If you haven't met us yet, we are Michael & Britney. We are a young eco conscious, plant-based family that strive to be active, healthy and always exploring and growing. In August 2021 we purchased our first home that we knew had a lot of 'potential' but wasn't sure if our vision would come to life, because it needed a lot of work!
Our dream vision was to run a small eco friendly Airbnb surrounded by nature, that our guests would feel both relaxed and welcomed at. We knew to make our guests feel this way, the house needed a lot of love and a big renovation was the first thing on the list.
I'm sure the orange and blue house paint was great for the 90's but we had to make some changes. The 'garden' was overgrown and unkept, the terracotta tiles were not the best look, and the whole deck was falling apart and hanging on for dear life. We had the goal to open up by Christmas, and boy were we optimistic!
We spent every spare minute and weekend painting, searching marketplace for furniture, digging, landscaping, replacing flooring, gardening, cutting down trees and organizing trades.
We had the whole deck and structure rebuilt from scratch, replaced windows, installed new grey water and toilet systems, turned the old veggie patch into a 2nd yoga/outdoor space, re-built new walk ways, installed outdoor lights and re-cladded half of the house in blackbutt etc etc. The list was big!
We used the railway sleepers from the veggie garden to create the walk ways into the house, we cut down 3 huge trees, milled the timber to create shelves in the kitchen & bathroom and overall have used second hand materials as much as possible to keep our footprint low.
As we are quite eco conscious and wanting to reduce our footprint as much as possible, the property is runs purely off rain water, we have composting toilets and grey water to add back into the rainforest.. We compost our food scraps, make the most of our solar panels and try to use eco-friendly products were we can.
We were successful in opening up our Airbnb for the first time in December, with Christmas day 2021 having our very first guests! Since our first opening we have continued to add, change and do what we can to make the space more comfortable for our guests.
She was born 5 weeks early so we had quite the journey with her, spending her first month of life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the Sunshine Coast University Hospital.
She showed us how strong and brave she was in those four weeks - born at a small 1.6kg/3.5 pounds slowly learning how to eat and breathe on her own until we could take her home.
After 4 long weeks, we walked out of the hospital with her and brought her back to our rainforest home.
Ever since then we've been watching her thrive and grow into the beautiful little girl we love and adore.
We love our little space we have created and thoroughly enjoy sharing it with guests from anywhere and everywhere. Please feel free to ask us if you have any questions at all. We hope you enjoy your stay!