Mark and Melissa Dunphy were handed the keys to their new Weston cafe at 5.30 one night in March and less than seven hours later it went up in flames.
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The Kambah couple were set to fulfil a long-held dream of opening their own cafe when the Brierly Street premises was gutted by fire.
On Monday, police released dramatic CCTV footage of an arsonist torching the cafe in a bid to identify the offender after investigations into the most recent fire stalled.
It shows a man in a hooded jumper smashing one of the cafe's door panels, splashing an accelerant inside and then setting it alight just after midnight on March 13.
Soon after, Mr Dunphy received a call to tell him the cafe, which would have been ready to be reopened in days, was ablaze.
"My heart just sank," he said.
The couple arrived to find 15 fire trucks and a HAZMAT team crowding the street. Though the flames had been doused, smoke poured from the building.
Just hours before, the Dunphys had formally settled the property, grabbed the keys and taken close friends on a tour of the site.
Their daughter, Olivia, 5, had run around the cafe putting numbers on tables and pretending to take drink orders from imaginary customers.
"It was released back to us the next morning and everything was just black," Mr Dunphy said.
"I just thought, 'They've killed it'."
Ms Dunphy said the shock left them "numb" for weeks.
The pair bought the cafe to help offset a downturn in their recruitment business and she said its destruction had taken a significant financial and emotional toll.
"It's honestly been a disaster, it's been an absolute disaster."
"There have been quite a lot of times where we've laid awake at night and thought, should we just forget about it and just give it up, because it's been too hard."
Despite that, they have finally been able to start rebuilding in recent weeks and the business is set to start operating before Christmas as The Cornerstone Cafe.
"I don't want the arsonist to succeed," Mr Dunphy said. "I think it's determination to not let them win."
"Even if it's not targeted towards us, it doesn't matter who it's targeted towards, it's not fair."
"We just hope police catch the guy."
The previous blaze ripped through the site in January 2012 and despite a seven month investigation, police did not identify a motive or any suspects.
They said they didn't have enough information to draw a link between the two incidents.
Criminal investigations constable Callum Hughes said police had exhausted their lines of inquiry and so had called for the public's help to crack the case.
"Arson, being a clandestine offence by nature, means we've been very limited in the sort of avenues we've been able to follow."
"We'd be asking people to study the footage closely to try and think back to that night in March this year to try and recall where they were or where they may have been, particularly if they were in this area.
"I'd be asking people to study the offender pictured in the footage, have a look at their mannerisms, posture and their description and see if they can recall anything that may come to mind that they may be able to pass on to Crime Stoppers to assist us in identifying this person."
The offender in the footage is described as about 165 centimetres tall with a slight build and rounded shoulders.
He was wearing a brightly coloured hooded jumper, dark trackpants with white stripes and white shoes.
"With the public's assistance we're confident we'll be able to find the arsonist," constable Hughes said.
Any information to Crime Stoppers 1800 333 000.
