Home decor: How Geneva Vanderzeil turned upcycling into an art

She first started sharing her styling hacks on a blog, and now DIY queen Geneva Vanderzeil has filled a book with her upcycling secrets. After seeing the completed reno on her West End cottage, you’ll want to know her tricks.

It’s kerbside collection week in Geneva Vanderzeil’s home suburb of West End.

Two young men carry a washing machine across a busy road to their ute, a couple rummage through a tall pile of discarded household items with a frenzied look in their eyes, and an elegant pair of white cane chairs beside a main road tease drivers passing by with nowhere to stop.

There are two camps when it comes to kerbside collection week – those who will scavenge and those who won’t. Geneva, 33, sits firmly in the first.

Geneva Vanderzeil at home in West End.

On the bullnose veranda of the renovated worker’s cottage she shares with interior designer husband, Ben McCarthy, and their daughter Frankie, 1, sits a wooden table she found on the footpath around the corner and carried home herself. She’s planning to saw its legs down and turn it into a cute little coffee table, documenting the whole process on her lifestyle website, Collective Gen, for her followers, including 178,000 on Instagram.

There are also two rows of old cinema seats for which she is devising a cunning plan.

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“For me it’s all about creativity,” Geneva says. “I’m never satisfied with just doing something in an obvious way. I like to think about how things can be done differently. DIY is sort of like art you share with everyone and encourage other people to do, and I love that.

“You can take a space that isn’t perfect and make it a space you love. We all get inspired by beautiful imagery but how do you translate that into something doable and affordable and that works for you?”

BEFORE: The Vanderzeil home in West End.

AFTER: The home after Geneva’s renovation.

Bringing old stuff back to life is one of the things Geneva does best. In her new book, Home Is Where You Make It, she offers DIY advice on how to create a home you love by upcycling, upstyling, repurposing or creating something completely new.

She first started sharing her knack for styling hacks around the home and chronicling the creation process on her blog, A Pair & A Spare, which started out as a DIY fashion blog back in 2008 when she was working as a town planner in London.

Geneva grew up in West End in the nearby family home where her mum and dad still live. Her brother lives next door to her, and soon they’ll be building a gate in the side fence so their kids can wander in and out between the properties.

They’re a close-knit family and Geneva is quick to admit she has been hugely influenced by her upbringing. Her Sri Lankan father, an acupuncturist, had an inventive streak and was always tinkering away in the shed.

“I remember he made this wood cover for the bath with a circle in it and a fold down top to stop the bath water from getting cold,” she laughs.

Her mum, an environmental consultant, taught her to sew when she was seven and would take her op shopping to find second-hand treasures.

“My mum is the ultimate environmentalist. She hates to buy anything new and she loves to thrift, so I learnt a lot of skills from her like how to make things new again and make the most of what you’ve got,” Geneva says.

Geneva and Ben’s bedroom.

After studying town planning at QUT and working for a local firm where she met Ben, next stop was London.

While her new town planning job helped pay the bills, Geneva craved more creativity in her work and found an outlet in her fashion blog. Her sewing tutorials (there are 1200 on her website) soon had hundreds of people from around the world commenting on them and they grew ever more popular.

In 2010 they moved to Hong Kong where Ben started his own business and Geneva found a job with even longer hours and more demands.

She continued pouring her creativity into her blog, until in 2012 she was approached by a publisher to write her first book, DIY Fashionista.

“It was an amazing stepping stone,” she says.

After asking to go part-time and getting flatly refused, she quit her job, wrote the book, and began her new life as a DIY pro. Before long she started branching out into homewares and interiors, using their studio flat in Hong Kong as her canvas.

“It was quite basic, what we did to it to make it nice, but that was the beginning of it,” she says.

By 2017 they were planning their return to Brisbane and bought the 1871 cottage they now call home.

“I just love old stuff to be honest. That’s a big part of my design aesthetic. We do a lot of travel and buy a lot of antiques … the house really appealed because it was old and I always knew we’d be able to make it awesome,” Geneva says.

Geneva’s tip: A single, oversized piece of art balanced on a low cupboard can pack a big punch.

They renovated it straight away, moved back to Hong Kong, welcomed their daughter into the world and returned to Brisbane in October.

“It was such an easy reno. We had a great builder and Ben did all the design. I think it’s given me a false idea about renovating,” she laughs.

By adding her personal touch to the furnishings and decor, Geneva has helped make the house a home.

“I made that wall hanging on the weekend,” she says, pointing to her latest creation on the back deck past the little vases she’s painted to look like terracotta pots.

“I like mixing and matching styles … You can fall prey to cutting and pasting what you see so it’s all new and it has no character. I’m about DIY and mixing things and not feeling like everything has to be perfect to be beautiful,” she says.

Frankie’s nursery.

It’s a philosophy that has come in handy while raising their little one in their small but stylish inner-city abode.

Frankie has been sent home from daycare with a fever and wanders out of her bedroom for a mummy cuddle.

“I’ve had to let it go about tidiness,” Geneva says, holding her sleepy-eyed girl in her lap. “When you’ve got a child I think that can drive you insane. Once a day I do a tidy up, otherwise things get on top of you, but at the same time I don’t really worry if things are messy. That’s life. People know the way you see a photo is not how it is all the time.”

With 60 per cent of her audience in America, the new book set for publication there soon, millions of visitors to her website each month, and partnerships with the likes of Bunnings and West Elm going strong, Geneva’s star is well and truly on the rise.

Does she feel like it could go supernova?

“I hope so,” she says.

“You only get out what you put into these scenarios … This is my passion and you have to capitalise on it while you can. I’m going to go at it 150 per cent.”

Geneva Vanderzeil feature on her new book Home is Where You Make It. For Brisbane News. ONE TIME USE ONLY

Images from Home Is Where You Make It by Geneva Vanderzeil, Murdoch Books, $35.