Most people walking past a fire-ravaged property would see only what was lost. Melissa and Milan Butina saw something else entirely — a starting point.
Seven years ago, the Brisbane couple were having a morning coffee near Plunkett Street in Paddington when they noticed the property at number 33 was on the market. Curious, and already in the neighbourhood, they ducked in for a look. What they found was not much of a house — a fire had razed whatever had stood there before — but what remained was striking: a pool perched high above the street, sitting atop a garage on an elevated 450-square-metre block with sweeping views in every direction.
It was an unusual proposition, but the Butinas were hooked. The timing of their chance encounter, combined with the property’s distinct bones, made the decision feel almost inevitable.
Rather than removing the pool or working around it, the couple made it the centrepiece of their vision. They engaged Brisbane-based architectural studio Myers Ellyett — known for delivering residential projects that respond closely to site and context — to help them design a home that would grow from the block outward. The result is a three-level, five-bedroom, four-bathroom home built into the hillside, with 180-degree views and a layout designed around connection, flow, and the kind of calm that is easy to appreciate but harder to engineer.
The Butinas were clear about what they wanted from the space: somewhere that felt open without being exposed, entertaining-friendly without sacrificing the feeling of a private retreat. Multiple living zones were created throughout the home to give the family — now including daughter Petra, five, and son Oliver, three — room to gather or spread out as the mood demands. Strong indoor–outdoor flow ties the levels together, with the original pool sitting at the heart of it all.
Over the years, the pool has evolved from an inherited quirk into something the family considers one of the home’s great pleasures. A heater was added to extend its use well beyond Brisbane’s warmer months, meaning it is a genuine year-round feature rather than a seasonal one. For the Butinas, it represents not just a place to cool off, but a focal point for the kind of everyday living that makes a house feel like a home — friends visiting on weekends, the children splashing about, the particular satisfaction of a summer afternoon with nowhere else to be.
Now, after seven years, the family is ready to let someone else enjoy it. The property at 33 Plunkett Street is listed for sale through Ray White Paddington agent Max Hadgelias via an expressions of interest campaign. The Butinas’ reason for moving on is perhaps the most fitting possible: they have loved the process of building this home so much that they are planning to do it all over again on another site.
For any buyer, the property comes with something that cannot be replicated from scratch — a story, a setting, and a pool with a view that once stopped two people dead in their tracks on a Sunday morning coffee run.
Published 9-February-2026
