OBJECT OF DESIRE
Some houses are meant to be noticed, as these owners discovered during the rebuild of their Ponsonby home. ROBYN WELSH reports
Some houses get the workin-progress attention they deserve, while others get more than anyone imagined.
That was certainly the case when Mark and Ida Dowling began picking apart the flat conversion of their Edwardian villa eight years ago.
Halfway through demolition work, a musician living round the corner noticed the goingson.
He called Mark to see if his band Blacklistt could shoot their next music video there and Mark thought it was a grand idea.
The resulting footage showed the remaining bare bones, including the centuryold front bay window, with a wall of technically engineered “flames” as the backdrop.
It was the perfect visual for the band’s 2012 single Worth Fighting For.
It was also exactly how Mark, a packaging manufacturer, and his wife Ida, a civil engineer, saw this house when they bought it a few months earlier.
This end of Trinity St is part of the Auckland Council’s historic heritage area that includes “The Avenues” and this north-facing house is spectacularly well-positioned to steal the limelight.
“We can see it from the other end of Ardmore Rd, at the top of the street, especially when there are no leaves on the trees in winter,” says Mark.
Now, following the sevenmonth
“We didn’t want to turn the villa into something else. We wanted to create the very best villa we could.”
rebuild that was designed by architect Darren Jessop, this view is a daily thrill. “When you stand on Jervois Rd and look down, it is a really pretty house. It is a really great result,” says Mark.
During demolition, it was a nervous first-view turning into Ardmore Rd for the 600m drive down.
“The worst day was when the bay window had gone. I thought, ‘That wasn’t part of the deal’,” says Mark.
“At least I had time to think about what had gone on. It turned out that every window frame was rotten.”
Little more than the timber floor and a few windows remained by the time the rot had been despatched.
“You could have thrown a grenade at it and started again but because of the heritage zoning we had to give this house its respect. We didn’t want to turn the villa into something else. We wanted to create the very best villa we could.”
Along the way they unearthed original wallpaper and apothecary bottles hidden in old walls. Every interior wall has been rebuilt. “We wanted to have a really open feeling in the living area,” says Mark. For effortless family living and entertaining, they opened out the indoor living area to the rear deck and astro-turf lawn on the same level.
At the front, they had bespoke leadlight glass designed for their villa door. In the living area, the vibrant hibiscus-style wallpaper is a nod to Ida’s Cook Island heritage.
They’re not averse to doing it all again either. “I think we’ve possibly got another building project in us at some stage,” says Mark, ahead of their move to Freemans Bay.
“It’s a character villa with a heated pool and spa in a great Ponsonby location,” says Robyn Clark from Bayleys. Sale: Auction July 22
Contact: Robyn Clark, Bayleys, 021 707 529