chairs which “didn’t make the cut” in their city home, as well as pieces by Melbourne-made furniture brand Tait Outdoor. There’s also a nod to Mariko’s Japanese heritage here, with traditional fabric dividers called noren hanging over doorways.

Photo: Eve Wilson

As a coastal retreat, this home offers respite and relief for the Provan family in more ways than one. For Mariko and the couple’s children and grandchildren, this is the ultimate summer sanctuary.

For Jeff, it’s been a revelation to create a beautiful, functional family home, without doing very much at all.

”The way we have decorated the home was not to save money or anything, but just about really not wasting anything we already had,” Jeff says. ”There are so many things that can be added to a home, but knowing when to stop makes all the difference.”

Photo: Eve Wilson

The Design Files guide to undecorating

It’s almost counter intuitive to offer advice on the idea of “undecorating”. By its nature, this approach to interior decorating is a no-rules movement, an embracing of intuition, and a resistance against formal trends.

Of course, there’s always a place for professionally designed spaces and cutting edge ideas. But for most of us, creating a beautiful and comfortable home is something that evolves naturally, without a set outcome, and often, without an enormous budget.

Here are a few ideas to consider:

Work with what you have:
Interior styling rarely starts with a blank canvas. Consider the existing conditions – period details, existing materials and surfaces. Don’t lament the things you can’t change. Instead, focus your attention on layering texture, pattern and colour over the top.

Photo: Eve Wilson

Embrace imperfect:
Embracing elements you wouldn’t have necessarily chosen yourself can often be what gives a home a unique personality. A mismatched floorboard, and slightly wonky doorway, all lends to the charm of an eclectic, highly personal space, and you’ll be surprised how much these elements recede into the background when you start to layer your space with treasured personal artefacts. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

“Finished” is a fallacy:
It’s a mistake to think of a home as something which needs to be “finished” once and never added to. The most interesting spaces evolve over time, reflecting the changing needs of the occupiers. Cut yourself some slack, and forget about “finished”. Banishing this idea will free you up to make braver design decisions.