Home Stories: Lauren and Scott Leary

Posted on 25 October, 2019

For this instalment of Home Stories, Ashley heads to Karabar to see a house with a bar, a pool table, a pole and a lot of plants.

While I was quickly getting ready on Saturday morning, my partner Emily was quizzing me on where I’m heading to for my next instalment of Home Stories.

“Avon and I are going to see Lauren and Scott from Karabar!” I yelled out, running from the bathroom to the bedroom.

“Hang on, which Lauren from Karabar?”

“Ahh yes—we went to school together. We haven’t seen each other in about 10 years…but we follow each other on Insta!”

And just like that, somewhere between telling Peppie the Cavoodle to get off my t-shirt, looking for my keys and dashing out the door, I nailed a somewhat-sketchy-but-semi-decent background on my hosts.

I usually don’t like to know too much about people’s homes before I visit, as I really like the element of surprise and discovering someone’s world with genuine curiosity.

It’s like speed dating (well if you replace the dating with neighbouring). But on this occasion, a quick background story about vintage shopping and home refurbishments made the upcoming visit even more exciting.

Lauren and Scott have been Queanbeyanites all their lives. Their parents are there, their work is there and their roots are well and truly set. And for that reason, they decided to make their Karabar home a long-term commitment and really invest in their passions, talents and taste.

They bought the place a couple of years ago and—in no less than four months— turned it from an unloved beige shell into a home with creature comforts and a serious sense of style.

Of course, it helps that Scott is a builder and Lauren works in her family construction business—but you get the sense that the real reason for that speed came from their passion and dedication to making a home ‘theirs’.

Speaking of creature comforts—I don’t know what comes to your mind when you hear those words, but in their case, the first room to your left is a fourth bedroom converted to a pole dancing studio, fully decked out with a massive mirror and more of Lauren’s winner’s sashes than I could count at a glance.

Next, a ‘fun’ room—a massive space with a pool table and a full bar. I did ask Scott if having a bar, pool table and pole meant that their home doubled as the definitive place to kick on for all their mates. “Ah yes, it’s definitely fun,” he laughed. “Minus the fact that after a few drinks everyone thinks they can do a scene from Showgirls on the pole…they can’t’.

From those two rooms onward, the house takes on a slightly different dimension. Lauren and Scott’s bedroom is filled with a beautifully-styled mix of vintage and contemporary pieces picked up on Gumtree, eBay and second-hand stores.

The two bathrooms have contrasting yet complementary styles with striking black highlights, organic stone basins, retro pink tiling and a grand mirror that took three attempts to install before it fit the six tap holes without cracking.

The living spaces are open and bright—thanks mostly to very clever placement of large, angled skylights—and are filled with soft highlight colours linked by a subtle use of oak across the kitchen cupboards, light pendants and furniture.

No matter where you look, there are plants, plants and more plants—all green, lush and vibrant. When I pointed this out Lauren told me, “That’s all Scott—it was a skill his grandmother passed onto him. Now he is the plant whisperer.”

I was amazed enough at the house plants, but as we moved to the outside gazebo my jaw dropped. We may as well have been on the set of Tarzan. There were ferns, trees, tropical plants, and countless greens things I could not name, all under a stunning thick canopy of a passionfruit vine. Lauren and Scott just need to let some snakes and a fancy parrot loose and they could sell jungle walks. Plant whisperer indeed.

So, despite my sketchy backgrounder, I had quite the adventure getting to know Lauren and Scott. I was surprised not only by the stories their home tells, but also by the talents they used to achieve this.

When we walked outside, photographer Avon turned to me and said, “Wow. That was just bloody awesome”. To which I said, “Yep, that’s what I call great speed neighbouring.”