Meet the Belrose couple who took a chance with their house on the Channel 7 show
Not many people would be willing to hand their house over to strangers to renovate however they pleased. But Lara and Peter Bird did just that. “I’m a bit of a control freak, so to be able to just hand your keys over and leave your house in the faith of strangers was a pretty big thing for me,” Lara says.
But the gamble paid off. The Belrose couple, who appeared on Dream Home, a Channel 7 reality house renovation competition series, now have a fully renovated home, resulting in a $700,000 increase in property value. They also walked away with $10,000 cash for taking out first place in the renovating section of the competition.
“I saw something on social media that was an advertisement to apply,” Lara says. “It said ‘Do you want your house renovated for free?’ And I was like, ‘yeah we do!’”
At the time, Lara explains the couple’s red brick single-storey home, which they share with their two children Leo, 10, and Mia, seven, was ‘a maze’ and ‘boxy’. The couple had purchased their home in 2022, and longed for a second storey so that the children could have their own space. But the costs to renovate were too high.
“When we first applied, we didn’t really know what we were applying for,” Peter, a marine technician, says. “We didn’t know if it was like a Changing Rooms thing where we (would have) to show up for a week or a month – right up until the point we were on it.”
Lara and Peter
The show, hosted by Chris Brown, featured six pairs of contestants who each week would design and renovate each other’s homes, two to three rooms at a time. The rooms and front facades were judged by a panel of three judges, with expertise in renovation, real estate and interior design, and the overall winning team received a cash prize of $100,000.
Each team would deliver a ‘design brief’ letting the other teams know what style of home they would like, or colour schemes they preferred. But that was it. Their own home renovations were in the hands of the other contestants.
Lara, a wedding florist, and Peter entered the competition with no renovation experience, and ended the show as runners-up. They left their home and took time away from their kids and jobs for close to six months, travelling to Victoria and Queensland to compete on the show.
“There’s a lot of hard labour,” Peter says. “I think the start of the cycles were a lot more challenging because that’s when you’re sitting up in bed until 2am with pen and paper trying to jot down what you’re going to do. There’s no one helping you design anything.”
“That’s where the lack of experience in renovation really weighed on our chest,” Lara adds. “You’ve got a room, you need to have a design that day and everything needs to happen within hours.”
Before
After
Even so, Peter says delivering new rooms and dream homes for the other contestants was ‘easily the most rewarding part of it’. Lara agrees as she appreciates that their own new ‘coastal mediterranean’ dream home was created by what they now consider ‘lifelong friends’. “What we’ve done for each other is really special,” she says.
On seeing their own newly renovated home for the first time, Lara was ‘overwhelmed’ and says it feels ‘surreal’ to be in such a beautiful space. “We’ve lived in the house now since the end of March (and for two months) I still had the dining table set the way (contestants) Brad and Mel (styled it),” Lara says. “I don’t want to change anything, I don’t want to move anything. I just love everything the way it is.”
You can watch Dream Home on 7plus.