‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’: Is this the quirkiest house on the market?

From its waterfall-inspired pebble-tiled bathroom to its upcycled interiors, there is a lot to unpack inside this quirky house listed in Raymond Terrace.

The 1940s three-bedroom, one-bathroom brick-and-tile house at 14 Wahroonga Street is anything but ordinary.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Dowling Real Estate Raymond Terrace listing agent Kim Hammond said.

“From the outside, it very much looks like a typical home in the area, but inside, the owner has literally transformed every single wall and repurposed a lot of items.

“Things that you wouldn’t even think of, whether it’s an old fence or old gate, handrails from a staircase, she will repurpose it.”

The house is listed for sale for $520,000.

The interiors are the creation of its owner who purchased the house a decade ago and spent the last two years re-modelling the inside.

She undertook all the work herself and sourced second-hand items to repurpose in bold and creative ways.

“I’m a creative person and I have learned to do moulding and all of the architraves, that sort of thing, and so it has been a work in progress,” she said.

Among the home’s many distinctive features is the living room, with its decorative wall panels constructed using various timber flooring.

The kitchen features upcycled pressed metal and decorative timber columns repurposed from a secondhand four-poster bed.

The cupboards in the kitchen were built from old leadlight doors and windows.

“I have salvaged a lot,” she said.

“I saw the four-poster bed online and thought, ‘I’ll see what I can do with that’ so I used the columns off the bed and the bed end in the kitchen which I cut up and recycled.

“If more people recycled, there wouldn’t be so much waste.

“I know everyone loves new and all-white and pristine in their homes, but sometimes, if you step back and look at an item and think about what it could be used for, there doesn’t need to be so much waste.”

The kitchen is equipped with a dishwasher and microwave however, the stovetop and oven are relocated to a screened indoor/outdoor area next to the barbecue, both with exhaust fans.

The bathroom is also unconventional and was arguably the biggest project of all.

The owner chose pebbles and coloured glass beads instead of tiles to create a waterfall-inspired wet area.

It includes a waterfall mural and a green resin toilet seat with a tree frog design to add to the rainforest feel.

“I used to live out of town on an acreage and thought, ‘If I can’t live in the bush again, I will bring the bush to me’ and so I found that mural,” she said.

“I thought ‘This is perfect’ and I needed tiles to make it look like a waterfall was flowing down but I found bottles of glass beads and thought, ‘I can make my waterfall out of that’.”

The owner’s environmentally conscious approach to the home includes multiple rainwater tanks and a 7.4 kW solar system with Tesla Powerwall 2 battery storage.

“She has made the home very environmentally friendly, so there are four water tanks and her water bills are next to nothing, as are her electricity bills,” the agent said.

“I have seen three of her quarterly electricity bills and they are all under $10 because she has a fantastic solar system and a Tesla battery.”

Ms Hammond said the property had drawn mixed feedback since it hit the market.

“There is a lot of interest in it which could be because of the price at $520,000, so it’s not too often you can break into the market for a three-bedroom home at that price,” she said.

“I was really surprised by the feedback because my reaction was, ‘Woah, someone is going to want to un-do all of this’ but I had a private inspection with a buyer and I said, ‘Get ready for this, it’s very different’ and she said, ‘Well, I’m different’ and when she walked inside she said, ‘I love it’.

“It is perfect for someone who thinks outside the square and doesn’t want the standard cookie-cutter home.”

The property is open for inspection on August 10 at 9.30am.

This article first appeared at view.com.au.