KEY POINTS:
11 Waima Street, Arch Hill.
There's been plenty of debate recently about how the younger generation has a tougher job breaking into the housing market. But Trevor Bail, for one, doesn't buy that argument. "It's never been easy," he says.
He bought a rundown Arch Hill cottage
in 1992 purely because it was the only thing he could afford.
"Arch Hill was an area that was under the radar at the time," he says. "I couldn't afford Grey Lynn or Ponsonby, and it was only because I had friends over this way that I knew about the area. When I saw the house was empty I approached the owner because I thought it was perhaps something I could afford."
And once he'd bought, there was the matter of repairing and restoring the home he now shares with wife Mary-Kate Thomson and their two girls, Celia, 6, and Bridget, 3.
The kauri cottage, built in about 1885, had been a rental and was in a sad way. As Mary-Kate recalls, "It had the original scrim on the walls and the copper was still in place by the coal range. The house had to be reblocked straight away because the floor was shaped like an umbrella."
To help pay the mortgage, Trevor renovated the front two rooms then tenanted them, while he slept in a bedroom divided from the lounge by a curtain.
"I'd do a bit of work on the house in the morning then go off to work then I'd come back and do some more."
He'd met Mary-Kate at about the same time as buying the house although, as he ruefully points out, "She went off to England on her OE for two years while I did all the dirty work."
That dirty work included polishing the kauri floorboards and removing all the skirting boards, gibbing the walls and then reinstating the skirtings.
With his restoration work, Trevor tried to remain faithful to the character of the home and part of that was his "no MDF rule".
The house has two bedrooms at the front, flanking the hallway. The master bedroom has a bay window and a fireplace with a solid kauri fire surround and an exposed brick chimney.
"If it was just the two of us, I'd change the master bedroom back to a living room because it's a gloriously sunny room," says Mary-Kate.
Beyond the bedrooms are the lounge and kitchen. The lounge also has an exposed brick chimney surrounding the coal range. "When there was just the two of us we'd get it going and do great pizzas in it," says Trevor.
To the rear of the lounge is a small sunroom with a slate floor and glazed roof. Trevor built the kitchen cabinetry using recycled tawa and stainless steel. The bathroom at the rear of the house is tiled and has a clawfoot bath and an open shower.
When Trevor was clearing down the side of the house for the parking bay, he discovered a well that would have been the home's original water supply. He cleared out the rubbish that had been dumped in it and turned it into a wishing well.
The couple has agonised about selling their much-loved home and leaving the central city, but they need more room for their daughters.
