MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS
Built 90 years ago, this home leaves a legacy of colourful memories, writes Robyn Welsh
Kim Segedin has nothing but the fondest memories of a home that has been in her family since her grandparents Leonard and Alice Litchfield built it ahead of their wedding in 1929.
She remembers her grandad snoozing in his veranda hammock and her grandmother’s love of sewing and on-trend redecorating. She remembers playing on her rocking horse in their “front room” lounge.
But Kim’s pivotal memory dates back to the mid1980s when, at the age of 14, she and her mother Noeline inherited this home.
“I always loved that house,” says Kim. “It was beautiful, it was warm and safe and I was just aware even then that we should keep it and not sell it.” Together Kim and Noeline tidied it up to rent it out, as had been done more than once since it was built.
Early in Leonard and Alice’s marriage, Leonard was transferred with his engineering job, firstly to Wairoa in the Hawkes Bay where Noeline was born, and later to the then-remote eastern suburbs of Auckland city.
The same friends rented this home each time. “It always still felt like a family home” says Kim. Noeline spent her teenage years here and after her marriage and Kim’s birth, this home became the extended family’s focal point.
About 15 years ago, it was Kim’s turn to live here. “My job brought me back and it was my time to move in here,” she says. Kim and her mother painted the house together and that project reminded Noeline how much Kim had inherited her grandmother’s love of colour, fabric and texture.
Kim’s contemporary updates here have been about maintaining the integrity of the house including its original layout, its beam-and-panel ceilings and the tongue-and-groove walls.
Out went the brown linoleum and floral Axminster carpet laid over matai floorboards, and
the six layers of wallpaper that documented Alice’s decorative updates.
In Alice’s 1960s kitchen, Kim updated the cabinetry by turning four of the cupboards into open shelves, minus their doors. In the bathroom, she replaced the original bath with a shower and a second toilet and turned the original wall cupboard into open shelves.
Elsewhere there is still more that goes back 90 years including the laundry cupboard hinges. The concrete pad beneath the laundry sink is where the original copper tub once stood.
Kim points out that this large laundry and adjacent toilet could be reworked as an en suite for the adjacent bedroom. The kitchen could also be opened out to the morning sun that warms the eastfacing veranda where Leonard’s hammock hooks are still screwed into the wall.
Kim, who works in export sales, had thought about making these changes herself, but she and her husband Peter, an engineer, now want to focus on life with their daughters Elise (11) and Ceska (9). “It’s time for another family to come in and continue what we’ve done,” says Kim.
This deeply personal property is significant for these sales agents too. “This is the first time in 28 years selling real estate that we have marketed a property built and kept in the same family for four generations,” says Marty Hall of Ray White.
* This article first ran on Wednesday, September 18, but the images that were published were of another property. We are running the article again today with the correct images. Herald Homes apologises for the error.