A touch of the Big Easy

481 Parnell Rd, Parnell, Auckland with vendor Niki McCartney. Photo / Fiona Goodall / Getty Images.

481 PARNELL RD, PARNELL

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SIZE: Land (approx) 323sq m, house (approx) 225sq m.

PRICE INDICATION: In excess of $2 million.

INSPECT: Sat/Sun 12-12.30 or by appointment.

ON THE WEB: barfoot.co.nz/558943

SCHOOL ZONES: Parnell School, double grammar.

CONTACT: Jack Atherton, 021 739 655, and Sherryl Jones, 021 122 3651, Barfoot & Thompson.

AUCTION: November 25.

Built in the style of a New Orleans villa, this early 1900s dwelling has kept a lot of commercial secrets safe within its four walls for the past 20 years.

When Niki McCartney bought it in 1995, she'd had the benefit of seeing it lived in as a home with an office downstairs. She fell in love with its beauty and functionality and its veranda connections to its enviable location. She also saw options appropriate to her career in adult literacy, eStablishing her English language school, which operated from here from 1995 until 2001.

Niki subsequently rented out the house for a mix of home/office uses until 2008 when she embarked on a sensitive renovation that touched only the areas requiring attention to achieve a separation of lifestyles. In doing so she created a private home for herself upstairs and another for tenants downstairs.

Architect Malcolm Walker reconfigured the stairs by removing the sweeping ground floor portion of the stairs behind the lobby and installing stairs straight up to the right of the main front door. A separate access here goes through a new exterior side door beyond the front gate at the side of the house.

These new, carpeted stairs link up with the original upper staircase, its turned newel post and balusters on the original landing where a colourful Victorian leadlight window looks north.

Throughout, the high stud remains intact adding to its sense of space and light. Character features include kauri floors, tall sash windows, board-and-batten ceilings, ceiling roses, corbels and the exquisite detailing in the frames of the curved lunette windows on exterior doors and in the hall archway en route.

Image 1 of 10: Work downstairs then enjoy life upstairs in your private sanctuary. Photos / Fiona Goodall, Getty

Kitchen and bathroom facilities are on both levels and this self-contained layout has worked well for Niki and her commercial tenants, the most recent of whom have rented her surplus upstairs rooms as well as the entire ground floor.

Life here during the working day and in the weekends is within arm's reach of the outdoors and for Niki, who travels a great deal, and this is part of its appeal. Her deep upstairs veranda looks north-west towards the Auckland Museum and the Domain. "You're in a whole microcosm up here. You're miles away from anywhere or anyone except for whom you choose to surround yourself with."

This same veranda has stairs down to the garden and also wraps around one of the three bedrooms upstairs. The two bedrooms at the front open to the east-facing veranda and have views across the mature trees and brick chimney pots of Parnell's colonial heritage.

Downstairs one of the two bedrooms opens to the rear veranda and the private tree-lined garden where seven sets of french doors around the Victorian conservatory-style lounge make for effortless large-scale entertaining.

Off to one side, the exposed brick chimney breast hints at family living of an earlier era before the chimney above was dismantled. Both fireplaces in the downstairs bedrooms are fully operational.

Niki's appreciation of this home has been as much for its functionality as for its form. "This has been incredibly flexible as a place to live," she says. However, her volunteer work in India where she helps untrained teachers teach literacy and numeracy to disadvantaged girls has necessitated a major shift in personal priorities despite her reluctance to sell this personal space here.