SCHOOL ZONES:
Whangaparaoa Primary, Whangaparaoa College.
CONTACT:
Karen Franklin, Harcourts, 021 779 838.
*Plus carport for 2
Forty years on from its construction as home to a family with five children, this modernist edition has been the perfect retirement project for Garry and Jill Lythberg.
They moved here in December 2013 and lived on-site during renovations that have retained the structure and footprint of the modernist house that was built in 1977.
"We didn't want to change the house from what it was into something it wasn't. We wanted to keep to its original design.
"We've not changed anything about the footprint because it was so good as it was," says Jill.
As enthusiasts of the 1970s modernist style, they knew what they were working with when they walked through the H-shaped house with its original dark brick and white concrete block work and its dark timber beams and ceilings.
With six previous house projects behind them, this couple knew how best to tackle the process.
In their first year here, their list included replacing joinery, installing the new kitchen, laying floors and shifting that front door. The following year the bathrooms took priority.
Along the way they painted out the red and yellow vinyl-papered walls, the dark timber throughout and the dark brick wall in the lounge.
In doing so they have still retained the linear texture that acknowledges this home's origins.
But it is their red front door that guests notice first, as they did in one of the Lythberg's previous homes.
"Everyone who comes in says: 'Wow, love your front door'. Red is a colour I love," says Jill.
Entry to the house is down the long, covered-breezeway and through this 2.4m high front door into the porch.
Garry decided they should shift that door out into the breezeway, to improve the proportions between the two spaces. In doing so they brought the coloured leadlight glass feature in from the cold.
Virtually every other alteration has been about making a timely replacement of old original features with a style-appropriate, modern-day equivalent.
5 Onepu, Manly. Photo / Supplied
They replaced the old bronze-anodised aluminium joinery with a powder-coated, pearl grey-coloured, double-glazed equivalent.
They installed a new kitchen, choosing white brick tiles that are a nod to the brick lines elsewhere.
Directly outside, they embraced the outdoor lifestyle with clear roll up/drop down vertical blinds installed between the original pergola pillars and beneath the new glass roof that replaces the pergola roof.
Indoors, they took out the original log burner with ceramic tiles on the sides that was, says Jill politely "very much of its time".
To replace it as a valuable source of winter warmth, they've installed more modern free-standing log-burners in both their family room and their lounge.
Underfoot there is carpet in the bedrooms and the formal lounge, with American oak laminate flooring for the kitchen and adjacent informal living areas.
5 Onepu, Manly. Photo / Supplied
With two dogs in the house and a beach nearby, it has proved to be the ideal flooring option, says Jill.
Their bathroom/toilet/laundry wing has been updated with frosted glass windows, large format floor and wall tiles in the bathroom, toilet and adjacent laundry which also houses the shower.
Jill knew a little of the family who built this house and says the shower on the side of the house near the neighbouring park and beach was ideal for the young children.
The room that is now the library next to a bedroom was originally two inter-connecting bunkrooms and Jill says these two spaces could easily be closed off to create an additional bedroom.
For this energetic couple, this property has been their introduction to Manly.
