Barn conversion makes a wonderful home for artist Mandie Taylor
Name: Mandie Taylor Occupation: Creator/artist Suburb: Pahoia Lived here: Four years, but been in the family 40 years
Trough the lens of love and nostalgia, Mandie Taylor could visualise the barn on their family property could become a beautiful home.
Mandie and husband Dan McGovern live in a loft-like barn conversion in Pahoia on a site that has been part of Mandie's life since the 1970s.
But no one, except Mandie when she younger, has ever lived on it. The barn building was a piggery when her family bought the property in the 1970s. They converted it to a kiwifruit orchard and the piggery roof was lifted and turned into an implement shed to house orchard machinery. Mandie spent her teens planting hundreds of shelterbelt trees, and lived in the barn in her 20s to save up for her first home.
"I've come full circle now," she says, referring to how she spent a chunk of her younger years mowing orchard lawns. She's still the boss of the ride-on mower.
After spending many years away from the property, Mandie and Dan had the opportunity to purchase it and save the barn from certain demolition. Mandie saw the barn's potential and "luckily found builders who shared my creative passion and understood my vision".
Now that the renovations and refurbishments are complete, Mandie feels she is truly home.
The renovation has been hugely successful and Mandie has customised the interior with fabulous, rustic touches such as the dining table which is dominated by a large, stuffed boar's head on a cake stand - something of a nod the property's previous use.
The renovation was in stages: to build a new home for occupants of the barn. After the barn was clad and sealed externally, Mandie and Dan then moved in to finish the interior themselves.
The busiest room in the house is the open plan kitchen-dining room. It's a gathering area for the family, Mandie says, their boys and their partners, as well as a large extended family. Winter is spent nursing warm cups of tea around the table while Dan cooks, and summer has the bi-fold doors wide open.
Mandie designed the kitchen to suit her impressive knife collection. The collection comprises old Japanese bone handled knives from her father through to a wooden handled butcher's cleaver found in an antique shop. The collection is precious to Mandie, who hates the idea of hiding it away where no one could admire it.
Any house changes on the horizon?
"I always have something simmering on the back burner. I quite like the idea of adding a guest wing, and this house doesn't currently have a glass corridor ... "