High-earning Airbnb 'The Red Barn' is for sale (2024)

Driving through the undulating hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, a glimpse of red peeks cheerfully through a clearing in the native bushland.

At the side of the road, an eye-catching letterbox provides a touch of whimsy and a tantalising hint of what’s to come.

Then, as your wheels crunch through the oval-shaped poinciana seeds that line the driveway, you are rewarded with the cheery sight of a Little Red Barn — the much-loved abode of interior designer Rachel Luchetti and her builder husband Gerard Cook, who transformed a barn style kit home into a family retreat.

ABOUT THIS HOME

This home featured in the April 2019 issue of Country Style. In September 2021, The Red Barn was sold to new owners for $1.9 million. The home is available to rent via Airbnb.

“Arriving at the barn is always such a wonderful feeling,” says Rachel, who takes their two sons, Leonard, aged four, and two-year-old Walter, to visit at every opportunity.

“As we live in an inner-city apartment, we crave the open space that it affords us.”

The couple bought the picturesque property at Doonan, 19 kilometres south of Noosa, in early 2016, choosing to source as many of the materials and furnishings as they could locally.

“As this is a holiday home, we couldn’t justify spending much on it and had to remain quite thrifty,” says Rachel, who looked to the surrounding towns of Yandina, Pomona and Cooroy for suitable second-hand pieces.

Rachel would send Gerard “all over the place” to pick up online finds and call into various antique stores.

“Gumtree has been great, not only for the barn but also because you get to meet people around the area,” she says. “When I’ve gone to pick something up, I’ve been able to see houses that you wouldn’t normally see because they’re hidden away from the main road.”

Buying in this area had been a dream for a while: “We’ve been coming up to Noosa for a long time,” says 38-year-old Rachel, whose Sydney-based architecture and interior design firm Luchetti Krelle works primarily in the hospitality sector.

“The first holiday Ged and I took together was to Noosa, so it’s a special place for us. We were looking at the real estate windows and noticed there was really good value a little further from the coast. We thought we’d come up and do a recce, have a drive around, when we came across this place.”

At just under one hectare, the property is perfect for this busy couple, who were looking for something semi-rural but didn’t want the responsibility and upkeep of a farm.

“It’s not a lot of maintenance but it also doesn’t feel like we have neighbours,” says Rachel.

The pair wasted no time in renovating, moving up while Rachel was on maternity leave and Leonard was just two years old. “When we first bought the place, it was a kit-home barn with one bedroom and a ladder loft,” she says.

“It had character and wasn’t overdone, but it definitely needed some updates.” As a builder, 42-year-old Gerard did almost all the work himself, from concreting and laying the tiles to re-lining and insulating the internal walls.

“The only tradies we had in were an electrician and a plumber,” says Rachel.

The loft was extended upstairs to include a landing area, and an extra bedroom and bathroom were added downstairs.

“There were a couple of weeks when it was unlivable,” says Rachel. “There were gaping holes and it was really dusty.”

Today, all signs of dirt and disruption are gone and Rachel says the resulting double-height living space, complete with a wood-burning fireplace and country-style kitchen, were worth any temporary inconvenience.

The space now feels luxurious, with fresh white walls and touches of timber to add warmth and character.

The family’s existing sofa, which they’d had for a number of years, felt right at home in the new space, while Rachel found many other key furniture items on Gumtree.

“It became quite an obsession!” she admits. Her favourite spot is the outdoor bath, accessible through the ensuite that opens onto the verandah through bi-fold doors. “To have a glass of wine in the bath and read a book — that’s my dream!” she says.

A steep block meant there was also work to be done outside.

“The property is at a 25-degree gradient,” says Rachel. “It had no connection to the garden and was too sloped for the kids to play.”

Unperturbed, Gerard brought his bobcat and excavator up from Sydney and got to work building retaining walls and backfilling to create a level grassy area.

He also created a circular driveway out the front, lining it with the long, oval-shaped seeds of poinciana trees that he collected around the neighbourhood.

As a holiday home, a swimming pool was high on the wish list but the limitations of the slope meant the couple had to get creative.

“We were both worried about the cost of building an in-ground pool on a site like this,” says Rachel, who found their concrete plunge pool at Allcast Precast in nearby Woombye.

“We also wanted to get that bridge effect leading from the barn out to the pool — it was definitely a bit of work getting that right.”

The pool is now the ideal place to gaze across the hinterland hills, while a nearby pandanus recreates the look of the Sunshine Coast’s beaches where the subtropical tree is iconic and abundant.

But though the sandy shores of Noosa are mere minutes away, Rachel says the barn has everything they need for a relaxing holiday at home.

“The boys burst through the doors to rediscover cherished toys and get busy with what they describe as ‘builders’ work’ and repairs around the property with their miniature tools,” she says. “We go to the beach early in the morning when it’s not too busy or hot, then come back here and hang out all day. It’s our little oasis.”