How We Created Spaces That Make Home Feel Like a Retreat

A different way of thinking about home

For a long time, most of our attention went into making our first house more functional.

It was a neglected 100 year old house that needed work in almost every room. We renovated the kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms and living areas while trying to retain the features that gave the house its character.

As the renovation progressed, we began thinking beyond what each room needed to do. We also started thinking about how we wanted our home to feel.

Our travels in Japan had a strong influence on this. During our honeymoon in 2015, we stayed in a room with its own private indoor and outdoor onsen baths. Nine years later, during a family holiday in Azumino, we stayed in a Japanese larch house with an enormous private bath connected to a natural hot spring.

It was not about trying to copy a traditional Japanese bathroom. What stayed with me was the calm created by warm water, privacy, natural materials, soft light and a connection to the landscape.

I wrote more about those experiences in Two Japanese Baths I Still Think About.

Giving the old bathtub another life

When we renovated the bathroom in our first house, we removed its original cast iron bathtub.

The bath was extremely heavy and showed plenty of signs of age, but it was still solid. Rather than sending it to landfill, we moved it outside and created a new place for it in the garden.

We chose a private position near the shed and surrounded it with a timber platform. Water was connected from the shed and passed through a heater before reaching the bath. A plumber installed the water connection, heater, pipework and drainage.

The bath drained into a greywater system so the water could be reused in the garden.

What had once been an old pink bathtub hidden inside the house became somewhere to soak outside among the trees. It was practical, a little unusual and one of our favourite features at that property.

The full project is in How We Turned Our Old Bathtub Into an Outdoor Bath.

Beginning again on the Great Ocean Road

Our current home on the Great Ocean Road is a completely different property.

Rather than an old suburban house, it sits within a large bush setting. There is more space, more privacy and a much stronger connection to the surrounding landscape.

We did not recreate the outdoor bath here. Instead, we looked at the property we had and considered how its existing spaces could support the way we wanted to live.

The result was a sauna beside the pool and a home gym created inside part of the shed.

Like the outdoor bath, neither project was only about how it looked. Both were designed to make something we value easier to include in everyday life.

Adding a sauna beside the pool

Adding an outdoor sauna has been one of the best lifestyle decisions we have made at our current home.

It is tucked beside the pool and surrounded by the bush garden. We can use it after exercising, warm up on a cold winter evening or simply step outside for a quiet break at the end of the day.

The setting is an important part of the experience. Leaving the warmth of the sauna and stepping into the fresh air immediately connects us with the landscape around the house.

It also removes the planning involved in going somewhere else for a sauna session. We do not need to make a booking or allow time to travel. It is close enough to use regularly, which is what makes it valuable to us.

You can read more in Why We Added a Sauna to Our Home.

Turning part of the shed into a home gym

The home gym was created for more practical reasons.

We have a young family and live some distance from the nearest gym. Travelling there, exercising and returning home would take a considerable amount of time.

Our existing shed gave us another option.

We converted one section into an insulated, plastered and painted room while keeping the larger section for storage. We retained the existing concrete slab, added electrical work and installed a larger custom window overlooking the bush.

The window made one of the biggest differences. It brought natural light into the room and stopped the gym from feeling like an enclosed corner of a shed.

We kept the equipment relatively simple and chose items based on what we would genuinely use. The finished room is not a commercial gym, but it is comfortable, convenient and easy to use throughout the year.

The complete conversion is covered in How We Turned Part of a Shed Into a Home Gym. I have also shared how much the home gym cost.

Before

After

What connects these spaces

The outdoor bath, sauna and home gym were created at different properties, but several ideas connect them.

We worked with something that was already available. At the first house, it was the original cast iron bathtub. At our current home, it was the existing shed, pool area and bush setting.

We paid attention to how each space felt. Privacy, natural light, warmth and views of the surrounding landscape mattered as much as the individual features we installed.

We also created spaces we could use regularly.

A beautiful space is not particularly useful if it is inconvenient or does not suit everyday life. The outdoor bath became somewhere to stop and soak. The sauna gives us a simple way to unwind at home. The gym removes much of the time and effort involved in exercising elsewhere.

A retreat does not have to be one perfect place

Looking back, we did not set out to create a home retreat according to a single plan.

The idea developed across two homes and over many years. Each project responded to a different property, a different stage of our lives and something we wanted to make easier or more enjoyable.

For us, creating a home that feels restorative has not been about making every room luxurious. It has been about identifying the things that help us feel better and finding practical ways to make space for them.

Sometimes that meant giving an old bathtub a second life. Sometimes it meant adding a sauna among the trees. Sometimes it meant turning part of a working shed into a room where we could exercise.

Together, these projects have changed the way we think about home. It is not only somewhere that needs to function well. It can also contain spaces that help us slow down, move, recover and enjoy where we live.