Helicopter house can finally be called a home
The house that a community built has finally become a home.
The house, built in just three months in the Mitre10 Mega car park in Nelson and auctioned last December, has settled into its new address without a hitch.
Mitre10 Mega marketing coordinator Murray Leaning said he was terrified that the glass splashback in the kitchen would break in the move, or that cracks might appear in the paint, but his fears were unfounded.
‘‘There’s not a crack in the paint, there’s not a scratch on it,’’ he said.
‘‘It just shows how solidly built it is.’’
The house was bought by Dean and Emma McCashin, who have turned the beautiful but impersonal house into a welcoming family home.
‘‘It’s so nice, having the kitchen and the living room all together so everyone’s in the same space, it’s great,’’ Emma said. The family had been living in a container-house previously.
‘‘We’ve moved in with perfect timing, just coming into winter,’’ she said.
She said it had been an ‘‘interesting process’’ doing all the behindthe-scenes work that builders would usually have done for them as they had their new home moved and installed at its new site.
When the house was moved, divided into two pieces, the movers had to lift the house over cars, and tilt it at alarming angles between trees and lamp-posts, Leaning said.
‘‘It was nerve-racking, watching it tilt past the trees there. But it all turned out fine.’’
He said seeing the house turn into a family home was ‘‘bittersweet’’, because it had been a large part of his life for so long, but he said it was good to see it turn into a real home.
‘‘It’s so cool to see it like this,’’ he said.
‘‘When it was all decked out for the auction, it looked great, but it didn’t look lived in.’’