820 Old North Road, Waimauku, Auckland. Photo / Ted Baghurst
Dave Allen is a man who knows what he wants - and doesn't muck around making it happen.
Eleven years ago, when he and his late wife, Wendy Brindle, sold a spreading 4ha property in Waimauku that they'd transformed over 32 years into an English-style botanical garden, it wasn't to sit back and relax.
Instead, the couple bought a smaller section 300m up the road and set about building a new house and, again, transforming paddocks into a garden.
Sadly, only six months after they moved into the spacious solid masonry home with daughters aged 16 and 18, Wendy died. But Dave kept up their vision.
"It was empty farmland, behind a vineyard. We share a driveway that goes past the Twin Totara vineyards, we're surrounded by 10-acre blocks, but the owner was allowed to carve off a smaller block when he covenanted the stand of native bush behind us," says Dave.
"Our old next-door neighbours are the same next-door neighbours now, just on the other side. I gave the architect a 12-page brief and drawings to the nearest millimetre and said, 'Design this'. He said, 'Design what? It's done.' But he was a very good listener."
Well known for the solid masonry buildings he designed with Nautica Homes (now known as House of Nautical), architectural designer Mark Wilson had indeed heard Dave and Wendy's desire for a home that worked for active teenagers (hence the four-car garage, for each of their cars) but gave their parents some peaceful separation. The meticulous engineer says that the building process was a delight, smoothly going from bare paddocks to consented home in less than 13 months.
In Mark and the builders he found people who were equally passionate about quality.
Dave gives full credit to Wilson for the way the house exceeded the family's brief for a New Zealand farm-style house.
Wilson gave the oversized garage (it fits mowers and a workshop) barn-like, black corrugated iron walls to contrast with the concrete plastered house. The house, a double Y shape, was designed to have a parents' wing on one side of the living spaces, kids on the other.
The heart of the home is the kitchen, dining and living space with Wilson's signature soaring cathedral ceilings. Dave loves cooking so designed the kitchen in exact detail, with modern-country panelled cabinets, a wall of fridge and pantry.
Warm Tasmanian blackwood shelves and island bench contrast with the granite bench tops. Off the kitchen is a laundry with a small sewing room attached, and a huge country-style storage room. The rimu of the kitchen floors is repeated in built-in shelving in the living room.
As a solid masonry house, passive heating and cooling does the work of keeping temperatures comfortable year round, but there is also underfloor heating.
The main living room has an efficient Jetmaster wood fireplace and there's also a smaller sitting room with a wood stove.
Dave says it was a great adult retreat next to the master suite so that the girls and friends could spread out in the main living room.
There is also a music room and library for Wendy and one of their daughters who played piano. The loggia was designed for Auckland's weather - north facing for sun, sheltered from the prevailing winds and the inevitable rainy days.
The house has comfortably hosted significant birthdays and baby showers for 50 people (there's room for 20 cars around the front).
In the girls' wing there are two double bedrooms and a bathroom, as well as a study, which is Dave's office now that it is no longer needed for homework.
The girls have long left home, but the house was ideally set up when one of them, husband in tow, settled back for 18 months. In the master wing is also a self-contained guest suite with bathroom and a little kitchenette, as well as its own entrance.
While in the past decade the city has crept out to meet his country spread, Dave says that their road skirts the busiest bit of the Kumeu highway, but enjoys the benefits of the Kristin school bus (and one to Waimauku primary school) at the end of the drive.
The convenience of Westgate shops and service centre, plus the burgeoning Kumeu village, mean country living is far from isolated now and the Waterview tunnel means easier runs to the airport.
Living right next door to their new site while the house was being built gave the passionate gardening couple a chance to figure out planting for the property that made the most of local soil and climate conditions.
The winding driveway is planted with a gracious grove of liquidambar trees, there are more trees lining the edges of the spreading lawn, as well as a productive fruit orchard and vege garden - all irrigated by water from the nearby Ararimu Stream and a sophisticated irrigation scheme.
Plenty of mulch and compost means that the 110 trees already look mature and need no maintenance.
Dave reckons the 1 hour 50 minutes on his ride-on mower to keep the lawns under control is his time to talk to each of them.
Dave is selling up as the house is too big for one. In his working life he travelled 200 days a year; astonishingly, retirement travels mean he is away almost as often.
While the house has always been easy to lock up and leave for weeks at a time, overseas friends are urging him to cut back on the house and land, find an apartment and keep up more travel.
He leaves a meticulous owners' manual covering everything from irrigation to security systems (and a catalogue of the trees) for the next people to enjoy the enviable country lifestyle he created for his family.