Bush site has a eye on the city
87A EXMOUTH RD, NORTHCOTE
When your hobby is renovating houses, staying in one place for more than three years is a bit of a giveaway that a house has won you over. In the past 12 years, marketing strategist Penny McKavanagh has done up country places, she’s done up city places in Grey Lynn and Freemans Bay, but the architect-designed house in the bush overlooking Northcote’s Onepoto Domain, the bridge and the city is the place that really stole her heart.
“I work from home, so I have to have a good environment,” she says. “I look out that window and just love it — the native bush, the park, then the bridge and the city in the background. And it gets even better at night, first with sunsets and then the lights of the city and the harbour bridge.”
Penny was intrigued to find the two-storeyed house was built only 15 years ago, as many of the details were timeless. As she and daughter Portia, 15, lived there, they discovered many clever touches that had been thought through by the architect owner, who had then been with Compass Dolphin.
She learned that he had subdivided the bushside section after living in the older streetside house, so could covenant her property to have its own private driveway, not shared with a neighbour. He’d also carefully tucked the house into the site so it sits above the tree-line, meaning it gets sun all around, but is