The picture-perfect, white-weatherboard family home of glamorous entrepreneur and former beauty editor Eleanor Pendleton has sold. The stylish property, located in New South Wales’ Central Coast, underwent a six-month renovation before being put on the market.
Eleanor announced the news on her Instagram, when she posted a series of stories describing her emotions about the sale.
“The moment we exchanged, I was flooded with emotion (actually, I cried a lot.) Having never sold a home before, it was bittersweet – so much excitment for our growing family’s next chapter but also a sense of sadness to say goodbye,” she wrote.
“We’ve had so many significant and special life memories in this home. We brought out baby girl from the hospital when she was born to this home. We grieved Mat’s mum in this home. We laughed, cried and danced a lot in this home. So excited for us to find our forever home for our family of five.”
Eleanor has always had an eye for transformation. She shaped beauty culture for a decade through her platform Gritty Pretty (now closed), and recently launched skincare line Haleau Beauty. She also applied her discerning style closer to home — reinventing a rundown 1920s cottage in Terrigal with the kind of quiet luxury only someone fluent in beauty could achieve.
Eleanor and husband Mathew’s freshly renovated cottage, which sits on an extensive 1500 square metre block, went to market with an asking price of about $1.65 million. While the final price hasn’t been revealed yet, we’re excited to see what the beautiful home sold for.
The historic four-bedroom, two-bathroom home has farmhouse-style French doors, an established garden and level lawn, and it backs onto a bush reserve. Originally built in 1926 by Mackinley Pickett, descendant of the Picketts Valley family, who first settled in the area in the 1800s, the 100-year-old home has been lovingly restored with Eleanor’s discerning style. New cladding, new and restored timber floors, a herringbone-pattern brick patio and colonial-style windows, brass tapware and generous storage all elevate this stunning home.
The grounds
The flat 1500 metre square property is brimming with citrus trees, including finger limes, as well as bananas and loquats, mature magnolias, frangipanis and purple wisteria.
For Eleanor, the garden is the true magic of the property. “Our kids absolutely love running through the garden and running through the vegetable garden, eating mulberries off the tree,” she says in a video she posted on Instagram. With its mix of established trees, productive raised beds and wide lawns, the garden carries the romance of acreage. “We just love that the whole property has this beautiful acreage feel without the acreage maintenance.”
A facelift
Eleanor and husband Mathew moved out of their Freshwater apartment in late 2020 and up to the Central Coast, where they both grew up and still have family. They discovered this unoccupied, rundown cottage on an old fruit orchard. The purple fibro house with red iron roof was dilapidated, but the couple fell in love with its ‘bones’ and sprawling garden.
Once a jumble of fibro and tired finishes, MacKinley Cottage is now a coastal-country gem with fresh white walls, natural timber, and generous windows that capture leafy views. With its ornamental vine-covered pergola, it’s the kind of garden that encourages barefoot play and long afternoons outdoors.
Mid renovation, Eleanor and Mathew’s builder, Luke, discovered wood rot in a small area of the cottage that included the current office and laundry, so those sections were demolished and reframed, and new piers were erected underneath that part of the structure.
Sydney-based interior designer Folk Studio pulled together a modern farmhouse design for the new laundry. Meanwhile, underneath the “very questionable carpet” throughout the rest of the home, as Eleanor described it in an interview with Inside Out, beautiful original hardwood timber floors were uncovered in one area of the house.
Why now?
“They love the space they’ve got, but now they would like a bit more,” explains Real Estate agent Matthew Farrugia, with LJ Hooker Terrigal, who is selling Eleanor and Mathew’s home. He says the Central Coast property ladder typically goes two ways from a house like MacKinley Cottage. “People either want more land and space, or something closer to the beach with views,” he says.
Matthew confirms that the house is just a stone’s throw from Jen Hawkins, who bought a $6 million Central Coast “knockdown” nearby in 2022.
Speaking of his client’s next step, Matthew says “they’re looking for that two-and-a-half-acre big home, more of a farm land sort of feel, maybe some chickens and some farm animals for the kids to enjoy. Just that next step in the similar lifestyle”.,
For Eleanor, though, the move might be bittersweet. Commenting on Instagram, where she posted a video about her Terrigal house sale, she says it’s “the most special home, filled with lifelong memories – now ready for her next chapter with new owners”.
See the full listing here.
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