The Beginning & Stage One

Our Family Home

My husband, Dave and I bought this gorgeous three bedroom, 1980 colonial designed home, back in November 2000, with the plan to bring it back to life and to give it the love that it deserves.  The internal structure of the house was sound, however a redesign was required as there was no staircase to the upstairs level and the upstairs was only a shell, albeit it was a two storey house with windows, and net curtains!

The original layout downstairs consisted of a large cathedral roofed entrance/hallway (which is what sold it to us, as well as the street appeal!), off this to the right leading through double french doors at the front of the house is the large living room with a gas fireplace, which leads through another set of double french doors into the dining room.  From the dining room is the kitchen and adjoining separate laundry.  Down the long, wide hallway on the front left was the large master bedroom with a Scotchman's en-suite to the main bathroom.  At the rear is the guest bedroom with an en-suite and back towards the entrance way is another small bedroom.

The long hallway, on one side of the wall had three lots of separate cupboard doors.  One was a double coat cupboard, the other a single linen cupboard and another double cupboard for storage.  Storage is great, yes, don't get me wrong, but I thought this was a bit of an eyesore to look at from a design point of view!

Before we started the first round of renovations we lived in the house for two years.  Everyone always says you should live in a place before you start decorating or remodelling it, they are right!  This helped us to get a feel of the place and how the layout worked.  The only thing we did do was paint the bathroom white, as it had this dark tree wallpaper with birds in the trees, probably a fashion statement back in the 80s!

After several discussions, and debates with the architect back then!!! The design was agreed upon for the development of the staircase, the upstairs layout and slightly re-designing the hallway cupboards.

Downstairs - staircase installation

Upstairs - Master bedroom, bathroom, study & reading nook

The before, during and after photos of our initial renovation.  The photos aren't that great as I have taken a photo of a photo from my iPhone!

top left photo shows the shell, along with net curtains,

to the right is the framing looking through in to the new master bedroom.

bottom left photo shows the entrance to the main bedroom,

to the right quarter of the bedroom is removed to make way for the staircase!

we needed to replace the glass in the roof line of the entrance,
hall way too as it was cracked & not safe

Voila we have a staircase!  The staircase is heart Rimu.

The hallway cupboards

the far left is removed to make way for a study nook in the bedroom.

the far right double cloak cupboard is removed to enlarge the pantry in the kitchen

and the single doorway becomes a double entry laundry cupboard.

Upstairs bathroom,

loving the underfloor heating in the mornings!

Upstairs master bedroom, I love the theatrical curtains!

We painted the upstairs in double pearl lusta.

We also replaced the original gas fire place with a new (back then) Rinnai Flame Fire.

The lounge then got painted in a mustard colour.

 In the hallway, we wallpapered a feature wall in red.

Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to finish off the lighting fixtures upstairs or furnishings as we re-located to Australia with Dave's job.

We wanted to keep the house, as one day we thought we may return to New Zealand to be with our family and friends again.  So we decided to rent out our home.  At first I found this really difficult, thinking that other families or whoever would be living in our home that we had bought and lovingly renovated.  I just had to let go!

We put our home in the hands of a property rental agency, whom looked after it really well on our behalf.  The company kept us up to date with six monthly property inspection reports.  We also visited from time to time to conduct an inspection ourselves.Until the next instalment.