For Meg O’Halloran and Josh Reed, collecting vintage furniture started long before they found the home to put it in. The Melbourne couple behind Way Back When spent years hunting down ’70s and ’80s pieces, restoring finds and slowly building a collection of furniture they loved.
This week on our Home Life Series, we’re heading to Ivanhoe to meet Meg and Josh and step inside their 1978 home, where exposed brick, timber beams, original details and plenty of colour create the perfect backdrop for their vintage finds. Having only moved in six months ago, the house is already filled with pieces that feel like they were waiting for this exact space.
From a locally made ’70s modular lounge found with its original tags and plastic still intact, to chrome armchairs and unexpected Marketplace finds, come inside and discover a home that proves you don’t need to renovate the character out of a house to make it your own.
Hi Meg and Josh, thank you for having us in Ivanhoe! For those meeting you for the first time, can you tell us a little about yourselves, what you do and how Way Back When came to be?
We’re Meg and Josh, and together we run Way Back When, our vintage furniture and interiors project here in Melbourne.
Way Back When really started from a shared love of finding things. We were constantly trawling Marketplace, op shops, auctions and anywhere else we could find interesting vintage pieces, initially just for ourselves. Eventually we had more furniture than we could ever possibly fit into our home, and it naturally grew from there.
We both have our own jobs outside of WBW, so it has always been something we’ve built together on the side. It’s a creative outlet for us and an excuse to keep doing what we would probably be doing anyway; hunting down things we love, restoring pieces that need a little bit of attention, and passing some of them on to their next home.
You’re both passionate collectors and the duo behind Way Back When. What is it about vintage furniture, particularly mid-century and 1970s pieces, that continues to draw you in?
We love that vintage pieces have personality. There’s something about the shapes, materials and colours from that period that feels much more interesting to us than everything being perfect or matching.
We’re particularly drawn to the ’70s because there was such a great mix of materials, shapes and colour. Chrome, smoked glass, timber, chunky shapes and weird little objects always seem to find their way home with us. Furniture could be functional but also a little strange or playful, which we love.
There’s also the thrill of finding something unexpected. Half the fun is never really knowing what you’re looking for until you see it. Some of our favourite things have come from Marketplace, op shops or completely unexpected places.
And there’s something nice about knowing a piece has already had a life before you and now gets to have another one.
You recently made the move into your 1978 home in Ivanhoe. Can you tell us a little about the history of the house, the neighbourhood and what first caught your eye when you walked through the door?
When we started looking at property, we knew we wanted something with original character rather than a house that had already been completely renovated.
The house was built in 1978 by local builder Ron Elliot. Amazingly, so much of its original character has survived. When we walked in, we immediately saw all the things we had been looking for. The exposed brick, timber beams, timber-lined ceilings and large windows. It felt warm and lived-in and, importantly for us, it hadn’t had all of its personality renovated out of it.
It also felt like all the furniture we’d been collecting for years suddenly had somewhere it made sense.
Ivanhoe was a bit of a change for us after living in Clifton Hill, but we loved that it was leafy and established while still feeling connected to the parts of Melbourne we spend most of our time in.
The home has so many beautiful original details, from the exposed brick and beams to the timber panelling and natural light. What was it about the character of the house that made you want to preserve rather than renovate?
Those details were the reason we bought it, so it would feel strange to remove them!
We definitely don’t think old automatically means something needs to be replaced. There are quirks and imperfections throughout the house, but that’s a huge part of what gives it character. We don’t want to turn a 1978 house into something that could have been built yesterday.
Although we’ve only been here for six months, we want anything we do here to work with what already exists. There are obviously practical things that will need updating over time, but we’d much rather restore, repair or adapt something where we can than strip everything out and start again.
The brick, timber, beams, windows and slightly quirky details are what give the house its personality, so the goal is really to work with them rather than modernise them away.
You’d spent years collecting furniture before finding this home. How has it felt to finally have a space for all those pieces, and were there any finds that seemed to have been waiting specifically for this house?
Very satisfying! We’d spent years buying things we loved without necessarily having the right home for them. There was definitely a lot of “we’ll find somewhere for it” happening.
Moving here made so many of those pieces suddenly make sense. There have definitely been a few moments where we’ve put something in place and thought, this is exactly where this was meant to end up.
However, living with vintage there is always another incredible find around the corner, so we do believe this will always be a forever evolving house.
Your home brings together 1970s, contemporary art and plenty of colour alongside the original architecture. How do you approach creating a space that feels playful and personal without competing with the bones of the house?
We don’t really follow a formula. If we both love something, we’ll usually find a way to make it work.
The house already has such a strong material palette with the brick and timber, which actually makes a really good backdrop for colour, art and some of the more playful things we own.
We like rooms to feel collected rather than styled all at once. Not everything needs to be from the same era either. We love ’70s design, but we don’t want the house to feel like a time capsule. We want it to feel like our home now, just with these incredible 1970s bones.
Mixing vintage furniture with contemporary art, objects and newer pieces keeps it feeling personal rather than like a recreation of a house from 1978.
What are some of the pieces in your home that you’re most attached to, and is there a story behind any of your favourite finds?
It’s hard because we’re terrible at letting things go once we get attached to them, and there is always that thought of “will we ever come across this again?”.
Our 1970s chrome armchairs are definitely up there, along with our modular lounge, which was made locally in Brunswick in the ’70s. We were lucky enough to find the modular with its original tags and plastic still attached, which made it feel like a pretty special find. It’s great to have these pieces together in the same room now.
We love furniture where you can trace a little bit of their history. There’s something particularly nice about having a locally made piece from that era sitting in a Melbourne home almost 50 years later.
Some of our favourites aren’t necessarily the most valuable or recognisable pieces either. They’re usually things we found unexpectedly, refurbished ourselves, drove far too long to pick up, or pieces that have moved through different homes with us and somehow always found a place. They end up representing different stages of our life together as much as they do a particular era of design.
The pieces that have been passed down through family or found while travelling are also very sentimental to us.
Looking ahead, you have plans to update parts of the home while keeping its original spirit intact. What would your dream evolution of the house look like, and what will you never change?
We’d love to make some thoughtful updates over time, particularly to the kitchen, bathrooms and outdoor areas, but we don’t want to rush anything. Living here first has already changed some of our ideas about what we actually need, and we’d rather make decisions slowly than follow whatever happens to be popular at the time.
Whatever we do, we want it to feel sympathetic to the original architecture rather than obviously new. Ideally, someone could walk in years from now and not immediately be able to tell what was original and what we’d added.
The exposed brick, timber, beams and overall character of the house are staying. They’re what made us fall in love with it in the first place.
