Our place: Inspired by Italy and its many charms

Annemarie Quill visits Tauranga interior designer John Darke in his nostalgia-filled villa.

The house was an original villa on 2nd Avenue and was moved to this site [in Waihi Road] in 1958. There are not many old villas left in Tauranga, but you can find them tucked away. We bought it five years ago.

I love old houses and European country style. In the garden, there's a large cork tree and the silk oak is pretty old, too. We have put in all the courtyards, which we plant clover in for the winter. We have made the fences from the old tin roof, and I even made the outside table.

I am from a rural community so this house, although we are only 3km from town reflects that. We have fruit trees, a family of chickens and everything we plant we can eat - avocados, feijoas, strawberries. We make our own preserves. I could hold a dinner party for 100 here. We want to create that Italian ambience of "come and be with us''.

The entrance to the house has Italian porcelain tiles but with walls made from aluminum as a nod to the agricultural world I come from.

We have done a lot of work to it and will do more over the years. It was in a rough condition when we bought it, so bad that the bath fell through the floor when we tried to take it out so we had to rebuild the bathroom. Now it is painted raspberry and the mirror is placed to show off the colours.

I love old frying pans. I have 38 hanging in the kitchen. I use most of them. Everything that is in the house tells a story of us. I have a family painting, where I am 10, by Cyril White. There is a photo on the wall of me at 2 then I have my son at the same age painted by Susan Harrison-Tustain.

We did not want to be too formal so have kept rustic touches, like the original door, which we stripped. My 14-year-old son wanted a bloke's room so it has the original kauri floor untreated. He has picked up on our love of antiques and vintage furniture and has an old sofa.

My 17-year-old daughter is more girly with a 100-year-old poster bed, which we picked up from a lady in town and a lovely old chair. When people come to the living room they do not want to leave.

I gathered furniture for 15 years but it looked wrong in every house we lived in until we found this house. We collect things - everywhere I go I buy something, and then take something else out - the worst thing, so over the years the house evolved to how we like it.

I have brass lights that were given to me - there are 36 bulbs in each. I have only polished them once in five years. The fireguard is out of a British ship the Mauritania, which sunk.
I have my great granddad's chair, which my mum used to sit on as a 3-year-old.

The clock is from my grandparents' mantelpiece. I keep my grandmother's plates, and have things like a plant from an old great aunt. Sometimes it is not even that I particularly like the object _ for example, this plant that my aunt gave me, but it is about preserving the past and giving things their place.

I am a sentimental person: I have a lamp that I bought in Levin the day of my grandmother's funeral so every time I look at it it reminds me of her.

I had the bunch of keys in the back door for years until one day, after the kids were giving us a hard time, I tried them in the bedroom door and one fitted so I presented it to my wife as a Valentine's Day present and now we display it.

We ripped the gib off, back to the sarking to give that rustic and contemporary feel. We have modern touches like the rug. The biggest issue in these houses is storage.

My shirts hang in that wardrobe in the lounge, and on top is a suitcase my brother had at boarding school. In the winter we even cook in here on the fire doing lamb shanks. The heat pumps through the whole house at 23C.

We have had 11 houses in 11 years. We will not move from this house. My family lived in the same house for 75 years and we will be the same. It is our own bit of paradise.