Do-up by design
A first-time homeowner tells Kylie Klein Nixon how she turned a 1930s cottage into a villa worth four times its purchase price.
When first-time buyer Rachel Massey bought her Upper Hutt home in 2015, it was a cosy, two-bedroom 1930s cottage with a tiny bathroom and a draughty laundry in a lean-to on the back of the house.
After a year of planning, 10 months (thanks to lockdown last year) of renovation work, and rocketing property values, Massey’s cottage has been transformed into a spacious ‘‘villa-ish’’ home, perfect for entertaining, and it is now estimated to be worth four times what she paid for it six years ago.
‘‘I did get a really, really good price for [the 90-square-metre house], and I’ve probably invested about the same amount into it through the renovations,’’ Massey said.
‘‘But now it’s about 135sqm with an internal garage, and you can have it as a four-bedroom.
‘‘I have currently as a threebedroom with two living spaces, which works for me.’’
The original floor plan was a square, with two bedrooms on one side, the lounge in the kitchen on the other side, and a small bathroom at the end of a beautiful hallway.
Behind the house was a somewhat dingy bricked courtyard and parking bay with a pergola and fence.
Massey’s renovation pushed out the back end of the house, opening up the kitchen to a new living and dining space.
A third bedroom, that Massey uses as a home office, was also tucked into the space, beside the single internal garage/laundry.
‘‘The laundry is pretty small. But that’s because I don’t like to do laundry, so I wasn’t going to add any extra space to that.’’
The dining area will eventually open through bifold doors onto a small fenced patio, which ‘‘gets a lot of morning sun’’. It’s a bright, airy addition compared with what had been there before, and it completely changes the feel of the home – from basic and cosy to modern and gracious – without sacrificing any period appeal.
Massey made some design decisions ‘‘early on that really helped further down the track’’.
‘‘It’s got some beautiful timber and some really lovely deco features. So it was really important, because I love the art deco era, to keep those features and modernise where I could.
‘‘The whole house is painted one colour, and that meant I didn’t have to choose a different colour for every room or think about what furniture might work,’’ she said.
Rather than mixing it up with colourful feature walls, Massey used texture to create interest, with faux wainscotting and panelling, in the master bedroom and bathroom.
As a first-time homeowner and renovator, Massey had no idea how to even begin such a huge project.
Friends recommended leaving that to the professionals, so she contracted a local design company and surveyors.
Part of that deal included them preparing and submitting resource and building consents.
‘‘It did take a lot of the back and forth and stress out of it for me. They know the council process; they know who to deal with,’’ she said.
Massey started with a design, rather than a budget, in mind because she thought it would be impossible for a first timer to even begin to know how much work like this could cost.
She was prepared to adjust the design but had a fixed-cost contract because that’s what her bank required before releasing funds for the work. She had a solid contingency set aside for any issues that could arise during work on such an old home.
‘‘I’m not doing this for resale. I’m renovating a home for myself, so I can have my friends over and my family over. So I think if you can really understand your reason why you’re renovating, that’s going to help you make a lot of decisions [about the budget].’’
In the end, the most crucial element was choosing the right builder – one Massey had a good rapport with – that made her reno seem such a breeze.
‘‘I treated it a bit like a job interview. I had my criteria of what I was looking for.’’ These included being prepared and turning up on time. Builders also had to be transparent about costs.
‘‘It wasn’t about finding the cheapest builder at all, but more understanding how they came to the costs.’’
Massey saved money where she could by repurposing native timber taken from the home during the reno to build a spectacular dining table and shelves, and by doing certain jobs herself, such as the painting.
It was a ‘‘huge, huge effort’’, but it really paid off.
‘‘It meant that I could spend money that I would have spent on painters on beautiful tiles for the kitchen and things like that. [The tiles] were certainly not in the original budget.’’
According to Homes.co.nz, the property had a rateable valuation of about $335,000 in 2016, about a year after Massey bought it.
Now the website gives properties in her area an estimated sale range of $890,000 to $1 million, reflecting the nationwide growth in property values. It’s likely that the highspec renovation and double reception configuration could increase that sale value further.
That’s nice to know, but not the most important thing, says Massey, who has no plans to sell.
‘‘The buzz that you get from having a vision of what you want, and then bringing it to life, and then when other people come over and get just as excited about the space and love it just as much as you do – that’s really cool. That’s really, really rewarding.’’
Hear more of Rachel Massey’s story in episode 2 of our podcast First Rung: Reno 101. Find out more online at Stuff Homed, or download, subscribe and listen by scanning the QR code below.