Home by the water
You’d be hard pressed to find a couple more embedded in their community than Laurie and Maureen Myers. They built their house on a pohutukawa-framed section in Northcote Point in 1979, but Laurie had grown up only four doors down the street where his parents had bought in the 1950s.
“When I look along the street at the shop fronts that are now houses, I can remember the Meadowgold icecream shop, the butcher, the grocery stores. And Maureen’s grandmother used to work at Gunman’s Bakery, so both our roots go back a long way,” says Laurie. “We were in Torbay when we first married, but it was inevitable we’d gravitate back here. This section had never been built on since an old villa was demolished next door.”
By the time they’d bought the land, the young couple, who were just starting their family, didn’t have much of a budget for a house build. They called on another local, architect Paul Higgins, to design a pole house to fit as much square footage into the sloping site.
They started with two levels and two bedrooms, living on one floor with the generously sized parents’ retreat and a smaller bedroom overlooking the sea in the pitch of the gabled ceiling.
As family and finances grew, they added a lower floor in the 1990s, ensuring that every room gets views of the water. And through the years, the avid gardeners mulched, fed and planted natives to create a bush haven only minutes from the bridge.
The main living floor is entered from a flight of stairs wending its way down from the street to the front door.
Over the years the 1970s colour palette of dark beams and wood has changed to soft off-white that still shows off the interesting beams and double-height cathedral ceilings. The rimu floors of the upstairs rooms appear on the ceilings of the lower rooms where the floors are a mix of cork and carpet.
The Myers were less interested in vast square footage and more focused on creating convivial spaces for their family and friends, so the open plan room is carved into a series of zones that share light and views, and allow interaction between the cook, or the barbecue deck, but also have retreat spots.
Paul designed the window placement to allow sun to flood the rooms from morning to sunset, but retain privacy from neighbours and the street. On one side of the kitchen — centrally placed so that Maureen could interact with guests or kids doing homework — is a dining and sitting area that opens through french doors to the barbecue deck.
Maureen has tucked vege gardens and flowers on this side of the house to give year-round interest, leaving natives to cope with the salt-laden air on the sloping water side of the property.
The favourite spot for everyone is an L-shaped window seat that seemingly hovers over the ancient pohutukawa and the sea views, next to another sitting deck for shadier afternoons. Paul was careful to tuck outdoor spaces all around the house so that there is shelter from any prevailing wind.
Maureen laughs that even though the kids’ bedrooms had desks, they were more inclined to haul their books to a seat with a sea view to study. There’s a smaller book-lined sitting room with windows that are cut to chair-level for a more private look at the garden.
The master bedroom on the upper level gets morning light, and has a delightful sky-lit bathroom which gives the bather a view of stars and trees. (The shower is in the downstairs bathroom.) The second bedroom has a wall of bi-fold windows that open to the tree-tops.
The second stage of the house involved closing in downstairs to create two more roomy bedrooms, a bathroom and laundry. The sea-side bedroom’s glass doors slide away in the summer to make a semi-outdoor space.
Over the years Laurie has built stairs down to the sea (the garage houses a workshop where he also has built immaculate boat models), popping in gorgeous viewing platforms for visitors to sit and admire nature. Two water tanks meant that even in the driest summer the couple can irrigate their lush gardens.
At the bottom is a charming cabin with a sink and fridge. Maureen says that when the kids and their friends got too noisy, she and Laurie would escape down here to make a cup of tea and have some peace.
There’s a boat ramp to a tiny patch of sandy beach, where the kids would kayak and swim all summer. And, when work called — the couple run a guided tour business — Laurie converted one of the garages to an office. Naturally it also has the tree and sea views.
“It’s going to be a wrench to leave this, but with the kids gone, it’s time for us to move to something smaller,” says Maureen.
“This is a family house for kids to explore and live on the water, like ours did.”