Like many share-housing Melburnians, Esin Üstündag, wedding content creator at Hot Off The Vows, discovered her home via the infamous Fairy Floss Real Estate Facebook group.

At the time, she had been looking for a new rental for months and feeling ‘quite cruddy’ about her chances of finding something suitable.

‘I knew I didn’t want to live in just another off-the-plan apartment or townhouse so I was looking for a place on my own,’ Esin says. ‘Safe to say my life revolved around house inspections and doom scrolling rental groups on Facebook.’

That all changed when a friend sent Esin a post about this house for lease in Clifton Hill. ‘I’m pretty sure if I were in a cartoon my eyes would have turned into love hearts and stretched out of the sockets. I was OBSESSED,’ says Esin.

With its quirky timber design and shape, the 1970s house reminded Esin of the log cabins common to the redwood forests of Northern California where she had previously travelled. ‘I was completely enamoured by it. I felt like I had found my home!’

The styling of the home has come together organically, leaning into the original features and the taste of Esin and her various housemates: currently Valentine Rondoni and Giyoung Baek.

‘Obviously living in a share house means you’re constantly adapting to other people’s intuitions within the space, but I think the design of the house really lends itself to a certain type of styling and lucky for me that’s just the vibe of Val (who has added to the styling alongside myself) and myself,’ Esin says.

‘The exposed beams and slate flooring are an interesting cross section — you can really lean into the modern mid-century feel while also being able to play around with some contemporary colours and textures and it all holds together really nicely.’

While some might find a red rust kitchen and bright blue bathroom difficult to style, Esin has only elevated their character with matching rugs and neutral layers of brown, green, leather, velvet, and glass.

The most special pieces are the paintings by Jaime Brohier, and handmade kitchen ceramics, which Esin takes delight in using every day. ‘There’s something about drinking from a cup that someone you know made with their hands,’ she says. ‘It just hits differently.’

There’s always something happening in this house, whether that’s the sun moving from the upstairs lounge to the downstairs dining area, or an impromptu session on the decks — not uncommon in this home given the (deliberate) lack of television!

‘Both Val and myself DJ, so making the decks the centrepoint of the lounge area was something that worked both practically and philosophically,’ says Esin. ‘A sunny afternoon in the house with a vinyl spinning is just magic!’

Everyone who enters the house agrees. Esin says, ‘What I love most is watching other people walk through the doors for the first time and clocking that same shift… It tells me the house has something real going on — something intentional baked into how it was built.’