Birkenhead: Added Value

32 Palmerston Road, Birkenhead

It's normally the comings and goings of children that force homeowners to trade up or down - not books.

But Sue and Wystan Curnow are expecting to be swamped by scholarly tomes upon the retirement of Wystan, a professor of English at the University of Auckland.

The couple, who are in their 60s, have lived in and loved their Birkenhead Point bungalow for 33 years, but as, Sue says, "We've got plenty of spaces here - they're just not the right sort of spaces."

"When Wystan retires, he's going to have to bring all his books back home from the university, so we have to find somewhere for them," she says. "And I would like a bigger room to do all my sewing in."

The Curnows raised four boys in the four-bedroom kauri home and have made alterations over the years, most notably adding a living room and verandah to the back of the house to make the most of the views to the southwest over the Waitemata Harbour.

Sue enlisted the help of a draughtsman friend to draw up plans to make the house embrace the view instead of turning its back on the water. Once they got a builder in, the job took about six months.

"Houses of this age [circa 1912] and in this area face the street and not the view," says Wystan.

"So what we've done is open up the view from the indoors and the verandah outdoors. It's like sitting in the view when we're in this room."

In a similar vein, they added French doors to the original living room, on the north side of the house, to open it to the front garden.

The Curnows have also updated the bathroom and kitchen, along with replacing the original scrim and wallpaper throughout the house with plasterboard. But they did leave one room - Wystan's reading room - with exposed kauri sarking, which has been oiled to emphasise its character. The house also has polished timber floors - a mixture of rimu and matai.

"The house was in what you might call very original condition when we bought it, with two power points in the whole house," says Sue. "I felt like a pioneer in those days."

All the alterations have been done in keeping with the character of the home, which has meant a lot of scavenging for period materials.

"We've been really conscious of retaining the dignity of the house," says Wystan.

"There had been a lot of bad repairs or alterations done and in the last few years we've been trying to restore the house to what it would have been."

Sue and Wystan, with the help of one of their sons, have also terraced and planted with natives some of the land at the rear of the house, taming what was a lumpy section.

"It's only in the last five years or so that we have started calling it the garden; before that it was the section," says Sue.

Vital Statistics

SIZE: Land 1464sq m, house 140sq m.

PRICE: $900,000.

INSPECT: Sat/Sun 12pm-12.45pm.

CONTACT: Lorraine Young, Harcourts Grey Lynn, ph 360 4193 bus, 021 764 032.

FEATURES: Beautifully maintained four-bedroom bungalow down right of way. Two living areas. Harbour views from open plan living area and wide verandah. Subdividable property with its own bush-clad gully.