Life is a beach

The interior is again a contrast between plain plasterboard walls and DJ dado panelling. “This gives a layered textured effect,” Kidd says. “You have a white wall but some sections are plain and smooth, some have ribbing and other sections have weatherboard, so even though it’s all the same colour, which is a warm white, it has some extra charm from these materials.

“The white walls are also contrasted by rich timbers which are a wide black butt. It’s a second grade timber so it contains a lot of blood veins and marks in it which is quite often not used in a quality home but in this case it gives it some extra character. That type of philosophy is run through the house when we get into the details of the joinery - we’ve again used DJ-style plank doors with Carrara marble from Italy.”

The spaces inside the home are large and there is a very high ceiling on the ground floor of around 3.3m. “It’s open plan but you can see from front door all the way through to the back door and as you look eastward you are looking beyond the ocean,” Kidd says. “There’s a busy carpark across the road but we were able to screen that out by having a wall 2m high whereas actually the floor level is a metre above the natural level.”

The kitchen and dining area are in open-plan format, with large high stacking concertina doors of 2.7m in height, so when they open up they give a horizontal and vertical view. “Again we used the theme of contrast,” Kidd says. “The timber contrasts against either white walls or natural sandstone, which is a local Gympie sandstone. Throughout we’ve used a lot of breeze way timber louvres and we’ve limed them with solution of lime white weathered grey oil and this stops the Western red cedar from developing fungus or mould and gives a grey effect which continues to weather down, so it gives a driftwood type look to timber. It’s a very natural theme.”

The internal doors are a plantation shutter type style with aerofoil blades on the upper section of the door frames and at the bottom they are a solid DJ infill.

In the master bedroom Kidd adopted a different theme. “We’ve used similar materials but the space is different,” he says. “There are large windows facing out to the ocean, so we’ve adopted an awning style window which means it hinges up like an awning on the outside of a house.

“The inserts of the frame are glass breeze way louvres so when the windows are closed you can operate them like a normal bank of louvre windows but you can also flip them and they are controlled on gas struts. We did this to try and open up the apertures so you can create a direct link between the inside and outside.”

According to Kidd, houses of this nature built in close proximity of a beach have to be considered like a boat. “All the fixings are done in stainless steel,” he says. “ The materials have to be suitable for the environment even to the point of having hot and cold mixer tap on the outside of the house so it can be washed down with warm water to prevent salt water build-up onto certain components.

“We adopted aluminium window frames throughout because we are in a beachfront salt environment. You get no movement in this material so there is no chance of water penetrating into the building. It’s important to choose the right materials but also important is how they’re fixed and I stress that very much.”

Kidd was keen to create a local look for the home, rather than the Balinese or Mediterranean styles popular for many new beachside homes.“We were passionate about developing a Noosa theme using natural materials to give a neutral environment, which understated the structure and enabled the interior furnishing to express itself,” he explains. “There is no colour in the house, either in the interior or exterior from the built environment; instead this is expressed by the furnishings. The interior furnishing can be updated but the backdrop remains the same.”

Salty Bits also took out the award for residential buildings over 400sq m in the 2003 Building Designers Association of Australia national awards.

Source: Building Products News.