Even in a quiet house, getting a baby to sleep is the biggest challenge many new parents face. So, what about in a loud one, during a renovation with power tools on in the next room? For most, a nightmare. For Ben and Rhianna, it was reality. "Our newborn eventually had to learn to nap through the sound of hammer drills going into his bedroom wall," Ben laughs. It wasn’t all noise and disruption, though. “There were also lots of beautiful moments watching him get excited abou

Your algorithm tells you it’s easy. Stunning before-and-afters. A room transformation in thirty seconds. The perfectly curated house tour. But it doesn’t show you the long days and lonely nights of renovating, where decision fatigue meets financial pressure head on. Or the tough conversations with your builder and bank over the unwelcome, yet unavoidable, variations. “It can be a lot at times,” an honest Jemma Mrdak tells Place Journal. “It pushes you in ways you don’t expect

More than 750 kilometres separate Port Willunga on South Australia's picturesque Fleurieu Peninsula and Melbourne’s CBD. A gap today brought together by a nine-hour drive or a 75-minute flight. But for husband-and-wife renovators M & M during the Covid pandemic, it was distance that just couldn’t be measured. Living in Victoria after work brought them back a second time five years earlier, the couple were forced to cut ties with what they always hoped would be their “forever