KEY POINTS:
42 KING EDWARD PARADE,
DEVONPORT.
Are you sure?" asked friends when the Calders' search for a fully renovated home led them to a decrepit former boarding house, albeit right on the promenade at Devonport's Duders Beach.
"Are you mad?" asked the blunter ones, eyeing the crusty interior's multitude of well-used toilets, seedy stoves and sagging scrim and momentarily forgot the spot's stellar waterfront views.
But Madeleine and Derek Calder's unstinting belief in the potential of the property they bought 26 years ago enabled them to transform it from boarding-house-bleak into a gorgeous 1880s family villa, befitting its beachside location.
Madeleine understood their friends' well-meaning concern. "It was uninhabitable back then and like a bombsite. But it had a good feeling. The view was the clincher and the fact it had loads of space, a great position and a fabulous big verandah - with a few missing balusters."
The couple ignored suggestions the home would be better bulldozed (its early-1980s zoning allowed three townhouses) focusing instead on briefing a design which would deliver waterfront views throughout the home once it was renovated and extended upwards. They worked bottom up; re-blocking, re-plumbing, re-wiring, gibbing, insulating and decorating.
Once a few rooms were liveable, they moved in with their two toddlers, who thought it great fun that the garden hose got used inside, sluicing off paint remover. Bonuses peppered their toil. They uncovered kauri wall panelling, and a wallpaper company which once papered a room for free to use it in an ad may have chosen hideous hibiscus wallpaper, but it sanded that room's floor as part of the deal.
Subsequent redecoration has ensured that these days the only hibiscus flourish in the subtropical garden, behind a front rock wall accentuated with quaint pedestrian and boat gates. The superb return verandah overlooking level lawns luxuriates in the waterfront vista, as does the master bedroom suite upstairs, accessed by the entrance foyer's stairs. Both sides of the bed admire the sea and gabled front windows mirror the ceiling line of the en suite located next to metres of wardrobing.
As the Calder children are grown, two other spacious rooms are set up as bedrooms, but a fourth could easily be chosen from the high-stud rooms downstairs. Front runners might be the study or the serene front sitting room with wood fire and bay window framing yet another ocean tableau.
Across the kauri-panelled hall, the kauri-floored main sitting room and the formal dining room with subtly gilded flocked wallpaper open to the verandah. There's more living space still in the rear family room which spans a dining table looking out to sea and a gas fire, before flowing into a sunroom area opening to further outdoor living on the deck.
A capacious stainless steel and solid rimu kitchen cleverly conceals an extractor fan. The storeroom next door could also be used as a larder.
The property is also bounded by Duders Avenue, enabling rear access to a double garage and off-street boat parking by the rear verandah.
It's obvious this is a much-adored home and great party venue but it's also a family home whose children are now adults, happily ensconced overseas. That's why the couple feel it's time to throw caution to the wind, sell and see where life takes them. After all, the chance they took on buying a ramshackle residence worked out incredibly well.
