Views of sea and the city
A 1905 home has grown upwards and outwards, writes Graham Hepburn
Having moved back to New Zealand from London with his family, Jamie Whyte was keen to find a place in central Auckland to settle down. But when he was elected the new leader of the ACT party in 2014 and had to fight an election campaign, he admits delegating the job of buying a house to wife Zainab.
“My mind wasn’t really on top of other things during the election campaign,” Jamie says. “So Zainab took care of it all really. We rented a place in Kelmarna Ave and looked for a few months and looked at a few places in The Avenues but I always liked St Marys Bay.”
And he liked the look of this three- storey home, which has separate spaces where the couple and their daughters Rachel, 13, and Khadija, 9, can spread out.
Built in 1905, the home has been renovated and extended outwards and upwards over the intervening years.
Jamie says in the three years they have been here they have enjoyed the home as they found it.
“We’ve done nothing to it,” he says. “We haven’t had the time really to do anything.”
On the ground floor, the villa has a formal dining room facing the street with an adjoining formal lounge with open fire, which Jamie has never tried using.
The lounge has beamed ceilings and the dining room has an ornate plaster ceiling. Windows open from the lounge out to the back yard and a cut- out with windows opens to the kitchen/ family room. All these downstairs rooms have polished wooden floors.
“I like the look of these formal rooms but we spend much more of our time in the kitchen and family room,” says Jamie.
The U- shaped kitchen has warm wooden tones and stainless steel benches, with a bar between it and the family room, which has an oriental feel with its multi- paned windows and sliding doors out to a vine- clad pergola that shelters a patio, which flows out to a small back lawn.
Built- in seating beneath the windows in the family room makes this a comfortable space. Tucked in behind the kitchen is a bathroom and laundry.
On the second level are three bedrooms, two of which open to a west- facing deck, a bathroom and another living space on the landing.
“This is where we watch TV,” says Jamie. “If we have people around we entertain downstairs and like having the TV away from the main living spaces.”
On this level, the views over the neighbourhood, back to the city and to the harbour start to open up.
“The fireworks from the Skytower are spectacular from here,” Zainab says.
Jamie says: “And at dusk is the best time to enjoy the view because the city starts to glow.”
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The three bedrooms on this level also have builtin desks and shelving. Around the corner from the living space is an office nook, where Jamie works.
The staircase to the top level has book shelves on one side and access to storage under the roof.
Windows in the master bedroom frame harbour views to the north and city views to the east.
Jamie says there is potential to create an en suite to the master bedroom but that will be for new owners to consideras he has been appointed director of research at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London.
He says it’s an exciting job for him, and the children will see friends they made during their last stay there.