A Canberra family will be joining celebrities such as Shelley Craft, Angie Kent and Osher Gunsberg in allowing the average punter to take a peek inside their home this weekend, all through a virtual open-house event.
Weston Creek couple Jen and Richard, who preferred not to give their last name as their home was about to be on show for all the world to see, were one of nine families from around Australia selected for the virtual open house, being run by IKEA.
The parents to three boys were the winners last year of an IKEA competition which saw their bedroom updated by the Swedish furniture giant.
Now, everyone can see the result. As well as the rest of their home.
"They gave us a call, invited us along and we're really excited to be involved," Jen said.
The nine families, including the celebrities, will be showing their homes online during live 30-minute slots, from 12.30pm to 5pm on Saturday to 1.30pm to 5pm on Sunday.
Richard and Jen will be showing off their home from 1.30pm on Saturday.
The link to see them is at ikea.com.au in the "inspiration" section. Or via Facebook.
Jen and Richard are firm IKEA fans, regular visitors to the Sydney stores before the Canberra IKEA opened in 2015.
They remember driving their four-wheel-drive to the Rhodes store to buy their kitchen and "shoving everything" in the car for the trip back to Canberra.
"I only just fitted in the car," Jen said, with a laugh.
And they are big on storage.
"We've got an ex-[government] house and it's small and there's five of us here and so when you find something that works, you keep going back to it," Jen said.
They are also very good at flatpacks. "We've trained our children in it, too," Jen said.
The family had been spending a whole lot more time with each other, as the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing saw them studying and working from home.
The couple has three boys - Harrison, 20, Lachlan, 19, and Brennan, 16, with the older boys at uni.
Home has become more of a sanctuary during the pandemic.
"We're a family that likes nurturing the sense of family and hanging on to that closeness - so the kids look after us when we're old," Richard joked.
Jen said home life had changed, but for the better.
"Normally, we're a family that's in and out all the time. We might have one meal a week with each other. At the moment, every night we're together and that's really nice, that's a bonus," she said.
"It's important, then, that our home is somewhere where we feel safe, we feel comfortable and we feel relaxed. That's important to us - this is somewhere where we can let it all hang out and be ourselves.
"It's pretty nice to have this bonus time with the kids as they're getting older."
Richard said one of his favourite IKEA pieces was a dining room table that usually sat the family of five but could be extended to accommodate 12 people.
"For me, that table is great because it just means community and people coming together over food and just relating," he said.
And Jen said she wasn't overwhelmed showing her home along those of celebrities.
"We can be an encouragement to people who live in the suburbs, with normal homes and normal lives and normal families. We're not minimalists, we're not a show home. We're just who we are," she said.
The open house schedule:
Saturday, May 16
12.30pm - 1pm: Kasia (IKEA + you 2019 Marsden Park winner)
1.30pm - 2pm: Jen & Richard (IKEA + you 2019 Canberra winners)
2.30pm - 3pm: Connie Cao (of Connie & Luna)
3.30pm - 4pm: Angie Kent
4.30pm - 5pm: Osher Gunsberg
Sunday, May 17:
1.30pm - 2pm: Georgia & Shane (IKEA + you 2019 Perth winner)
2.30pm - 3pm: Ann Edvall (IKEA Rhodes Interior Design Manager)
3.30pm - 4pm: Jen Bishop (of Interiors Addict)
4.30pm - 5pm: Shelley Craft
