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STAMP of APPROVAL A Taranaki post office has been transformed from rundown to ravishing by a nurse from Trans

WORDS VIRGINIA WINDER PHOTOGRAPHS JANE DOVE JUNEAU

Holiday souvenirs normally involve trinkets, not entire buildings. And not an old post office that you intend to make your home. When Australian-based Maria and David Hancock were holidaying in New Zealand in December 2019, they found the Eltham building on Trade Me. “We came through the back and I saw just the stairs and said ‘this is us’,” says Maria, who was born in the Transylvania region of Romania. They did the deal that night and moved in at the end of February 2020, just as the Covid pandemic was taking hold. “The first thing we needed was a bed – our stuff came after a while in a container,” David says. So he built one, which is “incredibly comfortable” and saved them thousands of dollars.

Then, with vision and hard work, along with Maria’s eye for detail and a bargain, they began the daunting task of turning the dilapidated historical building, built in 1905, into a graceful home and B&B.

As they toiled, they made sure the post office’s character was preserved – the telephone booth for international calls is now a coat cupboard, the walk-in safe remains in the entrance hall to the B&B suite and some original signs are still in place. They also kept the mataī floors, doors and architraves, and used rimu ceiling boards for skirting boards and in other parts of the home. The building’s soaring rooms with their 4.2m-high ceilings create a dramatic canvas.

The couple created an apartment for themselves on the upper floor, where a wooden counter with a window opens into the kitchenette. “You used to come up here for your telegrams,” says David. Downstairs, they created The Helena Suite for paying guests by removing walls, adding stained glass windows and building a platform in the corner for a bath that didn’t fit into the revamped bathroom. They also replaced cords in the double-hung sash windows, had English radiators fitted and Maria furnished the suite in a decadent style from what she describes as a lost era. “Everything that is gold in here was painted by me,” she says. Maria has also hung different wallpapers throughout, which remind her of home.

Maria, a radiology nurse, fled communist Romania in the 1980s with her then husband Alexander Imre, leaving daughter Adriana in the care of her grandfather.

In Vienna, they were placed in a United Nations camp for refugees seeking political asylum. Escaping had been a huge risk. “If they [had caught] us going over the border, we would have been shot or exchanged for salt.”

They spent a year in the camp, where Maria had a baby boy called Alexander, and then moved to Australia, where she had to adapt to Western ways. “In the beginning I was scared of everything.”

But she settled, was reunited with her daughter after three years, and made a life for herself. Meanwhile, David was busy with his photojournalism career, freelancing for newspapers and magazines in Australia and the UK.

In 2015, Maria and New Zealand-born David connected via an online dating app. Says Maria: “My son put me on Tinder and he [David] was the first man I met.” David says she was a first for him, too. “I just look at faces. When I saw hers, I saw this fiery challenging laughter... I saw that in her eyes.”

Together, they have channelled a power of passion into revamping the old post office. “We worked as partners on this project,” he says.

In Romania, as well as nursing, Maria sewed beautiful one-off garments for the elite residents of her home city of Oradea. “Everything I did was for special occasions and I put my heart and soul into what I was sewing.” Hanging on the wall of their sitting room is a black-and-white photo of a young Maria wearing a white synthetic fur coat she made for a wedding. In Eltham, she has used her dressmaking skills to turn 50m of fabric into drapes and to make cushions covers.

Both Maria and David have an uncanny ability to source beautiful items that fit with the style of their home, finding treasures everywhere, including next door at The Bank, a design, clothing, art and photography store and studio, owned by Mark Bellringer and Barbara Valintine, which featured in NZ House & Garden in August 2019.

Further afield, a favourite find is a bronze French fruit bowl they bought off a woman for $80. It was completely black but is now clean and gleaming. “Maria spent a day on it – she never gives up,” says David. Or sits down.

Maria gets up early and her first task is to fill the house with flowers. “Every day I spend hours changing flowers, changing waters – cut flowers, that’s the best chore ever.”

David has been busy baking bite-sized gingernuts to support Ukraine following its invasion by Russia earlier this year.

He’s using the same recipe as Helena Barnard, the namesake of the B&B suite. The mother of eight sons devoted herself to supporting the soldiers of World War I by raising funds and sending tins of her home-baked gingernuts to the troops.

Meanwhile, the couple haven’t finished work on their two-storey home, with another bedroom and the downstairs bathroom to go. “We have great faith that what we do is going to be beautiful,” says David.

HOMES / ASHBURTON

en-nz

2022-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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