SCHOOL ZONES:
Victoria Ave Primary, Remuera Intermediate, Epsom Girls’, Auckland Grammar.
CONTACT:
Gerard Charteris, 021 996 622, or Steve Koerber, 021 864 166, Ray White.
Elegant clipped trees down this front path deliver a peep of the porch that is the clue to a dramatic but sympathetic contemporary renovation of this 1920s Californian bungalow.
Its black and white tessellated floor tiles that tie this home's original architectural elements to the interior palette of the housethat was virtually rebuilt in a $2 million 14-month collaborative undertaking in 2005.
That project brought architect Geoff Ward, interior designer Prudence Lane and builder Daniel Hari together on site from the outset by the previous owners, who had never intended to sell their lifestyle investment.
They had door-knocked to buy this house, just as Andrew Clark and Rebecca Keen did through their real estate agent in 2009. The family was looking for a long-term base after 13 years based in Indonesia and Singapore, where Andrew was a management consultant, most often working overseas.
When Andrew and Rebecca walked through here, it was the skilful blend of contemporary scale and colour wrapped in original and replica architectural detail that sold them on the house.
"We needed a place to call home for the kids during their high schooling," says Rebecca. "The kids were starting to sound like Americans and we needed to make them New Zealanders."
They needed to do nothing more than build a timber deck off the dining area. All they had to do was relocate their lives to the three-storey house, which has bedrooms, living areas and bathrooms on each level.
Designed for maximum lifestyle flexibility, the previous owners gutted and reshaped the house to achieve that goal. The entry level features the informal living, dining, kitchen and study to the left of the lobby. The balcony lounge behind the kitchen also services the guest bedroom, which has its own en suite. The master bedroom wing is off the lobby past the original formal lounge and its feature stained-glass windows. The central original staircase leads up to two bedrooms, a central lounge and bathroom and down to self-contained quarters plus a media room and the large laundry.
60 Seaview Rd, Remuera, Auckland, home of Rebecca Keen and Andrew Clark. Photo / Fiona Goodall, Getty Images.
The key elements that have added its personality all evolved during the rebuild, says Prudence, from the porch tiles to the water-resistant Corian window sill in the master en suite.
The three-level laundry chute has been a fun feature for the Clark children, who would race in after school, rip off their shoes and toss their socks down the chute inside the kitchen pantry.
Decor-wise, the theme Prudence and her client worked to was "white, mirrors, glass and one single colour".
That single colour is the dark American oak timber floors, the carpet and the bathroom cabinets beneath Corian bench tops and porcelain basins.
"People underestimate the simplicity of a single colour and white," says Prudence.
All of this still left plenty of scope for this family to add its own personality -- and that has included Rebecca's rented bee hives in the lower garden, which came about after she took a bee-keeping course.
These bees yield 15kg of honeycomb with honey a year and the family will heap it on their toast at the kitchen bench then take it outside to enjoy on the poolside deck. A few other families in this neighbourhood enjoy the goodness as well.
The pool is out of sight of the main house but a voice-automated system alerts if the pool gate has been left open or if someone is on the property.
Now it's time for this family to close the door on the effortless living chapter of this home's history and relocate to Melbourne.
