SUNNYHILLS

129 FISHER PARADE

It’s not often that you carry around the picture of your dream house for years from one side of the globe to the other, and then, one day, buy it. Sue and Roger Kyle couldn’t believe their luck back in 2000.

The couple and their two boys had been based in Hong Kong for 15 years where Roger was a pilot for Cathay Pacific. They lived in a roomy villa-style apartment complex near the sea, away from the bustling city, and also kept a small apartment at Devonport’s Stanley Bay for their frequent trips home.

Their older son was at boarding school at St Kentigerns, Sue got sick of the commute back and forth, and Roger was ready to return to New Zealand. After renting for a while, the couple’s search for their family house did not get off to a good start. They were used to large space, they wanted greenery, but nothing appealed.

“We knew we’d know ‘the one’ when we saw it. The agent took us to this area, which is outside of where we’d been looking,” says Roger. “The minute we walked in, it was the style we’d wanted.”

“We’d carried around a book of American houses, and this was the style we loved — gambrel, dormer house. It stood out. Funnily enough, we’d driven around this street years before and seen this house and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing’,” adds Sue.

The gambrel style has a steep pitched tile roof, with, in the Kyles’ case, clinker brick siding (original versions had shingle), completed with colonial-style multipaned windows. The roomy house on a large section is right next to one of the many pathways that lead down