92c Hinemoa St, Birkenhead, Auckland,. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Architectural graduate Sophie Wylie grew up in this street, dreaming of designing houses.
Now she's living the dream in the home which she designed for her family and which stands in front of this property and its adjacent mirror image sibling.
These two contemporary homes are the latest residential
project by Sophie and her
husband Liam Joyce of Artifact Property — and their evolution came at one of the busiest times in their lives. Amid raising two toddlers and pregnant with their third child, Sophie designed these two freehold homes that share the same driveway as their own street-front side brick home.
All three homes have pitched rooflines, but 92B and 92C Hinemoa St are deliberately different in line, style and choice of materials to avoid any corporate village feel within the enclave.
"It has its own language but it is unique as well," says Liam of these two homes together.
With their exterior cedar rain screen and fixed louvres, vertical pine weatherboards and powder-coated steel tray cladding, they represent Sophie's low-maintenance design for family life in this seaside suburb noted for its heritage and its villa homes.
The pitched rooflines here are the villa influence. Everything else is about modern living with clearly defined, separate private and communal areas, open transition areas and a simple colour palette.
Indoor and outdoor living takes up the entire open-plan top level beneath the pitched ceiling. The three double bedrooms and the family bathroom are on the middle floor.
Downstairs on the entry level, a guest/fourth bedroom, lounge/media room and combined bathroom with fully equipped laundry take up the entry level, all opening out to the back lawn.
White full-height joinery, wide-plank, glued oak flooring and super white Brazilian marble-look granite in the kitchen bench, the fireplace fascia and in the bathroom accents are choices made with good reason.
"It's simple," says Sophie. "We didn't design the house for anyone in a conscious way. We just designed a clean palette that would suit whoever comes in here. We've left it up to them to colonise this house and make it their own."
The solid oak timber stairs run straight up off the front door that is set off to the side.
Closed in treads up to the first landing are balanced by the open vertical screen by the
hallway along to the ground floor quarters.
Up past the slender vertical stairwell windows, the stair treads are open to maximise the natural light.
The view from the first landing down and out the front door and up past the bedrooms to the slender window on the top level reaffirms the light that infuses the entire transition area.
There is a discreet guest powder room at the top of the stairs that opens directly into the lounge. The entertainment unit here is "smoked stained" oak veneer, the waterfall kitchen bench is granite and veneer, and the rear workbench is a complementary shade of engineered stone.
Nearby, a powder-coated exterior screen and planter trellis flanks front Juliet balcony. At the opposite end, the full-width hardwood timber deck and timber balustrade planter box frame the view through to Herne Bay and the Waitakere ranges.
Downstairs within the bedroom wing, the master bedroom has a discreet built-in desk.
"We could have put a chair in there but we built in a desk and we've left space above for shelving or whatever the new owner wants to do," says Sophie. This is about what she calls "these little moments of design".
Of the homes that are her mark in this neighbourhood, she says: "It's about offering a little extra."