ASK THE OWNER:
Rod Fry of Moaroom
Rod, do you have any advice for those hoping
to renovate? Do it purely for yourself and your family: who you are, how you want to live and the values you want your kids to be exposed to. Don’t fill your house with French stuff if you have no link to France; don’t fill it with New Zealand art if you really don’t enjoy that; don’t buy ‘fake’ anything. Try to be aesthetically cohesive – if something you’ve had for ages or inherited doesn’t work with the rest, then hide or sell it. And when it comes to renovating small spaces?
If you can, leave uncluttered lines of vision from one end of the apartment to the other to avoid any sense of claustrophobia. Proportion the spaces based on the time you’ll spend in them. For us, living in such a constrained space is like living on a boat – you need to really think about storage so that you can leave as much space around you as possible. Build storage wherever you can – such as in the bases of couches, or in cubes used as coffee tables – and build your higher storage units into the darkest corner or wall. What makes your renovation especially satisfying? Big, noisy dinner parties that everyone leaves smiling; your son sitting on the couch reading rather than turning on the TV; hearing him explain how cool and well made his bunks are; actually preferring to eat at home rather than at a restaurant.