The quirks were welcome in the refurb of this compact family home in Hawke’s Bay.
A sympathetic renovation in Napier smartened up a compact home without erasing its quirks
As Rachael Horton walks across her floor she warns it “may make you seasick”. She points out the ornate front door set with beautiful leadlight, which is never knocked on and in fact gazes straight into the back garden. There’s a powder room tucked under the stairs and on the top floor there’s a narrow little loo under the eaves complete with its own lobby. A lobby for a lavatory. None of it makes much sense, Rachael concedes, but she loves her home, sitting proudly and slightly haphazardly on Napier’s Bluff Hill.
A villa was not what she’d had in mind when, in 2016, the Wellington emigre arrived for a change of pace and a challenging new work role. Low maintenance appealed. Practicality. Something sturdy and within her set budget.
A single parent, she also wanted a property close to her office and to school for Christian, 10, and Elsa, eight. “Location is important when you want easy access, so you can leave work at short notice and pick up a sick kid or go and watch the cross country.”
“I came to view the house and could see it wasn’t very well built, so I thought it wasn’t for me. I’d renovated an old villa years before in Wellington and there was a voice in my head saying, ‘No, Rachael – do not buy a villa again.’”
But, like so many things in life, that plan was scuppered. “I just loved the location – the character of the Hill. There are dinky little homes like this one rubbing shoulders with massive mansions. There are laneways and alleyways and there’s nowhere to park and really tight, winding streets and views for Africa. It felt like home to me.”
‘There are dinky little homes like this one rubbing shoulders with massive mansions’
The house dates back to the 1880s, a bygone era when building codes were non-existent and the street was just a dirt track, used by the local grocer to deliver weekly provisions to the original lean-to kitchen. The aforementioned front door would at one time have been the main entrance off a (much wider) road below the garden. “It’s very much a house that’s backwards.”
Rachael felt some of the “backwards” needed to be managed. So she steeled herself (and prepared her bank manager) for a renovation. “The hardest part for me was pushing ‘go’ on this,” she says with candour.
“It’s a huge financial investment. You really have to trust yourself and your decision-making abilities. There were a number of moments where I questioned whether I was making an emotional or a practical decision.”
Christian and Elsa also had questions about the project. “They didn’t really understand what a renovation was,” Rachael says. “And when the house was completely stripped down, and it was just open framing and we were camping out at friends’ houses, they were quite upset. They couldn’t really see how it would all get put back together.”
Rachael knew how. Working economically, and within the original 160sqm footprint of the house, she had a couple of priorities – create a warm, family-friendly kitchen, and develop a second living space.
Rachael says her life was far too busy to muck around with DIY so she called in the experts: architects Citrus Studio, building company Davcon, and interior designers Bibby & Brady. She issued strict instructions. “I don’t like it when older homes have
the charm renovated out of them, so I wasn’t interested in open plan plus I wanted to keep my fireplaces.”
The renovation saw a kitchen take shape, a media room created for the kids and a serene adults area for Rachael and her friends. A new family bathroom replaced the old lean-to. “When the builders took the wall lining down there were floor joists that came halfway through into the room on a dirt floor and were just propped up by bricks.”
When the sarking came off the internal walls, the builders found a London Illustrated News from 1880 with a photograph depicting a mining disaster, and some very old hand-blown beer bottles with hand-whittled corks. “We decided to put them back and added a few DB Export bottles – like a wee builders’ time capsule. We hope someone else discovers them one day.”
Says Rachael: “I was as thoughtful and careful with the budget as I could be without compromising on how I wanted to live.” For example, she kept the home’s original kauri doors and their knobs. “A friend and I sanded back seven of the wooden door knobs and polished the brass plates at night in front of the TV.”
The hardest decisions to make were always the big ticket items. “Like the flooring, which I agonised over. It was a big spend so it was very worrying for me. Dael and Vic from Bibby & Brady were so helpful in guiding these big decisions and helping me get the colours right.”
Rachael also chose to install a mains water filter. “Napier’s water supply is chlorinated and it’s really nice to be able to drink filtered water from the tap.”
‘IT TOOK ABOUT A MONTH TO RELAX AND REALLY LIVE IN THE HOUSE WITHOUT FEELING WE WERE IN A SHOWROOM’
Bibby & Brady helped choose the soft dusty pink in Rachael’s room and the stormy blue in Christian’s, but Elsa didn’t quite get the bright orange walls and green carpet she’d been dreaming of. “Elsa has a quirky personality and she’s a bit of a tomboy, so pink was never going to do it for her.” In the end, she selected yellow for her little room at the top of the stairs.
The family moved back into the house earlier this year. “We were scared to touch anything at first,” says Rachael. “The kids were walking around in awe.
“It took about a month to relax and really live in the house, without feeling we were in a showroom. Now, we are completely at home here but at the same time, the kids know how special this place is and that I won’t afford to do it again. So I keep saying, ‘Guys, this is it, we need to look after it.’”