The story of 57c Hine Rd
The original house was built in 1960, and the grounds were set up by a part-time florist who grew flowers for sale at the house. There is only one variety of magnolia left from that endeavour.
She also planted the now-mature trees, in particular the English oak and several totara, so they are now about 55 years old. The other remaining plants are some plum trees, kanuka, holly, flowering cherry and a black locust. The kauri tree is less than two decades old.
I planted black fern, karaka, avacado, loquat, and bamboo. Mostly I let the self sown shrubs grow, like lancewood, five finger, mahoe, supplejack, wineberry, lemonwood, ribbonwood.
The extension
In 1981 we had a problem - my mother-in-law.
Her husband had died and she wished to move close to one of her children. The only appropriate place was our place. But with three young children in a standard three bedroom suburban house we could not house her, so we built a major extension to the house in 1982. It was much more than a granny flat, with a separate entry from the main house, two large rooms above the flat, and a mezzanine above that.
At the time, the old Gear freezing works in Petone was being dismantled and I chose to build the whole extension with recycled kauri. I acquired at a good price sufficient timber for the project; but nobody would cut it to size, so I built a saw mill, using baggage handling rollers from Wellington airport.
I bought over a hundred big beams, the total length of which came to 0.75 kilometres. These were floor joists. I also bought 3.5 kilometres of tongue and groove flooring, that had been nailed to the floor joists. To use the timber I had to remove a very large number of nails,and because the building was about 100 years old, and a lot of water is used in freezing works, all nails were rusty.
I cut the kauri to size for internal construction and weatherboards, with big beams cut as required. I hired a couple of carpenters, who found the kauri easy to work with, and they did all the construction, but the design was entirely mine. I continued the theme of bare kauri by using doors and plywood made from Fijian kauri and klinkii. I also built a large carport using steam piping from Gear and some of the big beams.
Surroundings
Because of the trees there are many birds, especially bellbird, tui and kereru, as well as sparrow, blackbird, finch. It takes a little practice to learn to recognise the usually five note bellbird call. At night there are morepork calls from the forest to the south. An occasional possum comes from there also.
There is a a creek that crosses the section, which is crossed by a bridge.
In an east-west valley there is maximum sun. At mid-winter the sun skims over the hills to the north. The roof is ideal for the addition of solar panels. The prevailing northerly and southerly winds are stopped by the hills to the north and south.
Finally - there is a time capsule of photos and description of the extensions placed during construction in the floor of the upstairs glass cabinet. Please leave there for all future owners – until the house is dismantled.