How do you marry up edgy custom steel features with original stained glass windows? You buy a relocatable villa, plan a contemporary extension, and enlist the help of an award winning architectural designer to put the two together.
It’s a good solution when one of you likes old and the other new, and it worked for Hannah and Duncan Anderson when they built their home at 279 Takatu Road, on the Matakana Coast.
They’d had some practice, completing the much-admired transformation of the Matakana Pub a few years ago. That refurbishment won architectural designer Peter Were the commercial interior award at the Auckland and Northland 2015 ADNZ Resene Architectural Design Awards.
Peter is Hannah’s uncle, so he was called in to work his magic on the house project, which got underway when Hannah found an old villa that was looking for its forever home.
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“I’ve always adored villas and I’d been looking at relocatables on TradeMe for years. Then I found this. It was on a corner section in Cambridge, by a gas station. It was original – very, very original – right down to the outdoor bathroom.”
The rescue was arranged, the old house was transported to the house site in Matakana and the transformation got underway. Looking back, there were some significant challenges but putting the two styles together wasn’t the biggest. “The consenting process was the most difficult,” Hannah says.
The villa became the bedroom wing, accommodating four big bedrooms, two bathrooms and the laundry. As many original features as possible, including the stained glass windows and timber floors, were retained.
The addition was designed as an open plan living pavilion containing a spacious modern kitchen with scullery, a big island bench, a casual dining space and a sitting area. Alongside is a more formal dining area, and then a lounge. This pavilion opens via stackers to the deck, pool and tiled outdoor entertaining area with spa and outdoor wood fireplace. The entire space totals over 400 square metres.
“It’s bullet proof – a great place for parties, and also a good family place for young kids.”
A seamless connection between the two wasn’t part of the brief. “We didn’t want them to look as if they had to match exactly,” Hannah says. “The two parts of the house are different but they work beautifully together.”
The interior styling also makes for a cohesive whole. While the pavilion has a raw luxe look, it references the villa style with its polished timber floors, wooden portals, timer bookcases and white-painted, sarked ceilings. Vintage-style light fittings hanging on chains from the pitched ceiling complete the picture. There’s a subtle change of style in the bedroom wing, where traditional features take the lead.
Hannah is especially pleased with the bathrooms, which face the sun and the view. “The sun is warming you up when you didn’t even realise you needed it,” she says. “They’re big bathrooms and I guess my favourite room in the house is one of them which features steel.”
She also loves the vista over farmland to Omaha Beach, Little Barrier Island and the Gulf beyond. The house is elevated to capture the best sea views but is tucked below the road, which gives it a feeling of safety and privacy.
The house on its nearly 5000 square metre section is going to auction on July 3, as Hannah is now living in Auckland. Much as she has loved her villa and its addition, the next property on her horizon, she says, will probably be a small house with no land.
Find out more about 279 Takatu Road, Matakana
