Ponsonby: Added value

7 Parawai Crescent, Ponsonby.

Chris Culverwell is not the first person to realise that having children is a life-changing experience.

But that didn't make it any easier when he decided he had to sell the ex-state house in Parawai Crescent that he bought 10 years ago.

He acquired the two-bedroom home when it first came on to the market after being a state rental and lived there for eight years before renting it out. He leveraged off his Ponsonby home to buy a home at Muriwai.

But when he and wife Amanda had twin girls, Jade and Ella, three months ago, he decided the brick and stucco plaster house had to go.

"Now, with the twins here, we need cash - they suck up a lot of money," he smiles.

"I didn't really want to sell it; I would have liked to have hung on to it for another 10 years. It's gone up so much in value. Without this place we wouldn't have been able to buy our place in Muriwai."

Chris says he hasn't altered the house a lot in the time he's had it.

"I did the usual things like ripping the old carpet out and polishing the floors. I took a wall out, and I put a deck on the back. We painted the inside of the house to tidy it up and it needs a bit of a going over again, but it's pretty easy to do.

"We modernised the kitchen a bit - it used to have a standard stainless steel bench with little cupboards above it all painted different colours.

"The outside was repainted a couple of years ago and the tiled roof was resurfaced."

Amanda and Chris also did some tiling in the part of the hallway that leads out to the deck. It was one of those seemingly simple DIY jobs that took a whole weekend and provided a test of the relationship. According to Amanda she had to finish the job off after Chris kept breaking the tiles.

Chris says the house is solid and could easily be extended because of its relatively large section. It's a job he had envisaged doing one day.

" I also thought about putting an extra storey on because you'd get good views of the water. And you could build a garage down the side of the house at the end of the drive because there's plenty of room there."

The house sits back from the road. It has two good sized bedrooms with a bathroom and toilet sandwiched between. On the other side of the house is a living room separated from the kitchen/dining room by back-to-back fireplaces.

The deck at the rear gets all-day sun as the east-west oriented section is open to the north.

Chris says because the house has remained largely untouched, a new owner has a great opportunity to add value by extending the house and reorganising the living spaces.

"It's got good potential for anyone who wants to take it on."

Vital Statistics

BEDROOMS: 2

BATHROOMS: 1

GARAGE: 0

SIZE: Land 591sq m, house 90sq m (approx).

PRICE INDICATION: CV $315,000. Auction November 2 (unless sold prior).

INSPECT: Sat/Sun 2-2.45pm.

CONTACT: David Simons, Unlimited Potential, ph 3616 485 bus or 021 2777 579 mob, or Angela Ryan ph 3616 481 bus or 021 636 444 mob.

FEATURES: Tidy ex-state house, polished floorboards, large site with potential for further extensions. Off street parking for two cars. Great entry level property into Ponsonby.