You won't see much hanging on the walls of this one-of-a-kind home in Burleigh Waters on Queensland's Gold Coast. "The art is in the render - the house is the art," says Emma Sweeny, who designed and created the unique abode known as Ruin X with her partner Matt Jamieson.
The entrepreneurial couple were looking for a large-scale application after launching their furniture range Object X, which was inspired by Matt's market-leading render company Render X. "This was our first renovation and we absolutely fell in love with it," Emma says.
The process involved transforming a 1990s three-bedroom, cream-brick house into a masterpiece in just five months, with rendering on every surface along the way.
"It was four minutes to the beach, it had incredible bones and the size of the land was amazing," explains Emma, who saw the potential in the humble house on her first viewing. "It's also a north-facing block. There were just so many things that ticked our boxes and won us over." Confident in their vision, they wasted no time in getting started.
A penchant for bold, brave style is shared by the pair. "Matt and I are both quite eccentric with our fashion, and so we wanted to do a home that was quite eccentric, too," says Emma. Enlisting local architect Jayson Pate topped their to-do list.
"We basically gave him a wishlist of what we wanted," says Emma. "We knew our style and we did all the interior design, but Jayson really maximised our land properly and knew what would work here."
The magic of render was the muse for Ruin X, although Emma also looked to the usual suspects (Instagram and Pinterest) for some creative encouragement.
"I've pulled things from a lot of different places, hoping they would work, but in the end it organically came together through just choosing things that we loved," she says. "We pulled it all together with the one-coloured render everywhere, and by creating our own furniture."
Render X is at renderx.com.au and @render.x
Object X is at objectx.com.au and @object.x