When Leon and Michelle Rieter bought their apartment in 2010, it was a shell, part of a former woolstore that had been converted into dwellings in Napier's port area of Ahuriri. To make the empty space home, they enlisted the help an architect to help them create spaces to suit their brief: "New York loft without the minimalist".
The existing steel posts and beams have been kept and more steelwork added, including under the floating wooden staircase in the apartment's atrium. This staircase leads to the upstairs bedrooms: the main suite, spare room, son Conrad's former room, and a feminine room for daughter Danielle to sleep in when she comes home during university holidays.
Reinforcing that New York feel is the wall-covering under the stairwell. The well-known black and white print Lunch Over Manhattan features construction workers casually enjoying a break while sitting on a steel girder high above the city. Leon found the print and blew it up on canvas to create a feature wall. "That, with the surrounding steel work, is just perfect," says Michelle. "It's got to be my number-one love."
On the steel beam above she's placed vintage mallets, chisels, planes and wood shavers. They sit well with the print and have sentimental value as they belonged to her late stepfather.