When Paul and Rita King drove through Mexico during the pandemic, the experiences and artefacts they collected along the way – from surf lessons in Puerto Escondido
to market finds in Tulum and a candy-pink VW camper van in Mexico City – became the inspiration for the home they would create back on Harbour Island.

The pink shutters and sun-bleached siding blend easily with the pastel-coloured cottages of their tranquil island, but beyond that this hippy-chic home breaks all the rules of conventional design. With its candy-striped walls, vintage patterned wallpaper and emerald-green couches, it’s fun, fearless and free-spirited.

Built, Not Bought

Located just 200 feet from the island’s legendary Pink Sands Beach, the couple acquired the property in 2021. “It was an ugly 1990s bungalow,” they say. “It needed a complete renovation, top to bottom, plus we extended it and added an 80-foot lap pool.”

Inspired by weeks spent learning to catch waves, they landed on the name first. The design philosophy unfolded from there: retro, rustic, relaxed.

Veteran designers and renovators, Paul and Rita were endlessly resourceful, finding reclaimed materials, re-purposing cast-offs, and making much of the furniture and the decorative pieces themselves.

1950s Inspiration

In addition to the treasures picked up on their travels, for Rita to achieve the 1950s-inspired interior she envisioned, she scoured antiques markets and searched high and low online to find vintage-style wallpaper, rattan and wicker furniture – some old, some new – and just the right tiles, bathroom fixtures and kitchen cabinets.

In the great room, the result is exuberant, with its mix of bold tropical prints on the walls, vibrant Mexican rugs on the floors and emerald-green Chesterfield couches as the centrepiece. This already colourful basis is enriched further by all manner of decorative pieces: local artwork, family photos, tasselled lamps and cushions, an antique church pew and mismatched contemporary dining chairs.

The bedrooms, on the other hand, are calmer spaces, each conceived specifically for its occupant. The master suite, with its white-painted walls and sloping ceiling is cool, airy, and uncluttered, given character by an elaborate rattan bed and quirky fish art, made with plastic collected from beaches.

In the guest room, palm print wallpaper bleeds into views of real palms outside, creating the sense of being enveloped in foliage. The couple’s hands-on creativity came into its own in the children’s rooms: their son’s closet features a secret loft at the top, while their daughter’s cypress wood four-poster bed was built from construction leftovers.

Each bathroom tells its own story too. There’s peachy surfer print wallpaper in the daughter’s, blue and white wave motifs in the son’s, and for Paul and Rita, a bathroom unlike any other. Filled with artwork and whimsical wicker pendant lights, it leads to a double walk-in shower, tiled in soft pink. From there, double doors open to a third, outdoor shower screened by breeze blocks, that pours into a feeding trough. On the floor, painted cement tiles transition artfully into soft pink ones in the shower area – a creative solution to insufficient quantities.

Treasures and Techniques

Paul and Rita’s ingenuity and imagination extends to every surface and corner. Rather than a home that looked freshly renovated from the outside, they opted for a weathered finish, in line with their surf shack vision.

“We salvaged oak siding from an old barn to clad the exterior,” Paul says. “And the rusty roof came from the family farm in Ocala, Florida. We shipped it over and actually place it on top of the existing roof.”

Inside, reclaimed heart pine boards, complete with old scars and scratches, now cover the floors and white tongue-and-groove-style plywood panels lend the interiors a traditional, beachy sensibility.

Elsewhere, leftover cement tiles from other builds on the island were used to create a mosaic beside the outdoor shower, with a Mexican ‘carnitas’ cooking pot given new life as a sink. In the garden, a livestock feeding trough was re-purposed as an aquarium for the family’s red-eared slider turtles and an old bathtub filled with compost to make a herb garden.

But their creativity wasn’t limited to salvaged materials. While the couple brought tasselled chandeliers, antique rugs and paintings back from their travels, sometimes it was the ideas that accompanied them home – such as the hemp rope curtains, seen in Tulum, that they recreated in their outdoor dining area.

Pink Philosophy

The covered outdoor spaces are earthier, with sofas built on breeze blocks, simple hardwood tables and benches, and hemp accents, all illuminated by old ship’s lanterns. But earthiness competes with playfulness, because what unites interior and exterior, and makes such a mix of materials and accessories work together, is the ever-present pink.

Not only does the colour ensure that King Surf Shack blends and belongs in Harbour Island, but as Rita says, “It’s hard to be unhappy in a world of pink.”

Coating exterior doors and shutters, appearing in stripes on walls and cushions, and in the Big Chill retro kitchen appliances, it adds another layer of light-heartedness to the home. The couple’s commitment to the dopamine-inducing colour and concept is epitomised, however, in their retrofitted 1973 VW van, parked next to their outdoor living room. Painted candy pink and converted into a fully functional outdoor kitchen complete with grill, wok burner, and under-counter fridges it’s both unconventional and unforgettable.

Local Craftsmanship

Although King Surf Shack is very much the expression of the owners’ wanderlust, filled with reminders of their adventures, it is also firmly Bahamian.

With its history of shipbuilding, Harbour Island is home to exceptional carpenters, Paul explains, whose skill is outstanding. “We’ve always been enthralled by their work and we’ve incorporated traditional woodworking details and techniques throughout the property,” he adds. “We’ve also commissioned local artisans to make the plaited panels that accent some of the cupboard doors and headboards.”

The local beaches also feature both directly in their photography and indirectly, from the shimmering chandelier adorned with whelks collected along the shore to the glass lamps filled with sea sponges.

Completed in 2022, the couple’s favourite spot has become the front porch, where they  sit on their rocking chairs in the mornings, the roosters and chickens at their feet and a cup of coffee in hand, watching the world go by. It was tremendous fun to build and design their own surf shack, they say, and the result is a place that genuinely feels like home while maintaining the magic of a permanent vacation.

Above all, King Surf Shack proves that the best homes are built not from blueprints, but from dreams, travels, creativity – and the conviction that a pink camper van absolutely belongs in one’s outdoor living room.