Ariane and Andrew Vincent’s former home in Melbourne, Australia, was the kind of place people dream about: a three-story house near the beach with views of Port Phillip Bay.
But after years of climbing all those stairs — and chasing three growing children (now 18 to 23) among floors — “we were ready to live on one level,” said Ms. Vincent, 55, a business consultant who has worked in the furniture industry. “We wanted a pool and more of a family home that was more fun.”
Six years ago, they found something in Brighton, a nearby suburb, that captured their hearts: an 1889 Victorian brick house coated in concrete render, on a quarter-acre lot with a sunny, north-facing yard and one of the oldest, largest olive trees they had ever seen.
“It’s probably one of the most significant olive trees in Victoria,” Ms. Vincent said. She and Mr. Vincent, 63, who owns a mobile document-shredding company, bought the house in November 2018 for about 2.8 million Australian dollars ($1.8 million).
The house wasn’t perfect. It needed repairs and had awkward additions on the back, and the interior looked like it had last been updated in the 1980s. “It was very run-down and unloved,” Ms. Vincent said, “and had been renovated really cheaply.”
