Style: July 01, 2022

46 Style | Home
“They wanted the four-bedroom house to look almost like a holiday home and
fit into the hill, not be a monstrosity that you could see from miles away.”
Dave says they wanted the four-bedroom house to look
almost like a holiday home “and fit into the hill, not be a
monstrosity that you could see from miles away”.
“It also had to have really good indoor-outdoor living. So
at the front of the house, we can sit in the sun but we can
also sit behind the house out of the sun and both [areas] are
connected to the living room.”
Instead of digging a big hole in the bank, they stepped
the house down so it followed the slope of the section,
Chris says. A subtle change in floor level in the hall added
interest and the mono pitch roof meant they could create
mezzanines for storage and extra sleeping space. Another
mezzanine above the garage serves as a home office.
The higher ceiling heights also allowed them to use taller
glass sliding doors, even at the lowest point in the living
room, Chris says, adding that windows that “chop the top of
the mountains off” are one of his bugbears.
In winter, there is the option to use a woodburner, while
in summer, external blinds on the west-facing windows
prevent overheating.
A mechanical ventilation system uses the energy of the
warm, stale outgoing air to preheat the incoming fresh air
and maintain the home’s ambient temperature.
On the exterior, redwood shiplap weatherboards were
used as the cladding; using timber from a plantation in
Nelson that had just reached maturity.
Many people would have brought cedar in from Canada
but the SIPs were imported from the UK and they wanted
to offset that a little by using locally grown timber, Chris says.
“There are overseas companies investing in growing
redwood in New Zealand in places like Kaikoura and, at the
moment, with building supply problems, it’s really good to
have alternatives.”
The final touch, landscaping, was completed by the
owners. This involved building retaining walls, moving 35
cubic metres of soil from the top of the section to the
bottom to flatten it out, planting hundreds of native plants
and putting in irrigation, Dave says.
“The idea was to create a sort of native forest around the
house to complement the timber.”