The Villa

This 1910s, rimu villa was much harder work than we bargained on but the results were a true transformation and will hopefully add at least another 100 beautiful years to her life

This beautiful old villa had had a pretty rough life and years of bad renovations and neglect had left her the ugly duckling of the street. But I knew she had good bones and scores of potential, so we rolled up our sleeves to give her back the charm and glamour she deserved!

Every square inch of this house needed work. Smoothing out the old plastering, covering the awful randomly sized ceiling tiles, new skirting, scotia, polishing the floors, painting everything inside and out, adding walls, building the new lean-to, leveling the floor, replacing the pipes and plumbing, re-wiring, its had it all! As much as possible we used antique and salvaged items to bring back the original character and respect the more than 100 years this house has been here

Some of the features were added out of necessity, as a way to create something beautiful out of a problem. When we pulled up the carpet to polish the hall floor we saw that at some point the front door had been leaking and rotted the original floors which had been replaced by a patch of scrappy plywood. I didn't want to re-lay the carpet so a feature tile entrance 'mat' solved this problem beautifully. Another example was where we extended the hallway wall to separate the lounge and bedroom . The bulkhead and transom were included to break up the space and disguise any potential changes going from the old crooked wall to the new portion of wall; which quickly became our favourite feature of the house.

We pulled off the rotten porch (which homed a few thousand ants!) and replaced the mismatched 50s washboard front door with a salvaged craftsman one that I painted the same charcoal grey as the windows. I designed a new leadlight to bring together the leadlight above the front door we wished to keep and the transom I was making for the hall. This really set the tone for the home as the first thing you touch as you enter.

We tore off the old lean to and re-built this, making the most of the Northerly aspect. We installed a brand new bathroom and kitchen to bring it up to the 21st century but kept the charm with classic fixtures. The kitchen island , all the doors and windows were salvaged items which we restored. The bathroom also got a glorious, deep, claw foot bath that we bought off trade me. The new lean to was so much brighter, and more practical than the previous and managed to feel even more original too because of the sensitive choices.

The original house had very little storage so we took part of the very large master room to turn into an extra deep double wardrobe plus a single for the adjacent room and a linen cupboard in the hallway. We also added a laundry with tub and space for a dryer . As well as beautiful it had to be practical for the current lives we live.

When many people visited the villa and commented that we were lucky to have so many original features, I knew I had done my job right. At times good design gets all the attention and at other times it aims to pretend that you were never there at all.