Ponsonby: Splash out

74 Vermont Street, Ponsonby. Picture/Geoff Dale

A pool and privacy are not the first things you expect in a home on the southern slopes of Ponsonby, but this house has both.

74 Vermont Street, Ponsonby The first time Chrissy Montague and Paddy O'Driscoll went to look at their house, the three boys they have between them shot straight out the back, clambered up the feature wall behind the pool, and jumped in.

"That was it - sold," laughs Chrissy.

Now that they've put the home back on the market, she wouldn't mind if the children of potential buyers did the same - it would only reinforce what great family times can be had behind the renovated villa.

Chrissy's son Nick, aged 10, doesn't take much persuasion to show me how he, his brother Matt and stepbrother Jake, both 12, get atop the wall by climbing up a heating unit concealed behind it. Dropping more than two metres at the deep end, the pool contains enough water to soak up the lads' varied styles of leaping into it.

"We quickly saw how useful the pool would be with three boys around this age," says Chrissy. "They can literally spend all day in it, making up all sorts of games."

Surrounded by a high, subtropical garden, the pool and its deck are completely private.

"That really appealed, because you don't find many houses in Ponsonby with this kind of privacy," says Chrissy.

Even the interior of the house has been altered to make the most of its exterior feature. A blank wall at the end of the hallway has been replaced by a floor-to-ceiling window, so that before you even enter the house you can see through to the pool at the rear.

Design company Brasell and Ojala transformed the living space of the villa by opening the hallway into the sitting room, the kitchen to the outdoors, and adding a third bedroom, which also opens to the back deck. Concrete surrounding an open fire in the lounge is echoed in a concrete pillar between the dining space and kitchen, and complemented by an embossed iron breakfast bar (that can swing outwards from the island worktop if the cook wants more space). It sounds semi-industrial, but the effect is softened by polished wooden floors, soft neutrals on the walls, and the light pouring in from the French doors onto the deck.

"We have the fire going nearly every evening from autumn to spring, and it heats the living space beautifully," says Chrissy.

A high wall and solid copper gates at the front of the property not only provide privacy, but also security for the family's dogs, chocolate labradors Cinnamon and Lemony. Lemony is Cinnamon's daughter, one of a litter Cinnamon had at the house last year. Paddy gets up at dawn most days to walk them at Vermont Reserve a few doors down.

The blended family is moving on only because the boys, and the dogs, are getting bigger by the week.

"At the moment we can put them to bed and make a noise," says Paddy. "But they're getting to the stage where they want to put us to bed and make a noise."

"We want to stay in Ponsonby - we just need a bigger house," says Chrissy. Nick speaks for all the boys when he says he doesn't mind what kind of house they buy, "as long as it has a pool".

Vital Statistics

Size: Land 402sq m, house approx 127sq m.

Price Indication: By negotiation. Similar properties in Ponsonby have sold for between $950,000 and $1.1m.

Inspect: Sunday 1.15-2pm.

Contact: Andrea Bell-Ritchie, Bayleys, ph 309 6020, 021 906 793.

Features: Private Ponsonby villa with renovation designed by Brasell and Ojala; pool; outdoor entertaining area and self-maintaining subtropical garden.