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Time Magic
Melissa Ambrosini

Inside Our Groundbreaking Low-Tox Dream Home

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What if your home could do more than just provide shelter and safety… What if it could actually make you well?

That was the vision Nick and I had when we set out to build our dream home: a low-tox, wellness-focused sanctuary designed to support our family’s health and make living in alignment with our values as effortless as possible.

In this extra special episode, Nick joins me behind the mic as we chat with some of the rockstar experts who helped bring our vision to life: Addison, Andrew, Emma and Mat.

Together, we’re pulling back the curtain on the entire process, from the first spark of the idea to the moment we moved in (because spoiler alert: every single detail was chosen with next-level intention and care). 

Tune in to hear: the biggest challenges we faced building a wellness-first home (and how we overcame them), the must-have low-tox features we swear by (you’ll want to add these to your list), our surprising (and very expensive!) journey to ensure our home was mold-free, the game-changing lighting and water systems that we’re so glad we installed, the unexpected sources of hidden toxins that most people overlook when building, and our best-ever tips for manifesting and creating a dream home that truly nourishes your family’s wellbeing.

If you’ve ever dreamed of living in a home that supports every part of your body, mind and soul, then press play now… this one’s for you.

In this episode we chat about:

  • The surprising moment we decided to purchase the house and the vision that started it all (1:15)
  • The conversation that turned our dream into a groundbreaking wellness-first build (6:22)
  • The toughest design challenge we faced and how we solved it (10:12)
  • How we created a mold-resistant home (and the costly lessons we learned) (13:09)
  • The truth about budgeting for a wellness-focused home (19:06)
  • What you need to know about negotiating with builders (20:46)
  • How we designed our cabling to reduce toxins and protect our family’s health (23:13)
  • Why circadian lighting might be the most underrated wellness hack in your home (27:17)
  • Our water filtration system and why we’ll never live without it again (32:13)
  • The healing benefits of our hot tub and sauna (34:32)
  • The surprising way we created a truly toxin-free pool (36:19)
  • The hidden dangers of conventional paint (and what we used instead) (39:03)
  • The low-tox flooring we chose that impacts the whole vibe of the home (41:07)
  • The story behind the stones we used and how we sourced them (44:02)
  • The interior design philosophy that turned our home into a healing sanctuary (45:57)
  • The truth about whether our home is “future-proof” (46:51)
  • How design choices directly impact your health and energy (47:42)
  • What it was really like working side-by-side with Nick on the build (50:00)
  • The single design feature our designer fell in love with instantly (51:51)
  • Everything you need to know about choosing timber (57:09)
  • The next-level alarm system we opted for and why (59:36)
  • The game-changing concept of ‘home automation’ (60:31)
  • The lighting system that completely changed the way I live (62:35)
  • The no-keys system that’s made our lives simpler and safer (67:19)
  • Would we build and automate another home again? Here’s our honest answer (71:14)
  • Do you really need air purifiers in a wellness-first home? (75:21)
  • Why your mattress could be sabotaging your health (and why there was only one choice for us) (77:22)
  • The powerful mission behind The Natural Bedding Co. (78:45)
  • The non-toxic materials that make our bedding a game-changer (81:26)
  • Our favorite wellness-focused element in the entire house (89:01)
  • Why we designed this home with every detail rooted in wellbeing (90:08)
  • How we keep our kids safe on the stairs without sacrificing design (90:41)
  • Our go-to tips for living a minimal, calm, and intentional lifestyle (91:28)
  • Where we store all of our kids’ toys to avoid clutter (93:51)
  • Our best-ever tips for manifesting and designing your own dream home (94:48)

Episode resources:

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The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

Melissa: [00:00:00] The Melissa Ambrosini Show. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa bestselling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, open, wide, comparisonitis and Time Magic. And I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. Each week I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible.

Are you ready? Beautiful.

This is so exciting. This episode is three years in the making and even more exciting because I have Nick Broadhurst back on the show. I don’t think you’ve been on the podcast since. Episode 600. So this is really exciting. You are the most requested guest on the show. [00:01:00] So what have you been up to? 

Nick: Well, I apologize.

I’ve been unavailable because I’ve been building a house. Well, I didn’t build the house, but I’ve been building a house, if you know what I mean. It has been quite the journey. 

Melissa: Definitely. It’s been a three year journey. So kickoff with telling us when did we purchase this house. 

Nick: So we purchased the property beginning of 2022.

We moved in middle of 2022, lived here for 10 months and it gave us, you know, a good amount of time to get to know the land, the light, the neighbors, and really feel into what we wanted for the house. But before all of that, when we were purchasing the property before we purchased it, in fact we had a very small window.

It was an off market opportunity and we literally had like a couple of days to figure out. If we could actually build the house that we wanted on this land, because Noosa Council has all sorts of rules. It’s quite a strict council, which is great. We love it for [00:02:00] that. But you have to obviously figure out what you can do.

So we worked with a good friend of ours, Matthew Marelli, from Suncoast Building Design, and his brother-in-law. Steve and Matt quickly did a sketch for us during that negotiation process. And we figured out, yes, we can build a house there, has enough bedrooms, we can do offices, we can do all the things that we need, which gave us the confidence to go ahead and purchase the property.

And then we gave them a brief, a brief on what we wanted. 

Melissa: And the brief was we wanted to create a wellness sanctuary, a healing home, a Mediterranean vibe, zen healing space. That was kind of like what we were saying to them. 

Nick: Like how do you build a healthy home that is actually going to make you live longer?

But that was the idea behind it. But then make it super beautiful. And when it came to architecture, my experience with architecture has been that a lot of the [00:03:00] modern Australian stuff, the minimalism side of it is, is cool. Like there’s some great architecture out there, but I find most of it to be quite harsh, like quite square, quite cold almost.

So the challenge was how do we build something minimal that feels soft and warm? Right? And that became kind of my obsession. I had this palette in my mind of colors and how the whole house was gonna feel and look. And the mission was to just basically see it through to the end and, and make sure that when you walked in this house, you felt like a deep exhale.

And that is what we achieve, which is amazing. 

Melissa: And if you have not watched the video yet, I’m gonna link to it below. Go and watch the full house tour. It is stunning. We are so proud of it. It’s absolutely beautiful. And let us know what you think. 

Nick: So circling back to the design, we took a whole [00:04:00] bunch of Pinterest boards and a brief to them, which we had a clear vision in our, in our mind of what we wanted it to be.

But it’s a very different thing to then actually, you know, manifest, create that design. And to their credit, their process is very, very unique. So Steve and Matt both went off and designed a house separately without sharing ideas, without seeing each other’s designs. And they did that over a about 30 day period.

Then they come together and they look at each other’s designs and they change it to create one design, taking the best elements of. Both. For example, Steve was the one who came up with all the arch ideas, although we, we said arches, but Steve was the one who put those arches in those specific places and they weren’t in mass design, so they came together like that.

Right. So it’s very, very cool. Very clever process. You’re kind of getting two designers instead of one, which I really liked. [00:05:00] So we went for our first meeting and we sat down and they showed us the design and we literally just went, there’s nothing to change. 

Melissa: It’s perfect. 

Nick: Literally nothing to change. Now this is, we’re talking about the architecture.

We’re not talking about interiors, we’re just talking about the architecture of the house. It was incredible. And we, yes, we would’ve made some small tweaks along the way, but overall they nailed like 95% of it first go. And then we went away and I contacted them and I said, you know what? I just wanna see another version of the house that’s even more minimal.

Super minimal. And they came back with another design, which mind you was very, very cool. But it just confirmed to us that we wanted to stick with this design. And if you see the video, you’ll see we have these beautiful arch windows in the front. And at one point I actually removed those archs, I thought, I thought it was a bit of a bold choice.[00:06:00] 

And then literally, gosh, about four weeks before we started building, I was like, put those windows back in. And luckily it didn’t require another council approval, and we put the windows back in and off we went. So that was how the design process started. 

Melissa: Let’s bring on Matt Marelli from Suncoast Designs.

What was going through your mind after Nick and I had initially shared our vision and our thoughts with you? 

Matt: It’s a great question. So I think, I mean, the best part about the whole process was. We had a really clear design brief from the start. We had a great conversation. It was more of a conversation, not a standard design brief.

And that whole process flowed through the whole design process really. And we captured a few really important points that we wanted to bring all the way through the design and the build. [00:07:00] Obviously, the main ones were that I took outta that design would’ve been, or design brief would’ve been minimalistic.

Uh. Healthy and a, a home that, you know, a family could really love and appreciate. So we really tried to embrace that and do that from the start. And it was, it was incredible because you gave us so much design freedom and we went away and spent a lot of time and effort and we presented with you guys. I still remember the day we presented you guys with the, with the design and like, it’s, it’s a, it’s a really rare thing that you love.

Not a rare thing that you loved it, but a rare thing that you appreciated what it was and it really didn’t change from that moment. And I think that’s what, you know, just gave such an incredible outcome. 

Melissa: Yes, Nick and I were chatting about this the other day, how you and Steve go away, which is just amazing.

You go away. [00:08:00] And then you create your own versions, then you pull together the best pieces. And then you presented that to us. And I remember we were at your house, we were sitting outside. You presented us this amazing creation that you guys had come up with. And Nick and I looked at each other and you were like, okay, be honest.

Like give feedback. What do you wanna change? And Nick and I were like, it’s perfect. And you’re like, no, just because we’re friends, like you can be ruthless. Like you nailed it. Like you said, you nailed it from the start. Like you really understood what we wanted to create, what was important to us, and what you guys came up with was just absolutely magical.

So I wanna know, what is your favorite part of the house? 

Matt: Uh, I’ve got a few favorite parts of the house. The facade for us was like obviously a main feature. We just, all the little details that it’s got from, you know, the natural timber screen, the random [00:09:00] screen, the, with those incredible long arch windows behind it.

I love the, the reverse curve with that real dramatic point as in the entrance where you don’t really notice that from. It’s really subtle now with all the beautiful landscaping and how it’s all put together, but just, it’s a really minimalistic facade, but it’s got so much going on and so much detail and the, the way the trees reflect off the facade with the horizontal battens and the arches, it just, it’s, uh, ever evolving and it, yeah, it’s just incredible.

The other feature that we really love, you know, being in little coven, having a. Probably the best beach and national park at your doorstep. We, there was no traditional backyard or area, so the Alfresco had to become a, an a really, really important design feature of the house. We knew it was gonna get a lot of use, so we wanted to enlarge that space and make it feel [00:10:00] a space of its own, not just an external cover.

And I think we’ve achieved that with the Incredible garden, the Oculus, those, those archways and yeah, that’s probably one of the best parts of the house. 

Melissa: What was the most challenging design element for you guys? 

Matt: Challenging would’ve been the, the, the width of the hou, the width of the site, sorry. And with the slope, there was quite an ugly building next door that we, we, you’ve got an incredible national park view from that whole northern facade.

And we wanted to. Try and capture that through the whole house. We wanted to expose the whole northern part of the house to that facade. And so doing that without, you know, seeing and exposing it to the neighboring building, that was probably one of the big design challenges, especially having the pool there as well.

So we had [00:11:00] to create a real sense of privacy within that pool, but also, you know, raise the platform. So you felt like you were out of the ground, you were almost amongst the trees and you had an uninterrupted view of the park. So that would’ve been one of the challenges. And I, um, I hope you guys have lived in and out for a little bit and I hope we’ve achieved that.

Melissa: Yes, definitely. It feels very private. It feels like a sanctuary, like it really does feel like such a wellness sanctuary and it’s just so beautiful and. I remember years ago when we sat down and we shared our vision with you, and to think that we’re now living in it, you just go, wow, like it makes me go.

Time is such an illusion, isn’t it? Like, you know, it blows my mind. It 

Matt: is. Oh yeah. We obviously had a few conversations with Nick throughout the build process and yeah, what I think one of the big things that we were talking about was [00:12:00] when it’s, when it’s all said and done and you move in, you sort of forget about everything else, and you just enjoy the home for what it is.

And Eddie is a, I mean, collaborative effort from everyone, from you guys to, you know, Avalon to all the consultants. And it really has ended up as a, a beautiful, beautiful home. 

Melissa: Yes. It’s so beautiful and you guys are not only incredibly talented. You are so beautiful to work with and that makes such a difference.

I think a lot of people can say that building a home, it ain’t for the faint of heart, that’s for 

Matt: sure. It’s not. It’s not. And like one of the first things we talk about with any inquiries we get in clients is, yeah, let’s meet up because let’s catch up. Let’s make sure we’re, you know, good together and wanna work together.

Because it is, it’s a, it’s a long relationship and if you don’t have those foundations at the start, it can break down. So yeah, it’s been great working with you guys. You [00:13:00] obviously, there’s been plenty of challenges along the way and you know, to come through that and still have and achieve what we have.

It’s incredible. 

Melissa: Yes. Now a lot of people listening wanna create a healthy home like, and that was something that we said to you in the brief. Like, I remember sitting down with you and I’m like, how can we build a home that is mold resistant because we live on the Sunshine Coast? Mold is, 

Matt: I’m glad you said mold resistant and not mold free because that’s, 

Melissa: well, this is the thing, like it’s so prevalent, especially where we live.

And that was something that I said to you, I was like, Matt, I want as much natural light as possible. I want as much airflow as possible. Like how can we build something that is going to be mold resistant? So for people that wanna create a healthier home, what are some things that they need to think about and where do they start?[00:14:00] 

Matt: I don’t, I don’t know if you guys knew this when you bought the block, but you were extremely lucky with the orientation. Like that’s first up the, one of the most important things. Yeah, the, the blocks long and faces east to west, so it gives the opportunity to expose the house to the north majority of the house, which obviously is where all that passive solar comes from.

So you want to introduce as much natural elements into the building, sun being the big one and ventilation. So firstly, to be able to do that, and that’s why, you know, the house is from east to west. We wanted to, we wanted to achieve that. So majority of the majority of the building and especially the main spaces have got that incredible passive solar gain from that northern orientation.

So that’s a big one. Obviously ventilation’s a huge one too. [00:15:00] A lot of cross flow ventilation and making your house, house breathable. That’s, that’s a big one that’s come into a lot of the codes now and a lot of really good builders are using, you know, incredible products that allow the house to breathe without the house being able to breathe.

Then that’s when we’ve got condensation and mold issues and what I mean by that is not, not using building materials that are not porous and using really good breathable membranes. So it still gives us really good weather protection, but it allows really, you know, microscopic vapor to go in and outta the building, which is the biggest one.

Melissa: What are some examples of some of the materials that people could look into that are breathable? 

Matt: So it’s probably the biggest one is your actual building wraps and membranes. So it’s, a lot of the codes now expect to have [00:16:00] vapor permeable membranes, but it’s a, you can go a step further and ensure you’ve got the right air gaps and things like that to actually allow that transfer.

The, probably the, I don’t really want to go through and like recommend products, but just using Yeah. Natural materials. So like masonry’s a great one. It’s porous, natural renders. They’re really good. So we don’t, we wanna steer clear of anything that’s not gonna allow the home to breathe. 

Melissa: Yeah, makes sense.

Right? 

Matt: Yeah, makes sense. That’s exactly right. And yeah, I mean even like internal, internal materials and finishes as well. Like that’s, that’s a huge one. But if you are getting. If you are getting good access to light and ventilation through the home and the house can breathe like molds everywhere in it, it, it, it’s in the air.

So you just don’t want to trap it and give it, give it a space to grow. So it’s also [00:17:00] being conscious as the, as the occupant, you know, people have got these closed walk-in robes or rooms that they never open, and then they wonder why they’ve got these issues. So, you know, it’s, it’s about how you live in the house and how conscious you are with that.

And, you know, it’s something that you can definitely, you know, you can definitely sort of work with. 

Melissa: And I think it’s really important, like you mentioned, if you’re buying a block or you’re buying a house that you’re going to knock down to look at like where it’s facing and where you’re gonna build it to.

And that was huge for us. Like we wanted it north, like as much sun as possible. Like we love the sun, so. I think that’s really important to look at if you are buying a block, like look at where the sun hits. If you are buying a house that you’re gonna knock down, like just, you know, if you can live in it, like what we did, we lived in this place for about nine or 10 months before we actually moved in.

So we got to experience and go, oh wow, okay. So the light comes in there a lot and then it moves [00:18:00] to there, which was really cool. 

Matt: Yeah, it gave you incredible insight into how the actual, how the site works and how the house is gonna work because it’s, you know, a lot of people don’t think like that. They look at how many rooms has it got and what’s it gonna offer, but they’re all the things, how you actually use the house, how you live in it.

They’re the most important things and they’re, when you move into the home, they’re all the things you really enjoy. So, yeah, that, I mean, that was incredible that you guys got a chance to do that and yes, half the reason why we’ve got such a good result. 

Melissa: Yes. Well, thank you for. Your collaboration on this incredible project.

We absolutely appreciate your vision for helping us manifest and create such a beautiful, magical home. So thank you so much. 

Matt: Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. 

Melissa: It was super fun working with a friend of ours on this project. And of course, none of this would have been possible without our [00:19:00] builders who actually built the home.

Matthew and Liam from Avalon Projects. Next, let’s chat about budget ’cause we’ve got lots of questions about that. So obviously we’ve got the design, we have to kind of look at the budget next. 

Nick: So building in Australia, we just happened to nail this perfectly. It was the most expensive time in Australian history to build a house, 

Melissa: sensing some sarcasm there.

Nick: No, it was literally. Crazy because there was a massive labor shortage. So I tell you what, I think the dream job is being a tradie, which is in Australia, we say tradies, but that’s, you know, electrician, plumber, carpenter, builder, et cetera. On the Sunshine Coast in Queensland because you earn great money and you get to go surfing and you work re reasonably short hours.

My gosh. The cost of labor was extraordinary and no fault [00:20:00] of the builder because it just kept going up and going up and going up. So it was a real challenge. I would say the biggest challenge of this build by far, 100% was the ever increasing cost to build. And no matter how much we tried to forecast this, there was just so many unknowns and a lot of lessons learned, which I’m happy to share with you.

So how much does it cost to build in Australia? It really depends. It depends what you’re building. Is it $2,000 a square meter or is it $10,000 a square meter? For us, it was towards the 10,000. It was an expensive build, but we did not cut any corners. We did everything exactly the way we wanted, and we don’t regret that for a second.

But in terms of negotiating with builders, this is one of the questions. How do you negotiate with builders who want to blow your budget after building begins? I don’t think they want to blow your budget. I don’t think that’s their intention. It’s just that everybody starts out with the best [00:21:00] intentions to build a certain home for a certain price within a certain timeframe.

And of course, the builders are gonna put their best foot forward because they wanna win the business. But when reality sets in and the owners start making changes and there’s variations, it just gets more expensive. So you have two choices of building. You can do cost plus, which means essentially a. The builders build it and you just pay whatever it costs, right?

Or you have fixed price and there’s pros and cons to both because if we did fixed price, we, we wouldn’t have got the house that we wanted. Full stop cost, plus we got the house we wanted. But essentially we spent twice as much money than we thought we were gonna spend. So I think the general rule of it’ll take twice as long and twice as much.

I seriously think if you’re building a house and they say it’s gonna be 12 months and one and a half million, I would say make it 18 to 24 months and two and a half to 3 million and then you won’t be disappointed. But it’s also important to know that going into the build, [00:22:00] because you don’t wanna be put under financial pressure during the building process, that’s just not fun.

So that is not really tips on how to negotiate. But one thing I would say when it comes to working with builders, I would a hundred percent have a sit down meeting every two weeks. To look at the budget. I don’t care if it annoys the crap outta the builder, it’s your money and you just make that part of the process.

Melissa: And spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets. Absolutely. Look at everything like every dollar that gets spent needs to go into a spreadsheet and you need to be across everything. 

Nick: Absolutely. I was heavily involved in choosing the vast majority of everything that you see in the house, so I was across a lot of those costs.

What I was not across is the cost of labor and certain materials, which, you know, just escalated. So having those regular meetings, we met, but we just didn’t meet enough. That was one of the biggest issues and [00:23:00] I, I know that the builder would have no issue with me saying that because in hindsight we both said, yeah, we should have sat down way more often.

But that is a huge, huge tip is sit down frequently. If you’re doing cost plus. 

Melissa: Let’s now dive into all of the health things that we’ve incorporated in this beautiful home, because there is a lot of them. So let’s dive into it. First of all, let’s kick off with how we do not have any wifi in the house. 

Nick: Yes.

So unfortunately, the video on YouTube that you see does not talk about this. That was an oversight by us, but I’m glad we can address it here because it was a huge feature of this house. And what we ended up doing is hardwiring everything, which doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you have a house that’s fully automated, okay?

Like every part of this house is like a living, be breathing organism. Every part of this house you can control via automation. But we didn’t want to have the wifi on to do that, which meant every single little thing that’s getting automated had to be wired back to the central board, [00:24:00] okay? Which means it has to go through conduits into the slab or through the ceiling.

And there was literally a couple hundred thousand dollars just in that. So it was a very, very expensive process, but it was essential to us. Now, it’s not just about hard wiring, it’s what are you wiring it with? The standard data? Cable is a CAT six cable, but you can get a CAT six a cable, which is what we use, which is more expensive, but it’s shielded, meaning that it doesn’t emit as much or it emits very little of the EMF because if you are sharing data from your central modem or internet connection point and it’s going through the house, well the wires are just gonna admit that EMF anyway.

So why bother hard wiring everything? You may as well just turn on the wifi, right? But if you use Cat six, eight cables, then it’s shielded and you don’t have that problem. So that was the first thing. The second thing was all of the electrical cables, [00:25:00] we grouped them together. So that’s one of the big things you can do, is you actually tie them all together when they’re all done.

So they’re all tight as opposed to spread out across the house and you run them in areas where people are less likely to stand or walk or sleep. Okay. So behind our bed, in our master bedroom, we’ve actually got the PowerPoints disconnected at the moment. We can turn them back on. That’s fine, but we have ’em disconnected ’cause we don’t want that behind our beds.

Okay? But we just put them there for resale. The other thing we did, you probably have heard of Earthing, so you can get earthing sheets for your beds. Now, most Earthing sheets, they plug into a normal PowerPoint and they connect to the earth in the PowerPoint. But the research I’ve done has shown that that’s a pretty unhealthy practice because you’re gonna pick up a lot of the dirty electricity from the PowerPoint itself.

So instead, we run in the middle of each wall, [00:26:00] behind each bed, there’s a separate PowerPoint. It looks like a normal PowerPoint, but each one is just a single copper cable that goes out and into a copper rod in the garden. So they’re all individually earthed themselves, if that makes sense. So that was a really cool thing we managed to do, which you can only really do if you build from scratch.

So the last thing in terms of EMF or dirty electricity was the solar panels. This is a big one because the solar inverter in most houses is very dirty. Okay. So it’s not something you wanna stand near. It’s, it puts off a lot of, it’s not EMF. It’s rf, isn’t it? Anyway, whatever it is. And you have to, I can’t remember, I’m sorry.

This the exact thing that we did, leave a comment and we’ll share it with you. But there was something we had to do in terms of the cabling. It was earth, I believe, and shielded cabling and something else that was done. It’s something about not feeding back. Anyway, it was quite [00:27:00] technical, but we figured that piece out as well.

So that was another huge piece of keeping it healthy. And so if you are in this area and you wanna have a company who knows what they’re talking about, we worked with Brock will from BW Electrical, and it was a process of discovery for both of us, and he was very willing to work through that with us, which was great.

Melissa: Now let’s talk about the lighting in your home, because this is such an important piece of the wellness puzzle. You do not want blue light in your home, especially in the evening. You want those Ambers, those reds, those beautiful tones as the sun is setting. So our whole house has circadian lighting. Do you wanna talk about that?

Nick: Yes. You would’ve seen Melissa and myself on socials, I’m sure, wearing blue blocking glasses. And we do that because when you are exposed to blue light, especially in the nighttime, it throws off your circadian rhythm. You have. Lower quality sleep, it increases cortisol. It’s not great, [00:28:00] right? So before this house, if you would’ve come to any previous homes and you walked in at seven o’clock, the house would be red because we would be using the red lamps from bond charge.

We’ll link to that in the description below. But we wanted to basically have a house where we didn’t have to wear glasses and we didn’t need to to use lamps. And to do that, you need to have circadian lighting so it gets all controlled through control four. Okay. So control four is what controls the automation.

And that was all handled for us by a company called EK, who were amazing. They really were the only people who knew what we were talking about. And they had already done this in other homes. So I think only a handful of homes have done this in Australia. The circadian lighting works with a specific type of hardware, and we got that hardware from a company called Bright Green.

So, bright Green uses a type of technology called true color. [00:29:00] And true color means that when you’re standing in a space, the light that the lights emitting are not a affecting the way your eyes would naturally see those colors. So if you go to a museum, for example, they don’t have normal lights. They’ve got really expensive lights in there, so you don’t throw off the colors of your painting or the artworks.

It’s the same concepts with bright cream, true color. All the lights in this house are true color. If you look at, well, you, I dunno if you can see, you might see it in the video, but our downlights are tiny and they’re plaster set, so you can almost not see them. They’re so, so cool and so minimal. I’ve never seen them before.

I was, it’s one thing that people notice, so like how are your lights so tiny? And how did you do that? So all these things. Take time and money to do, but my design philosophy is the magic is in what you don’t see more than what you do see, and there’s so many things in this house where, for example, you come in the front [00:30:00] door, there’s a circular door, handles quite big like the size of a dinner plate.

Then there is a beautiful spiral staircase, and that spiral staircase has a huge Tasmanian oak sliding door and carved into that door is a half circle, like a semicircle. That semicircle is the exact half of the front door handle, right? All these little things to me make a difference. If you look at our skylight in the upstairs section, this beautiful big skylight sky circular skylight is the exact same circumference as the circular stairwell.

We don’t have door frames. We used a system called Easy jam doors, so you have. Zero arch tray of doorframes. We don’t have skirting boards. All these things mean your eye is not drawn to those uglier things. And instead it gets to appreciate the space. So coming back to bright green, the circadian lighting can be set up to just move with the sun, essentially.

So it just changes color in the morning, daytime into the evening. So during the day it’s more blue and [00:31:00] then it gets more orange and deeper colors in the evening, we actually set it up manually, so we pretty much have it on the warmest colors all the time. ’cause we just like that in the house. And it is such a game changer.

I can’t even tell you. You walk into the kids’ bedrooms and they’re like a deep orange. It’s so soothing. If you had to put on a standard light instantly, you would feel stressed, right? So the circadian lighting was, again, it’s a big expanse. It’s not a cheap thing to do. You need people who know what they’re doing to pull it off.

And for us, that was a non-negotiable. So for the lighting, again, the people we used for that, the hardware was bright green, BW Electrical did all the wiring for that and tall tech handled all the integration of the automation for that. 

Melissa: So good. And everyone that comes to our house just absolutely loves the energy and the feel because of the lighting.

Nick: The lighting design [00:32:00] was six months back and forth. Okay, six months to do lighting design. But when you walk in, you, you can see the imagery at night in the video, you notice it. It’s incredible. 

Melissa: Now let’s talk about water filtration because we got this question so many times. In the video I talk about how important.

Filtered water is not just to drink, but to bathe in. So every single tap in our entire house is filtered. This was an absolute non-negotiable for us. There is so much information out there now about chlorine, fluoride, all of the different chemicals that are in our water. So you do not wanna be drinking that, and you definitely don’t wanna be bathing in it because bathing in it is just as bad because your body drinks the water.

So this was very important to us. 

Nick: Yeah, we are water aficionados, so we went, I wouldn’t say overboard, but we did a [00:33:00] huge system. We used two companies for the water, aqua wise, put some gigantic filtration system on the house. Absolutely huge thing. But ultimately we wanted to just, you know, go over and above.

So we start with the system from Aqua Wise, and then we feed that through a hydrogen health. Whole house water filter, which is not publicly available yet at the time of this recording. But you can email info@hydrogenhealth.net au if you want more details on that when it’s released. 

Melissa: And try using the code, Melissa, to get 20% off.

You can get 20% off all of their other products, but try it for the water filtration system as well. 

Nick: And then that’s essentially serves the whole house. But at the point of drinking, we have, in our butlers pantry, we have a zip tap. So it goes through another filter and the zip tap just removes anything that might be in the lines, because you might have, you know, [00:34:00] microplastics from the water, but they’re not pipes.

They’re actually like, these days they’re, they’re a type of plastic. So then you wanna remove that as well. Okay. At the point of drinking. And so we put it through a zip tap, which is instant sparkling, boiling, cold, and then normal tap water is like the best. Investment ever. Melissa drinks sparkling water all day every day.

Now 

Melissa: I’m obsessed, which is why I didn’t initially wanna get it because I knew I’d become obsessed with it. Now we’ve got it, and I’m obsessed with sparkling water. 

Nick: That is the water. Okay, since we’re talking about hydrogen health, let’s talk about the ice tub. So this is the very first one in the country, and again, you’ll have to email hydrogen health to get information on when this will be publicly available, but it does two degree to 43 degrees.

Melissa: So it’s a hot plunge and a cold plunge 

Nick: plus it attached to it is a hydrogen generator, which pumps [00:35:00] hydrogen into the water. So when you are bathing in it, your body’s getting a full hit of hydrogen, which has insane benefits. If you think about Japan, for example, one of the ways they treat stage four, some stage four cancers is by using hydrogen therapy.

So let that sink in. 

Melissa: Then the sauna, which is huge. It is a yoga sauna. It is so beautiful. That is from cell state and it is infrared hot coals and it’s got red light in it, so you are just getting like triple goodness inside there. We love it. It’s so much fun to go in there. It’s so hot though. Like we last like 20 minutes.

Nick: Yeah, we, we don’t use the hot coals because 

Melissa: it’s too hot 

Nick: without the hot coals. We do like little date nights in there sometimes when the kids are in bed and I. It was 70 degrees. We couldn’t stand up. We’re lying on the floor. It’s super hot. Of course [00:36:00] we have it cranked the hottest settings. That’s probably our fault.

But anyway, it’s an incredible sauna. And now that is Cell State. Okay. CELL State. And again, you’d need to contact Cell State to find out when that’s publicly available 

Melissa: and you can see it on the video. It’s so beautiful. Go and watch it. It’s stunning. Let’s talk about the pool because I got lots of questions about the toxic free pool.

Again, this is really important. You do not wanna be swimming in chlorine. Most pools are loaded with chlorine. You do not wanna be swimming in that it is not good for you. Your skin is your largest organ and it will drink whatever you swim in, bathe in, put on. So it is really important that you think about this.

So let’s talk about what we did for our pool. And a question that I got as well is how big is our pool? 

Nick: You’d think I would know that, I dunno off the top of my head how big the pool is, but when you watch the video, you’ll see me swimming in it. So you’ll get a [00:37:00] feeling for how big it is. We use the Brower B Fresh 70 Swim system.

Okay, so it’s B-R-A-U-E-R-I think. Again, this is listed in the blog post on Melissa’s website, Brower B, fresh 70, and you can run it as a natural pool. So basically no salt, no magnesium, nothing. Or you can run it as a magnesium pool, which is what we’re doing. And it’s beautiful. You jump in and it feels like a soft hug.

It’s just incredible. The pool also has some cool little features. It has two very powerful swim jets, and someone asked me yesterday, how do you adjust the speed of those? ’cause you can make ’em faster and slower. I made the mistake of actually walking up to it and trying to adjust it and. Almost ripped one of my nuts off.

It was big mistake, but very cool feature. And then it’s also self-cleaning game changer, [00:38:00] literally, 

Melissa: because then you don’t have the ugly, creepy crawly in the pool and it just always looks so pristine. Everyone that comes to our house is like, how is your pool so pristine all the time. So self-cleaning, next level, amazing.

Nick: So all we have to do is sweep it, you know, with the brush once every two weeks just to make sure that there’s nothing growing on the, on the walls essentially, because we do run it very, very, very low chlorine. So you have to watch that carefully. But speaking of the water itself, it is an ozone. So Brower is an ozone system.

Okay? So we’re running ozone, magnesium, but as I said, you can run it as a natural pool as well. And we run it as low chlorine as possible so it doesn’t go green essentially. Right. I have someone do it for me ’cause I just don’t. Fully understand that yet. ’cause it’s a new system for us and they run it as low as possible.

And I believe that’s like one part per million of chlorine, something like that. So that’s the pool. It’s super [00:39:00] cool. It’s also heated, which Bambi absolutely loves. But let’s move on to paint. 

Melissa: This is a question that we got so many times because again, it’s one of those things that most people don’t think about, but it is highly toxic.

And then you get the offgassing once you’ve moved into the house. So what paint did we use 

Nick: in the last house we did, which was our tree house, the apartment in that one we used a type of paint that was literally as low as you could possibly, essentially zero. And I found that was just a bit hard to work with at scale.

On a house like this. So I needed something that was still gonna be super low but easier to work with. And we chose Hames, which is H-A-Y-M-E-S expressions. Hames expressions, all the internal. So basically the ceiling in the walls are the same color, which [00:40:00] is beautiful. That color is Carrara by Reine. So Reine Carrara color using hames expressions, matte paint, and it gives you this soft look.

It’s not the most durable. It’s a little bit annoying sometimes because if you get it marked, you can’t like rub it and clean it ’cause you’ll see it. But it does look the best, in my opinion. So that was the paint that we ended up using. But in terms of low tox, I mean, how long is a piece of string, the whole building process?

Let’s just be honest. Building houses is toxic. It just is. Concrete is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases in the world. How do you get around that? Well, the materials to get around that are not really available, like hempcrete, these sorts of things which you can use aren’t really, and that’s really just for walls.

So there’s some things where you’re just like, okay, we just have to do certain things. And you might use certain materials that at the point of laying down those materials, they’re [00:41:00] very toxic, maybe for an hour or two hours or 24 hours. But at the point of then setting, they’re extremely low to zero. For example, our floors are all hand rendered, so that was like a two month process to do the floors because they have to be, you can’t have anyone in the whole house while you’re doing it, and then you have to seal them.

Now that sealer is pretty smelly, but once it goes off, those floors are indestructible. It’s harder than concrete itself, and there’s zero VOCs to it. So it’s a trade off. You’ve gotta figure out where are you going to, like which battles are you gonna take on? Right, but VOCs are in like everything. Let’s talk about the rest of the flooring that we use.

So we used Size L carpet in one of the areas, which is our offices. And the upstairs retreat area size L is extremely low, probably zero VOC. It’s a natural material. 

Melissa: And the only reason we used that was because this is [00:42:00] Nick’s recording studio and my podcasting studio. So you kind of need that material on the floor.

Otherwise it will echo 

Nick: all lots of rugs. But even, even then is, you know, you do need something soft. 

Melissa: And that was actually a question we got was do we have carpet? And no, like carpet is incredibly toxic and the stuff that lives in carpet, germs, dust mites, all of that. So if you can avoid carpet, I highly recommend avoiding carpet.

But size all is good. And in the kids’ bedrooms we have a rug. 

Nick: Yeah, so the kids’ bedrooms are actually rendered concrete. It’s a beautiful sandy color, which works with the rest of the palette, and it has that soft, soft feeling when you walk in. It’s just beautiful people’s comment. They’re like, oh, this floors feel so nice on my feet, as opposed to walking on say, polished concrete.

So then upstairs in our bedroom we have cork, which then flows into travertine. And I will say I stole this idea from the [00:43:00] Kal Hotel in Brisbane, and when I saw that, I was like, this, this is a vibe. I wanna do this in our place. And I wanted the right space to do it. And that was the master bedroom in the master en suite.

And it looks so cool. Again, you gotta glue the cork down. That glue is toxic, but once it’s settled, it’s not. So 

Melissa: did we use a toxic free glue? 

Nick: I’ve asked. There’s There’s really no way around it. Yeah. So unless you wanna like, I don’t. Whip up some oats and let them dry up a night or something. Oats are pretty hard to get off.

Melissa: Stink it down. 

Nick: Yeah. 

Melissa: Do you reckon gluten-free oats would work 

Nick: be pretty sticky but not, probably not sticky enough, but it is a, you know, do you not use silicon? Well then how do you finish the join between the floor and the skirting board? Like, there’s so many questions and I don’t love silicon, but it does finish the product.

It does finish the, the house off in certain areas, 

Melissa: especially bathrooms. 

Nick: You’ve gotta pick your battles. You do what you can and you surrender the rest and you don’t [00:44:00] stress about it. That’s, that’s my thing. 

Melissa: Let’s chat about the stone, because I got so many questions about the beautiful stone and you have to watch the video for the stone.

So talk about what stones we’ve used and where. 

Nick: So around the pool is a bullnosed travertine, which gives the pool like a softer feel to it, as opposed to having like a square edge, which I wanted to avoid. It just makes it feel softer. It was in line with the theme of, I want this house to feel soft. So that was the travertine around the pool.

It’s, it’s an unfilled travertine, normal cut. And then in the master en suite on the floor, we have a vein cut, filled and honed travertine in the kitchen. The back section of the kitchen is Rado, which is a type of court site and the beautiful kitchen bench, which is a mathematical piece of wizardry to pull that off.

The limestone flutes and the bench top are all [00:45:00] limestone and big thank you to Ceramic Senior Lucy, your legend for helping us source all that incredible stone. Amazing. And I will say that while building a house is definitely teamwork, that kitchen, I can’t take a lot of credit for it. ’cause that was designed by Emma Smith from Emmy Collective and she nailed it.

The only thing I really changed. Was I changed some of the selections of the timber. If you look at the actual timber in the kitchen, it’s called Natural Arlington Oak, 10 by Nick Poll, N-I-K-P-O-L. 

Melissa: You just mentioned Emma, our amazing interior designer who we worked with very closely. You and her, like, I’ve gotta give you guys credit.

What you have done is amazing. You worked so closely together as a team. It was awesome. Let’s bring her in to share a little bit about the journey from her perspective. Um, can you share your design [00:46:00] philosophy with me? I guess 

Emma: my philosophy is like. With designing anything you are thinking about will this date in say, 10 years time.

And so it’s always thinking about future proofing, anything that you’re designing as well as truly listening to what the, I guess the client is wanting is I guess, a great thing to also be considering as well as just looking at great inspiration all around you. Just not the nature around you and the color palettes that you draw from, I think is very important as well when designing for sure.

Melissa: Yeah. I love that idea of future proofing because no one wants to get five years down the track and go, this is so dated, I need to redo my whole house. So do you feel like with our place we have future proofed it? 

Emma: For sure. I think that was a big thing that we, I guess throughout the [00:47:00] process, each design point we touched on, will this be something that, we’ll, like in 10 years, and that was even say with any of the bedrooms, any of the kitchen living, all areas we looked at with materials, colors, textures, and design details.

Whether in say, yeah, in that timeframe will this change, but I think we’ve nailed it with just the color palette even. It’s very, we kept the, I guess the shell of everything quite neutral and we then introduced pops of color here and there that can easily, over time, we can chop and change and swap out.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. I think we’ve nailed it on every level. I absolutely love it. It’s so beautiful. We wanted to create that Mediterranean zen healing home vibe. Like that was our thing. And you know us like we are complete health junkies, wellness junkies, whatever you wanna call us. So having this space be a [00:48:00] healing home was so important.

So what role does interiors play in creating that healing home? 

Emma: I think it’s the overall feel you get when you step into a space. And that’s where drawing on colors, textures, and materials is, is that you’ve the, even just the wall color we’ve picked throughout the home, it has like this soft, calming, warm white, rather than say a cool white is really important.

As well as all the lighting, natural lighting that has been thoughtfully planned. With the building designer as well, I think then is a compliment to what we’ve done inside and all the softer finishes say like we’ve used cork in the bed like in your bedroom, and just like the other finishes say in the bathrooms, they’re all those warmer tones.

And I feel like then that draws on that very calming aspect that you are wanting to feel whenever you walk into a space that this is your home and [00:49:00] it’s the place where you go to like relax and switch off from your everyday busy life. 

Melissa: Yes, it is. It definitely does have that calming feeling. It’s beautiful.

We are completely obsessed and we’ve had a couple of friends come through and it’s not completely finished at the time of recording this. There’s still some things happening and so we’ve had a few friends come through and two of them have both individually said, you can’t actually call this a home.

It’s beyond a home. They were saying it’s a luxury resort or a luxury hotel. Like it feels like that. It’s got that luxury, beautiful, warm, inviting feeling. And I couldn’t agree more. Everywhere I turn, I go, oh my gosh. I love that element. I love that element. It’s been so meticulously thought out and we love it and we’re so grateful that you have been able to come on this journey with us.

It’s been a long journey, but we got there and [00:50:00] I wanna know what it’s like working with Nick. I know what it’s like working with me. I’m easy. I’m super easy, but like what’s it been like working with Nick? 

Emma: I think he’s definitely been a client that has really challenged even me professionally. A good challenge or like this is a really good challenge.

A lot of the time clients vary and some are happy to just fully let you go with the design and everything. And then some really want to be guided and then some might challenge you in why you’re selecting this certain finish. And that’s what I really enjoyed about working so closely with Nick is that like if I suggested a finish, he would come to me with an alternative finish and sort of challenge me as to why mine might be a better fit than his or why hiss might be.

And it’s been really good, like I’ve learned a lot a along the way, like with a lot of research and brainstorming ideas with him. No, it’s been, it’s been a really enjoyable experience as well as learning along the [00:51:00] way, so 

Melissa: it’s been great. That just gives you a bit of an insight to my husband’s mind, like that is him, like he is a perfectionist and.

If you present him one thing, it’s like either yes or it’s like, hmm, I think we can find something better here. And that just kind of goes to show that every single element of this house is so, yes, exactly. It has been so thoroughly thought out from me, from Nick, from you. It’s so well considered with the overall intention of the whole home, that Mediterranean zen healing home vibe.

So yeah, I just love what we have created so much. It’s absolutely beautiful. What’s your favorite piece or section or part, or maybe you’ve got a couple, I’d love to hear. 

Emma: One of them I think [00:52:00] is the view you have from your master bedroom to your en suite of your beautiful round bathtub. I think that. Is such an amazing piece of design that has been captured where it looks, it captures all areas of your master bedroom, walk-in robe and your en suite.

And I think it’s just a beautifully crafted area. And that bus hub is just insane. 

Melissa: We have baths every single night. All four of us get in every single night. We love it. And there’s probably room for one other person. That’s how big it is. I’m not even joking. You can come and join us if you want. It’s so big.

And originally when I first saw it, I was like, no, this is too big. It’s gonna look ridiculous. And I was like, we should have gone with the size down. And Nick’s like, trust me on this one. And there was definitely some elements where he was like, babe, trust me on this. Like trust me on the wall color. And I’m like, [00:53:00] Ooh, okay, okay, okay, okay.

And I always know his vision, like I do trust him 1000%. But there was a little bit of like, you just need to trust me on the bar. You need to trust me on the wall color. And I was like, okay. And I just surrendered and like look at it. It’s just stunning. So any other favorite pieces or parts in the home? 

Emma: I think also the use of render in featured elements, say in the bathrooms, like the micro cement as well as the rendered feature wall that curves around that beautiful fireplace into that.

Amazing. Another amazing area is that powder room. I think that whole area is so like, it’s just amazing the size of the glazing that sheds all that natural light through. Like it’s just beautiful. 

Melissa: Yeah. You know, environment really does matter and I know that you should feel okay wherever you are in the world or whatever your house is, but environment does really [00:54:00] matter and I cannot tell you how calm, how at peace, how.

Right how like I’ve landed, my nervous system has landed. It just feels so lovely. You know, the texture under your feet, the soft furnishings, the lighting, everything. It’s been such a beautiful soft landing to come here and I just wanna thank you so much for all of your input, for your vision, for pushing back on some things too and going, no guys, this is good.

Trust me. Yeah, everyone had such a beautiful vision and the results are just 

Emma: chef’s kiss. Wow. Thank you. Yeah, no, it’s been, yeah, it’s been incredible. It’s been, yeah, one of highlights in my career for sure so far working with you both. But yeah, no, it’s been a beautiful outcome. Great team, [00:55:00] everything so, and amazing clients.

Melissa: Aw, thank you so much. Well, you are a dream to work with. And we’ve absolutely loved the process of working with you. It’s just been so easy and inspiring and every meeting that we’ve ever had, I have loved going to and I’ve been excited. So thank you. You’re incredible. You’re so talented. Do you know I actually wanted to be an interior designer.

I remember in year 12, now I’m a bit older than you, but we got this big thick book and it was anything that you could do. So like school teacher and doctor, and we had to go through and kind of highlight or circle things that sounded good to us. And interior designer was one of mine, and I explored it and I really wanted to do it.

So this scratched that itch for me. And who knows, we might do some more together one day in the future. Yeah, 

Emma: that would be amazing. Of course. 

Melissa: Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you. You are so talented and I am so grateful that we got to work on this together. I. [00:56:00] 

Nick: So that was the amazing Emma Smith and thank you Emma, for your hard work.

And we also worked with Chloe Tozer for some of the various elements of the house. So we couldn’t have done it without Chloe’s input as well. And I will say that building a house is, it’s like raising a child that’s, you know, it takes a village and it was a collaboration and it really was where I feel like some decisions were just purely Emma’s decisions and just nailed it.

And some were me making what I thought were quite bold decisions, but needing someone of Emma’s skill to like make sure I wasn’t making a mistake. So she was really my sounding board, which was perfect. 

Melissa: And a lot of this house was your vision, and I really want you to like let that just like soak in a bit, you know, like a lot of this was your vision, your dream, and you brought it to life.

And yes, it takes a village, but you were kind of like the captain of this ship. 

Nick: Yeah, look, I mean, if I [00:57:00] wasn’t involved, the house would look completely different. It wouldn’t look anything like this, or it 

Melissa: might still be, still be in the slab stages 

Nick: maybe. 

Melissa: Okay. Let’s talk about timber. Now. Everyone wants to know about the beautiful timber that we used.

Nick: I love this story because when we first moved to Newso, they started building this now very famous boardwalk, and the timber they used were like, what is that timber That is so beautiful? We had not seen it before, and it’s called a Coya, A-C-O-Y-A, which is a European pine. So it’s not local, but bearing in mind when it comes to timber, you have to choose timbers that do specific things.

They have very specific roles and they’re good at some things and not, not at others. You can’t just go and use any timber. We used Aqua to give a subtle nod to the Noosa boardwalk, which is like literally a hundred meters, not even a hundred meters away from our house. And also because it has a 50 year warranty in terms of its structural [00:58:00] integrity stays very, very straight.

But it’s a blonde, blonde timber. The challenge then was how do we keep this looking like that? Because if you leave it, it goes silver. I didn’t want that. I want the house to feel warm and soft and gray to me is not that feeling. I had to work with a company called Q-E-C-U-T-E-K, and David from QE Legend, like went over and above to work with me on this.

There’s like literally no, not a huge incentive for them to do. So they just went over and above for. Not a huge amount of product that we purchased, but we worked directly with their lab to test different products and to come up with something specifically for our house, which was amazing. So if you use a Coia timber and you want to keep it looking like ours, you need to use QE euro.

Not the Australian type, has to be the Euro because the Australian has copper in it, which makes a CUA go green. So Qec euro, and it’s a [00:59:00] half strength whitewash, which gives a subtle whiteness, not that sort of cheesy whitewash like beach chic, but just like a subtle little white hint. And it looks crazy.

We’re looking at it right now. It looks so beautiful. So that was the equi, and that’s all the external timber. There is some external timber on the eaves, that’s by Australian timber ceilings. A very specific type of timber needed for that. But all the internal timber, all the stairs, the doors, et cetera, are.

Tasmanian Oak. 

Melissa: Love it. It’s one of the things that so many people comment on when they come into the house. They’re like, oh, the timber is so beautiful. Let’s talk about the home alarm system. 

Nick: Security is super important for any house really, and we do plan on traveling a lot. So we wanna make sure that we have the best security system.

This was all managed by EK and they put cameras around the house. All the main entry points, we can look at it on our phone. When someone, I love this feature, by the way. This is like a must for me. When someone [01:00:00] buzzes the front door and I’m having lunch down the road, I can let them in. I can love that and I can wait and make sure they’ve actually left the property.

’cause you can see on the camera. So cool. And that was all handled by Tourek. So let’s hear from Addison, the owner of Tourek, game changing company. Absolute leaders in what they do. 

Melissa: One of my favorite features in the whole house is the circadian lighting. Everyone that comes into the house is like, why does it feel so good in here?

Like, it just feels so amazing. So talk to us about that. How long have you been doing it? Why is not every home doing this? 

Addison: Completely agree, Melissa. I think every home should definitely have it. It’s something that is just absolutely amazing. Uh, I’m, I’m definitely gonna put it in my home, but yeah, it’s something that’s only sort of recently come to a residential aspect.

It’s something that’s been used in, in, in plains hospitals and healthcare units, and even planes in, in many years to try and, you know, try and adjust how we’re feeling inside our body to what’s happening, uh, to mimic [01:01:00] the natural sunlight outside. But it’s really just become recent times that we’ve been able to have that in a residential aspect.

And it’s really around trying to mimic the sunlight inside your home. So it’s changing the way your body feels with your circadian rhythm to be able to, in the morning early, nice and alert and focused and energized, ready to kick off the day, which is exactly what the sun will be doing outside. Then towards the end of the end of the day when we, we can imagine we’d have a sunset coming down.

It’s nice, warmer tones of light and warmer feelings inside the home. Then the light will obviously mimic that inside using our, our, our color changing lights, which are the, um, CCT lights. So it’s color, which is correlated temperature lighting, which is really cool. So being able to control that and then have that mimic all the way through so you can have, be nice and warm and ready for bed and natural lights as the light goes down to about 2,700 Kelvin, which is nice and warm, specifically like a sunset.

Melissa: It’s so good. So before we had this in our house, we would wear the blue light blocking glasses, which we still do. Like we wear them when we go [01:02:00] out at nighttime, things like that. And I still wear them because sometimes I have to look at a screen at nighttime. And that’s super important ’cause there’s blue light behind your screens.

So I still do wear them, I just don’t have to wear them as much now. And before we had all of this incredible lighting in our house, we would have all of the red and Amber Little lamps around our house. And again, I still do use those. Absolutely. I’ve got the little red reading clip light that I clip onto my Kindle or I clip onto my book and things like that.

But it’s just so amazing now that the whole house has this beautiful circadian lighting that mimics the sun. Another one of my favorite features is the sensors. So in the night when I get up to go to the toilet, I don’t have to turn on any lights. There’s senses and it’s that beautiful deep orange and the red, which I just love.

And actually a lot of visitors that come and stay, they notice that and they’re like, this is amazing. And everyone says, I sleep so [01:03:00] well here. And that’s just so beautiful. And I think a huge part of that is the lighting. 

Addison: It is. Awesome. And how have you, have you felt that it’s changed your sleep or how you wake up and, and you, you and Nick sort of, I guess, the way you feel in the home.

Do you think that’s had an effect on it? 

Melissa: Well, like I said, we were kind of already doing it before anyway, with the glasses and the lighting, but absolutely, that’s what I’ve noticed. Like my children are so calm in the evening. It’s just the energy in the home when we have visitors, it’s beautiful, it’s soft, it’s calm, it’s absolutely, you know, conducive to rest and sleep and it’s just so important.

You know, sleep is so important for our health. So this is a very. Amazing way to biohack your sleep. 

Addison: Definitely. I totally agree, Melissa. It is one of the most popular things we do, for sure. 

Melissa: Well, we absolutely loved working with you guys. You do so many different things. Do you wanna just share a couple of the other things that you [01:04:00] guys do?

Addison: Yeah, so obviously, um, big focus on lighting automation, but I guess probably the, the biggest, I guess the most important is really simplifying technology in the home. So it can be nice and easy to use. So much of, I guess a modern home has all these 10 million different apps. So many clients come to us and say, we’ve got 10, 15 apps that were being given, and that’s our sort of so-called smart home, but really want to sort of go beyond that and make sure that from an early stage, like we did with, with you and Nick to sit down and go, how do you want your house to feel?

How do you want your house to be experience? If you want ambient background music, obviously nice lighter automation, security. Security cameras, access control. So you, you guys can go to the walk to the beach without having to have keys in your pockets and that type of thing. Intelligent intercom system.

So it’s gonna call your phone when you’re, when, when you’re anywhere in the world to, to access the access your house and to be able to let someone in remotely. As well as air conditioning integration and control, full control, obviously audio, visual TVs and that type of thing. But really encompassing everything technology related into your home, into a [01:05:00] nice, sort of easy to use platform, I guess, is really, really what we’re trying to achieve and what we’ve definitely achieved at your, at your place there.

Melissa: Yeah, it’s amazing. And how long have you guys been around? 

Addison: We’ve been around eight years now, Melissa, which is very exciting. We’ve already seen lots of different changes with technology and it’s constantly evolving and moving very quickly. But yeah, we’ve, we’ve had a, we’ve had, we have such a fun time, especially meeting, meeting incredible people like you and Nick.

Melissa: Aw, well we have absolutely loved working with you guys. Not only are you brilliant at what you do, you are really kind people. And when you are building your dream home, that is so important. Well, it was for us anyway, we wanted to work with awesome humans and we wanted this to be. A fun and as little stress process as possible like building a house.

It ain’t for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. And you guys are just so easy to work with and I am saying this because it’s [01:06:00] not like that with everybody and with different suppliers. So I really just wanna like underscore and highlight how amazing you guys are to work with every one of you that has come into our house and helped us.

Once we moved in, there was so much tweaking of the automation to make sure this is the color that we want then and, and we want these lights to come on at this time and we want those ones to go off at this time. And it was like an A dance that we had to really work out how we want this home to move with us now that we are in it.

And you guys were just so amazing to work with. And I wanna thank you for that ’cause it’s not always the case. 

Addison: Thank you so much, Melissa. That’s very, very sweet. It’s been an absolute pleasure working with you and Nick as well. And, and it is something that it, it’s an ongoing sort of relationship and it’s something that we, we really pride ourselves on is creating some really beautiful relationships with our clients.

’cause it’s not just a, a plugin and run. It’s very much, you know, constantly evolving and, and learning how you guys are living. And you don’t know how you’re gonna live in the home until you’ve been in it and spent some time and go, yeah, this time of the night we [01:07:00] really like doing this and this is what we, where we spend our time here and uh, depending on what, what’s happening and where the family sort of hangs out.

And it’s really nice that by having everything automated and so easily to be able to tweak that, to continually sort of adjust and refine and make it, make it the home truly yours, which is really great. And then in another six months time it might change again, which is fantastic. 

Melissa: Yes, absolutely. And another feature that I absolutely love, and you mentioned it before was everything is controlled by my phone, which I love.

And we did this in our last place as well. Where we didn’t have keys and we live on the beach, right. The last thing we wanna do is like take keys down to the beach and then they get lost. I’ve lost keys in the sand. You’ve got kids, you’ve got bags, you’ve got 5,000 things to take down to the beach. So I love that.

I don’t need keys to get in and out of this place. It’s amazing. And I love that everything is just done off my phone. The lighting, the air conditioning, the music, the security, [01:08:00] like everything is from my phone. I absolutely love that feature. It is so helpful. And it’s just all in one app. And like you said, so many people have 15 apps for their house.

No, like I’ve got a business, I’ve got children. I just need one app. I need it to be simple for me. I don’t wanna overcomplicate things and I love that I can be out. Someone can buzz at the door. I know that someone’s, you know, dropped a parcel off or whatever it is. Like there’s so many just little things that just make your life so much easier and you guys have helped make our life easier, so thank you.

Addison: That’s amazing Melissa. And it really is just convenience, isn’t it? Like it’s something that you might not even think that you’d, oh, what would I need that for? But once you’ve lived with it and you’ve experienced it, it’s really go, oh my God, this is actually saving so much time. Incredibly busy. Like you, you and Nick are, and, and dad.

There’s little, little sort of moments of time of, of saving time throughout your day and making things a bit easier from having that convenience. It really, really make your whole living experience a lot more enjoyable. For sure. So I’m really, [01:09:00] really happy You enjoy that. 

Melissa: Yes, I do. There’s so many things that I love about what you guys have done and just loved working with you.

So thank you so much. 

Addison: That’s okay. Listen, it seems fantastic. And is there, although, are you really enjoying the speakers as well and Center podcast and that type of thing around the place? Nick was saying you’re enjoying that. 

Melissa: The music. We have either jazz music or classical music playing in the house all day, except for when my son sleeps.

So that is the only two times in the day where we don’t have music or if I’m podcasting recording right now, but we have music playing in the house all day. I love the soothing jazz music. So we have background jazz music, or we have classical piano music. And for me, that is so calming to my nervous system.

I appreciate other types of music, but for me in this season of my life, like. I need nervous system regulating. I need calming music. And so, yeah, like I said, we [01:10:00] have music going all day and I notice a difference with my children as well. When we’ve got that beautiful music playing. We don’t listen really to podcasts during, ’cause I’ve got two kids, I wouldn’t be able to hear what they’re saying.

But the beautiful music is, is constantly playing. And again, that’s something else that a lot of people comment on when they’re in our house. They’re like, it just feels so beautiful in here. The lighting, the materials, the music, the arches, like it feels like. A cathedral and it’s got that beautiful energy.

So that’s a lot of the feedback that we get, and I feel like every element contributes to that. 

Addison: Hundred percent. That sounds so incredible. I I can just imagine that, just background jazz and just envision you and your family living there. That’s so cool. That’s really nice to hear, Melissa. 

Melissa: Yeah. Well, thank you again, Addison.

It’s been such a pleasure and what you’ve created is amazing. 

Addison: Thank you. And would, would you put it in your next time, do you think? 

Melissa: A thousand percent. 

Addison: Awesome. That’s fantastic to [01:11:00] hear. It’s one of those things that once you live with it and you, you understand it and you’ll become a part of you and you’re just so used to, you know, pulling out your phone to grab things or to control anything, that sort of stuff.

It just becomes sort of just, just, just, just a part of controlling your homes, isn’t it? 

Melissa: Absolutely. And that was actually a question we got asked when we posted that we were going to do this episode. People said, what would you do differently next time? What would you take and what would you not take? And when you do a project.

On this scale you learn so much and we have like a mental spreadsheet of what we would do differently next time and I’m so glad that you mentioned that because we would definitely use you and do all of the automation that we’ve done in this home in our next one. So thank you for mentioning that.

Addison: That’s okay. Fantastic. Is there anything that you think that you would, you would add? Is there anything you think that you, oh, I wish we put speakers here. I wish we add, add, added this in this area or you think you, you nailed it on the head [01:12:00] head and it would be exactly the same for the next one. 

Melissa: I don’t think there’s been anything with the speakers or the lighting that I would would change and anything with the lighting anyway, you can change anyway with the phone.

So yeah, and I just love it. I love that at every night at six 50 all the lights go off inside the house like, and that for my children, they know, like my 4-year-old knows it’s sleep time. And it’s just all of these little things, they just make such a difference. 

Addison: Amazing. Amazing. That’s so cool. Melissa.

It’s really beautiful to hear about once you’ve lived in it, to really exactly adjust it and tune the home around your lifestyle. Like, just like what you’ve said at six 50 you like are off time, time for time for bed. And it just really is, really goes to show how much we can really customize things inside the home, around your lifestyle and forever change that you might, that might change later on.

Bedtimes might change as the kids grow older, constantly evolve, constantly adjust as the whole family’s lifestyle and, and, and everything changes. So it’s really, really amazing to hear. You guys are enjoying it so much Vanessa. Thank you. It’s been [01:13:00] fantastic working with you and Nick. 

Melissa: Oh, you too. Thank you so much.

It’s been a pleasure. Super interesting how this relationship with Tall Tech actually came about. So I posted on my Instagram that we had bought this land and we were knocking it down and then Nico from Tall Tech reached out to me and. Have you thought about automation and the lighting in your home and all of these amazing things that tall tech have done for us And we had a meeting with them and then it was on.

So we absolutely love tall tech. Cannot recommend them enough, beautiful people, amazing to work with and they do such an amazing job. 

Nick: One of the cool things about having Control four running the automation for your house is if you want something changed. I just text Abby from Tool Tech and she changes it for me.

So it is just very, very versatile and I’m like, you know what? I don’t like the back light on that light switch. I want the back light on the switch [01:14:00] to turn off at six 50 so it doesn’t light up the kid’s room. Things like that. You control the amount of light coming from the backlight of the light switch, you know, which is great.

So, but then you go, well hang on in that room. We still want the backlight ’cause we wanna see it if we get up in the middle of the night. So you can literally control everything. It’s so cool. 

Melissa: Another feature that I love is at 10 to seven every night. We’ll each be with one of the children laying down and all the lights in the whole house go off and it is amazing.

It is so good. 

Nick: All the lights except the very front of the house, because it looks so cool, lit up at night so you can control exactly what lights come on and what time, et cetera. Also, air conditioning is controlled through control for music, obviously Spotify, all the different music apps we mentioned.

Security, the cameras, what else is in there? I think that’s it. So yeah, it’s, it’s the best. Love it. 

Melissa: Do we have air purifiers in the house? 

Nick: We don’t. I originally looked at [01:15:00] doing dehumidifiers installed into the ceilings of the bedrooms. I didn’t do it in the end. It was another cost. I was like, cheap as creepers.

That’s, yeah, I’m not too sure. So you can just run the dry mode on the air conditioning on a schedule. So it can come on, for example, between six and seven every day. ’cause you know all the windows are shut normally at that time. 

Melissa: Let’s talk about bedding, and if you’ve watched the video, you will know how important your sleep environment is.

Okay? So sleep is such a low hanging fruit for your health. We spend a third of our life sleeping. Ideally, you wanna be sleeping eight hours every single night, and what you sleep on really, really matters. So the kids’ bedrooms and the guest bedroom are all natural. Bedding co. We absolutely love their products.

We have been using them for almost 10 years now. We love them. So their mattresses are certified organic latex [01:16:00] and organic cotton and hemp, and they have no springs in there. So if you think about your mattress and it has springs in it, it’s essentially a wifi magnet. You are laying on a wifi magnet all night, all night.

Your bed should be healing. So we don’t want any springs in your bed. And then the base is all a beautiful timber. Again, you don’t want any metal. You want as little metal as possible in your base. And again, the bases are from natural bedding co. The pillow covers the mattress, protectors the cot, protector the quilts.

Everything is from natural bedding coat. And you can use the code, Melissa 15 to get 15% off most of their products. 

Nick: Now we would have natural bedding coat in our room if we didn’t already have a bed. That was a substantial investment years ago. By a company called Samina, Samina Sleep Systems. So if we didn’t have [01:17:00] a Samina, we would absolutely have Natural Bedding Co.

So you can look up both those companies. Natural Beding Co. Australian Company, family owned, fricking cool, beautiful to work with. Very patient with us ’cause it took forever to build this house. 

Melissa: Let’s bring on Andrew from Natural Bed and Co. The founder, the creator, the man himself. Let’s bring him on to share with us now.

So in Time magic, Nick and I talk about low hanging fruit when it comes to your health and sleep is definitely one of those things and there is often so little thought put into what we’re actually sleeping on. So can you talk to us about the Standard Mattress? What are they made of and what is this doing to our health 

Andrew: over time?

Obviously something that we’ve investigated and we’ve had building by loads, tell us about electro pollution from spring. So that when you put a compass on an innerspring mattress, it spins and apparently the electrode pollution can [01:18:00] obviously affect your health. So that’s one aspect of it. The other one is the petrochemicals in the foams and other things that things are made of, which again, are not good for you ’cause you’re spending eight hours with your hip on a pillow in your mattress.

And then also the coverings, which often sprayed with mold sprays and other toxic chemicals. Yeah, I would say that’s my knowledge of, and you know, other mattresses 

Melissa: we have been using natural bedding co products for, I mean, probably 11 years, maybe longer now. We had them when we lived in Sydney. We’ve got them in our new house.

We absolutely love them. So why did you start the company. 

Andrew: That’s a different story. My background was auditing in an administration and I’d spent many years trying to find a niche for myself in that. [01:19:00] And then one day I went and did a yoga teacher’s training and shiatsu and all that sort of stuff. And the guy came from the dojo in Japan and showed me how to make futons.

And so in the eighties we did futons and everybody had a futon and it was great. But as the eighties went on, futons lost their people got fed up with them because they became heavy and damp and things. So one day a managing director walked into my shop from Malaysia and said, will you sell my latex if I have it tested and compared to other things that you are doing?

And I said, of course. And so for a number of years we went, we had boxes of 10 sheets of latex come in. Once a month and we would make mattresses out of them. And at that stage we weren’t so concerning ’cause they said they were natural. All the latex is natural. So I initially [01:20:00] thought this is the answer to editing of course.

And, and then we started researching how the latex is made, what was seeing it and what you know was not good. And so we’ve eventually reached the point now after probably about 35 years, where we’re making all of our mattresses out of organic, certified organic latex, which come means that the whole quantitation of trees has had no chemicals in it for seven years.

And so it’s a bit like a jungle when you go to Sri Lam for, it’s like, it’s quite an amazing thing to see a normal. Plantation and ones that has had no chemicals because everything just blows up. And also in factory, the way it’s made in factory is also there’s no chemical. 

Melissa: I love that. Beautiful. You guys are where I learned about the springs in mattresses and basically when they’re springs in a mattress, you are [01:21:00] lying on.

Someone once said to me, you are laying on, basically you are a wifi magnet. You are a magnet for electromagnetic currents. So, so many things I love about you guys. Your bases are just timber. That’s it. Your mattresses are just organic latex. There’s nothing else. And there’s no chemicals, there’s no springs.

Tell us a little bit more about your whole system, your frames, your mattresses, your pillows, your quilts, your quilt covers the pillow, covers the pillows. Talk to us about. What’s in these, dive into that for me. 

Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s go to the bases. The base, we use all Australian timber, so tasie oak or Victorian ash.

None of it has ever been sprayed with anything. It’s just been kiln dried and it’s, it’s top of the range. So it’s it high quality. And we use stains on that from a company called [01:22:00] Voss in Germany. And the dyes, or the stains that we use are basically classed as vegan. So there’s nothing toxic coming off those at all.

And they take three days to finish with a beautiful, you know, look with, basically, one of the things that I’ve done or I believe in is that unless we can get companies to provide us with a certification, then we unfortunately have to move away from them, because a lot of companies like the idea of being certified, but they won’t go and get the goals.

Certification. And so we, we were bringing stuff from China, but again, they couldn’t get a certification, so we had to move. And now most of our other product comes from media, which is fantastic because they, not only their company owns organic farms, but the whole factory is organic, which is fantastic. [01:23:00] I mean, the main problem that, well, not a problem, but I’ve never been a person to think this is the answer.

Let’s just sell, sell, sell, market, market. Most of our time we spend educating our customers and letting them know. And some people go, electro pollution, what are you talking about? Or whatever. And it’s like people come into the shop. ’cause I’ve recently come back into the shop and the people come and lie down on the beds in the shop and they go, wow, this place, it’s so tranquil and it’s so this and it feels amazing.

And it’s like, yes, that’s the fake. Sleeping or even having natural everything. Natural because when we did the shot, we did it with organic paints and other things, but it just has that tranquility that you just don’t get when you have the toxicity and your body’s trying to deal with that. So, yeah, and without pillows, we recently got approached by some chiropractors who bought [01:24:00] some, and they just loved them so much because you’ve got your hidden a pillow for eight hours at least, and they’re, they’re all certified organic and the coverings all organic and it’s just so much healthier.

And unfortunately you can’t, like if you go in a normal breathing shot and you lie down, you don’t get sick. But what people don’t realize is that this happens over a long period of time. So having that in your house and in your bedroom creates, as you will know, creates a whole different feel when you sleep on that.

Melissa: Absolutely. I love knowing that my daughter is sleeping in a toxic free bed and every time I lay down with her I’m like, oh, it’s so cozy in here. And it’s just, it’s a peace of mind. And like you said, she sleeps seven till seven, so that’s longer than, you know what adults are getting eight hours. And so it’s a long time and you need to make [01:25:00] sure that it is not emitting chemicals and it’s healthy and clean.

You’re gonna get a better sleep. You’re gonna, you know, rejuvenate so much more. So I love the work you’re doing. You’re amazing. 

Andrew: And at least the thing is with children is that there’s so much more susceptible to getting sick on these things. And they, we put it down to. Whatever we’re putting down to it’s Western medicine, then it’s got a name and it’s everybody can go.

It’s that or, but in fact, a lot of the time I think it’s coming from what you’re so on and people don’t realize that what you’re putting in your body. 

Melissa: Absolutely. Like I said at the start, it is a low hanging fruit and if we can dial in our sleep and our sleep environment, you are going to be way ahead of so many other people on their health journey.

And it’s not about comparing ourselves to other people, it’s just about I wanna [01:26:00] be the healthiest and fittest and strongest version of myself and that starts with my sleep. So optimizing that is the key. It’s everything. 

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, I, I’m 70 last year and I just think it’s been 40 years since I started this business and it’s, it’s had an impact on me, you know, like I’m a healthy person.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve been into your store. I can attest to the energy and the feeling in there. It’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve laid on the beds. We have been using your beds in your products for many, many years, and we absolutely love what you’re doing. So thank you for creating this amazing company.

Do you have a discount code or anything like that that you would like to offer my listeners? 

Andrew: We do have a 5% introductory code, which you just have to put your email address into where you go on the website, and that will give you 5% off. And [01:27:00] we often have a, usually we have it posted up, like whether it’s three, I think at the moment.

We’ve got three organic sheet sets, which you buy a mattress. 

Melissa: Yeah. Wonderful. Well, we will link to the natural bedding co website in the show notes. Everyone go check it out. Let’s take your sleep to the next level. Thank you, Andrew. 

Andrew: Yeah, thank you. 

Melissa: I got lots of questions about the bedding that we used. So we used, 

Nick: it’s a bit of a mix and match because it depends on colors, right?

So again, we would’ve just used natural benko for everything if it had every color we wanted. But we did a bit of a mix and match. We’ve actually got three companies that we use for bedding. We have hail mercantile, 

Melissa: which is stuff that we have had literally from our last house that we did. So five years we’ve had this stuff.

It’s not cheap, but it is beautiful linen and we love it. 

Nick: Then we have for all of the protective stuff, so like the mattress protector, pillow protectors, we use natural [01:28:00] bedding code. They’ve got beautiful organic cotton protectors, so amazing, no plastics in them, which most mattress protectors have plastics, right?

So we wanna avoid that. And for some of the different colors, we used bed threads, they’ve got some really great colors in their range. So that’s what we did for our bedding. And the bedhead we have behind our bed is a custom bedhead that Emma designed for us. We wanted it to have that arch feeling to it and really stand out in the room.

Stunning. It’s so cool. The kids’ bedrooms, or in fact, Leo’s bedroom and Bambi’s bedroom have bedhead from Hail Mercantile as well, and they’re incredible. I mean. Maybe, you know, going into business making bedhead is a good idea. ’cause those things are not cheap, 

Melissa: but they look absolutely stunning. 

Nick: By the way, if you can hear what sounds like a, a pterodactyl in the background, it’s our little seven and a half month old boy is woken up, but he seems pretty happy.

So [01:29:00] we’ll keep going. 

Melissa: What is our favorite non-toxic element of the house? What’s yours? 

Nick: Mm. 

Melissa: That’s really hard. 

Nick: Honestly, I think it’s not having wifi, that’s, I mean, that’s a, an invisible toxin, but to me it’s a toxin. I think. No wifi. Yeah. 

Melissa: I love everything that we’ve just mentioned, but I think the water filtration system, how could we live without that?

Nick: Well, we actually had to for about a week and we were like, oh my goodness, this is what is going on here. You know? No fault to the council. They’ve gotta make the water safe to drink. Like it’s, if you go to Bali and you get Bali belly, why is that? Because the water’s not safe to drink, but you still have to get it out again.

So it is a bit of a strange idea, right? Like they put it in so you then have to take it out. But it does deliver safe water. So that’s what we do. We also have a water spin on, it’s a water kinetic harmonizer I think it’s called. They don’t make them anymore, so I won’t tell you the brand of it, [01:30:00] but you can get different water spinners that essentially you can put on the whole house or under your sink and it’ll spin the water so it restructures the water before you drink it.

Very important. 

Melissa: What is the reason we designed our home this way? 

Nick: Why not? 

Melissa: Well, I think the reason is because we are completely in love with health and wellness. And if you’ve heard our story, Nick and I both ended up in hospital 2010 for me, 2009 for Nick, and we were both at complete burnout with a whole host of health issues.

That kind of was the catalyst that propelled us onto our health journey. So we just love health and wellness and it’s a core value for us. So why not? Another question we got a lot after watching the video was how do you protect children and babies from those stairs? Well, fk, he’s only just started commando crawling, so we’re not at that point yet.

We will have to watch him. And you know, with Bambi in our last house, we had stairs as well, [01:31:00] and we just put up a barricade during the day so that she couldn’t get anywhere near there. 

Nick: Pillows. 

Melissa: Yeah, we put pillows. She would like 

Nick: run and try and like hit the pillows and give us a heart attack, but it’s not an issue for us yet.

Melissa: And we will cross that when we get there. But we will Yeah. Put up a barricade during the day, I think. 

Nick: Yeah, the, the Sunken Lounge is not too bad because most of it’s a soft landing on the actual couch, but there are some steps down to it. And again, we’re just gonna have to watch carefully. 

Melissa: What are your tips for committing to a minimal lifestyle and environment?

Nick: I would definitely recommend watching the documentary, the Minimalists, and they’ve got a bunch of books. They’ve got minimalism, emotional clutter. Melissa loved the book called Love People Use Things, and I think you interviewed them on that. So you will link to the episode, get inspired from watching things like that.

Reading more about. And honestly, there’s also the life changing magic of Tidying Up that book and also the Netflix series. And for us, we [01:32:00] basically have the, I guess, philosophy that everything in our house, we have to love it, which comes from Marie Kondo. We’ve gotta love it. Otherwise, it doesn’t have a place here.

It has to serve a purpose. I 

Melissa: pretty blessed that both of us have this philosophy. It’d be tricky if one of you was a hardcore spender and the other one was a minimalist. But we are both minimalists. We always have been. We lack good quality things and we don’t buy lots. And we have a rule, like if something comes in, something has to go out.

We don’t like a lot of stuff. We’ve always been like that. We love clean lines. We don’t like clutter. That’s just how we are. Like I function, my brain works better when there is not stuff everywhere. I just, I can’t do it. 

Nick: I had a very interesting question underneath the YouTube video about this. Someone was slinging insults as they do online, saying, you know, how can we call ourselves [01:33:00] minimalists for the house that big?

For me, minimalism is not about the size of your space. If you appreciate. That lifestyle. Why do you have to have a small house? Why do you have to follow, you know, the fire concept? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Minimalism is a philosophy, right? We live here and we work here. So we actually do need space.

We actually have two offices, two studios, right? For me, it is a philosophy. It’s not about the size. It’s about what do you actually have in the house? How does the house feel? We don’t have TVs, we don’t have screens, we don’t have the technology. It’s all very, very minimal. On the surface. There’s a lot behind the scenes to make it look minimal, but it is minimal.

So I don’t think it’s size of space that matters. I think it’s the philosophy and how it makes you feel That matters. 

Melissa: I’ve got a few questions about the kids’ toys and where’s the kids’ stuff? We have tubs of toys and they are in the cupboard and we will pull things out, [01:34:00] play with them in the day, and we pack it all up and this is what we’re teaching our children.

And it is such a calmer way to live when you live like this. And going back to, you know, the whole toxic free thing. Another question we got asked is about all the products we use and everything that we use in our home. From toothpaste to skincare to shampoo and conditioner to everything that we use.

Beauty product wise, cleaning products and all the food we eat are toxic, free, are spray free. And that is just how we live. And it comes back to what I was saying before, it is so important for us, like health is such a core value for us and. We just love it. Like it doesn’t feel like a chore. It’s just part of who we are and we absolutely love it.

So this kind of leads me to the last couple of questions about manifestation. So many of you were saying that this is an absolute dream for you as well. Like one day you wanna build your own dream home, and I just wanna [01:35:00] say that you absolutely can. The creator wants you to have everything that you desire.

Whatever it is that you desire, the creator wants you to have it. So whatever it is, it can happen. So how do we manifest what it is that we want? So let’s talk about tips for manifesting your dream home because there were so many questions about how do you manifest your dream home. 

Nick: Well, let’s be honest, unless you win the lottery, it’s gonna take some work.

And even if you do win the lottery, doesn’t mean you’ll keep the money. Most people who win the lottery lose it. There’s a concept in Kabbalah called Bread of shame. Bread being sustenance, and shame being essentially shame. So when you are given something that you have not earned, such as like winning the lottery, most likely that’s going to be lost, okay?

’cause that light of the creator has not been earned in the first place. For example, you would know a [01:36:00] lot of examples of, you know, billionaire families who give their children everything and the children end up depressed and addicted and you know, suicidal, all sorts of problems. That is a clear example of what they say is the bread of shame or unearned light.

So essentially. Yes, creator wants you to have, when I say creator, you can replace that with God, universe, Buddha, whatever you want, but Creator wants you to have everything. That’s the whole point of our soul being here, is to be able to fulfill our desires. Okay, to experience everything. But are we gonna get that just by hoping, or do we have to have energy moving in the right direction to create that wealth?

Well, we do. For us, this is the culmination of a decade. Well, it was a decade when we started building and we didn’t really, when we first met, we didn’t have a lot. To be perfectly frank, we were, I was starting from scratch after divorce. Melissa was [01:37:00] a young little spring chicken bit of savings in the bank.

Melissa: That is not true. I had an investment property. 

Nick: You did actually. Yeah, you did. Thank 

Melissa: you. So thank you. And high interest earning and high interest IG account, 

Nick: which is great because the investment property was debt free and we, we sold that at the right time and we put that money in the bank and we knew we’d use that one day and we used that to buy our first property together.

And we have built this together every decade, so it doesn’t have to take a super long time. But let me tell you, it was a lot of energy. It didn’t just magically happen. And we’ve done that through many, many different things. But throughout the whole process, we have employed the basic premises of manifestation.

We have journaled, we have written down, we have spoken things out loud, we have visualized had vision boards, like we’ve done all that stuff. So is there a. Magic trick. No, it, it’s a process. But I will say [01:38:00] that the closer you become to being like the creator, like God, right? The more likely you are to manifest your desires.

Melissa: And then on a practical sense as well, what I like to do when there is something that I wanna call into my life is I get really clear on exactly what that is. Like what is it? What is the house look like? What does the job look like? What does the relationship look like? What does whatever it is look like?

I get really clear on that first. And then every day you take steps forward toward that thing every single day. And then anything that is not in alignment with you going after that goal, it is a no thank you for now. 

Nick: Great example was how do we actually buy this house slash land in the first place? We would walk the streets.

And mind you, there’s only two streets we wanted to buy in. There’s like literally 12 [01:39:00] houses that we wanted and they very, very rarely come up. 

Melissa: And we’d call these our manifestation walks. And we’ve done this for years, like since we first met when we lived in Sydney. 

Nick: Yeah. How’s it feel like We’d, we’d imagine what it’s like to walk into that house, to have our parents walk in and like, Hey, we surprise ’em.

This is ours. We own it now. You know, like all those little things that make it feel real. But we did those walks and we got the call from the agent first. Hey, opportunity off market. Didn’t even know him particularly well. Now we know him very well and he offered this to us first, you know, so I credit that to our manifestation walk.

So never give up, keep doing the basics and never stop doing it. I hope you enjoyed that episode, guys, that’s a lot of information. As always, there’ll be lots of show notes to point you in the right direction. 

Melissa: And now is a perfect time for you to stop what you’re doing and go and watch the video. And please let us know what you think.

And if you loved this episode, please [01:40:00] subscribe to the show. Leave me a review on Apple Podcasts and send me a screenshot of your review to hello@melissaambrosini.com. And I will send you my wildly wealthy guided meditation as a little thank you for taking the time. And I would love to know what you think, come and tell Nick and I on Instagram at Melissa Ambrosini and at Nick Broadhurst, what you loved most about this episode and what you thought of the house.

Nick: If you’ve got any questions that we missed, please leave a comment underneath the YouTube video. 

Melissa: And we will get back to you as soon as we can. And before I go, I just wanted to say thank you so much for being here, for wanting to be the best, the healthiest, and the happiest version of yourself, and for showing up today for you, you rock.

Now, if there’s someone in your life that you can think of that would really love and benefit from this episode, please share it with them right now. You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them, do whatever you’ve got to [01:41:00] do to get this in their ears. And until next time, don’t forget that love is sexy.

Healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

P.S. If you’re looking for a high-impact marketing opportunity for your business and are interested in becoming a sponsor for The Melissa Ambrosini Show podcast, please email pr@melissaambrosini.com for more information.

P.P.S. Please seek advice from a qualified holistic practitioner before starting any new health practice.

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