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MADE WITH LOVE

A hands-on approach pays off for this Taranaki family.

Words VIRGINIA WINDER / Photographs JANE DOVE JUNEAU

When a couple with an eye for style got hold of a multi-storey Edwardian house with a colourful history, it went from unkempt to elegant.

Sylvia Howieson and Tony Young bought the New Plymouth house in 2008, put tenants in it and returned to London with their two young boys. With them, Tony took detailed plans of the house so he could mark up all the changes he wanted to make, ready for architectural sign-off and council consents.

Sylvia’s focus was on colour and design, “inspired by NZ House & Garden”. She had a collection of the magazines, which she cut up and stuck on a board to muse over. “My tastes have not changed.”

Six years later, the couple and their boys Fergus and Campbell relocated to Taranaki, moving into the ramshackle home that was built in 1905 for a man of Belgian descent who was responsible for sourcing an ornate fireplace in the lounge and the sweeping staircase.

“When we came back the house was a wreck,” Tony says. “There was water coming through the roof at the back of the house – we had to replace walls,” adds Sylvia.

Tony, an oil and gas engineer and long-time house renovator, began working full-time on the property. “This was his job,” says Sylvia, who at the time was a senior advisor for the Ministry of Education; she is now a deputy principal at Coastal Taranaki School in Ōkato.

The plan was for Tony to spend two years restoring the house. That turned into three.

For five months he had help from builder Mel Slinger, and together they built a garage using windows from the dining room and carefully following the roof line of the house.

Inside, Tony relined scrim walls, put in insulation and a new kitchen, had the sash windows fixed and moved walls, turning the seven-bedroom house with an intriguing history into a four-bedroom home.

“Lots of rooms were divided up,” he says. “It had a fairly unusual life.” Adds Sylvia: “It used to be a rabbit

warren of hallways, staircases and tiny little rooms.”

For the first few decades the house was used as a residence, but after World War II it became the Tainui Guesthouse for returned servicemen, and in the 1960s the lower floor was occupied by wives who had husbands in the now-obsolete New Plymouth Prison. In the early 1970s it was a quarantine facility for sufferers of hepatitis C.

“Every 18 months the doorbell rings and it’s someone who used to live here,” she says.

The couple have now called the house Auldbar (Old Bar) after Tony’s dad John’s farm at Toko in rural Taranaki, and the Young homestead in Scotland.

Sylvia remembers some tough times living in the house at the beginning of the renovation project. For a time the lounge became their sole living headquarters, which wasn’t pleasant in mid-winter, especially with two young boys.

“There was one dark moment when we had no windows, just tarpaulin, and the only source of heating was the fire. We were cooking and eating in here,” she says. “Some nights there was a gale – it was so noisy and windy and blowing. It felt like being in The Wizard of Oz movie.”

But those times are offset by the many highlights. The swimming pool is a star attraction. When the family moved in it was overgrown, and filled with black water and a few dead creatures. Tony cleaned it out and got the boys to help paint it so it could be used. “I reckon it’s one of the nicest pools in town because it’s so private.”

The English-style garden is also a sheltered suntrap, perfect for banana palms, flaxes and planters with vegetables.

Created on what was once part of the driveway, the garden has been planted with flowers and foliage by Tony’s mum, Margaret. “She has free rights to the garden to pick and do the flower arrangements for the [Taranaki] Hospice and has done for years,” Sylvia

‘Every 18 months the doorbell rings and it’s someone who used to live here’

says. “Tony and Margaret do all the planting, I’m the weeder and the feeder.”

They also have beehives, which produce up to 40 litres of honey each year.

Inside, the lounge is now a warm and inviting place, with a window seat, gas central heating and kept cosy by wool Harris tweed tartan curtains sourced by Sylvia’s mother Evelyn from Scotland. “We brought them in our suitcase after a visit home,” says Sylvia.

Across the hall is the library, which is Sylvia’s dream space. “I wanted floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with a ladder.” Tony built the shelves using wood from an old TSB Bank building, which he found at the wreckers. An old painting ladder was cleaned up to become a smart addition to the room, which has walls painted in moody blue Resene Tax Break.

It’s an example of the couple’s ethos that the interiors reflect the period in which the house was built.

The biggest change was to the kitchen. Says Tony: “It’s what the house needed because it had a tiny kitchen that didn’t fit the proportions of the house.”

“This was meant to be our laundry but the kitchen guy said, ‘No, you are having a pantry’,” Sylvia says of the area that now keeps the kitchen free of clutter. The laundry is now in the garage which is perfect for dumping sports gear and sandy beach towels.

The “kitchen guy” built everything using recycled wooden furniture and included a large island bench and loads of storage space, while the family added a window-facing seating area.

Flowing off the kitchen is a dining room with an ornate Victorian sideboard and huge folding table, which can accommodate a large dinner party or be reduced to suit the family of four.

While their sons live downstairs, Sylvia and Tony are upstairs in a lofty bedroom with views over the city to the sea, across a leafy valley and up to Mt Taranaki. Tony moved a wall to add a walk-in wardrobe and spacious ensuite, and put in an extra

large window to bring in furniture and a clawfoot bath that had to be hoisted into the room by a crane.

This is heaven for Sylvia: “You lie in the bath and look up at the maunga.”

It’s peace and relaxation time that’s been wellearned. “It’s been hard work,” she says. “But it’s a really great place to live now,” Tony says.

“And we have the best parties,” Sylvia says. “That’s what our house is all about – it’s about entertaining and sharing it with everybody.”

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2021-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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