The Thurgoona couple has two delightfully gorgeous children in Layla, 7, and Hugo, 3, but it's fair to say their first "baby" was a 90-year-old hunk of cast iron.

The story really begins when Doug, a born and bred Border boy, met and fell in love with Danika while they were studying design at university in Sydney 10 years ago.

After graduating, the pair travelled to Europe and the UK where they discovered a shared fondness for old printing presses during visits to markets in London.

On their return to Australia they stumbled on an antique that was to start the first chapter in their business, D&D Letterpress.

The love affair was sealed with the rescue of Wendy, a 1920s Chandler and Price hand-fed and foot-treadled printing press from a hospital that was about to be demolished.

"We had no experience, just a real passion for printing and design," Doug says.

The couple connected with a former print mentor based at the printing museum in Western Sydney, who helped them clean the rust off Wendy and get her up and running.

Her first job was printing Danika and Doug's wedding invitations.

"Des used to come over and teach us in my parents' carport (where Wendy was stored), stay the night and leave us with homework to do," Danika recalls.

"He taught us the correct terms and if I ever called the ink 'paint', I'd get into trouble."

They became "obsessed", Doug admits.

"We heard about our next press, Fritz, through the museum.

"Fritz was living under a house in Brisbane and we had to pull down a wall to get him out and heave 1.2 tonnes onto the trailer to get him home."

It was Fritz who opened the door on printing jobs commercially.

And so began a fledgling venture producing wedding and business stationery on weekends while Doug juggled his job as a product designer for an outdoor adventure company and Danika worked for a custom design rug company.

But they couldn't keep up with the work coming their way - it seemed there was a definite market for their hand-crafted custom stationery.

The day after Doug resigned from his full-time job, Danika discovered she was pregnant with Layla.

Sharing the news with family at a Chinese restaurant, Danika recalls her dad asked if it was too late for his son-in-law to get his job back.

The two presses were moved into a shared garage space at their Dee Why apartment.

"We were on the top floor and the garage was unpowered so we had to drop an extension cord from our window to work," Doug recalls.

"When the neighbours were at work we would wheel it all out into the shared space and pack it all away at the end of the day."

With baby Layla's arrival, the parents were juggling "our two babies" and working through the night to finish jobs before deciding to officially set up shop full-time.

There were several cumbersome moves - and more presses added to the family - before Doug and Danika bought a dirty, rundown mechanic shop at Brookvale and transformed it into a sophisticated space.

With the addition of several staff, including talented design interns, they took it in turns to juggle the lucrative Saturday morning wedding trade with specialty printing jobs for companies that have included Maserati, Tag Heuer, and Penfold's.

"Part of the appeal of letterpress is that you are buying so much more than what is printed," Danika says.

"This is high-end stationery - it's a very tactile product. When you get it in your hands you fall in love with it.

"The paper is made from 100 per cent cotton from Italian mills and it takes the de-bossing (where an indent is made into the paper) beautifully.

"It's a product you want to touch and feel - people make comments like, 'It's the most beautiful thing on my fridge!'"

This dynamic duo have essentially modernised the traditional letterpress process.

"We don't set type by hand anymore - designs are done on computer and we produce a printing plate (with a raised version of our artwork) to put in the old presses," says Doug, the dedicated press wrangler.

They still mix the ink by hand and marvel at every meticulously produced piece.

"This is a more thoughtful product," Doug says.

"We are perfectionists and we don't let anything leave the studio unless it is perfect.

"You can't get the same result with digital printing."

More than that, though, Doug says he loves seeing designs come to life.

"For us it's about not being stuck on a computer designing all the time - it's about being hands-on with a physical product," he says.

"This is a happy merging of all our passions."

While business was booming, Doug and Danika were becoming frustrated their dreams of buying a home were being thwarted by Sydney auction prices and three-hour-a-day travel times.

On trips to visit Doug's parents, they would joke about moving to the country.

In 2015, the impending arrival of son Hugo "solidified" their decision to relocate.

Now they have the best of both worlds.

They have recently completed a tasteful renovation of the large shed beside their Thurgoona home where six gleaming presses stand next to pots of ink, sleek stacks of paper, and old lead type cases and wooden composition blocks collected along the way.

Doug says while they have down-sized, business has been barely impacted with most of the interaction with Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane-based clients handled via email and an efficient courier system.

But the benefits to the family have been priceless.

"Layla's school is only minutes away, we can take the kids to swimming and have a coffee break watching the chooks wandering in the garden," Danika says.

"If our bees swarm, we can put on our bee suits and go and move them straight away, or if the ducklings hatch we are there to see and enjoy it.

"The lifestyle here is beautiful."