Kent and Joanna Sheldon don't find houses -- houses find them. When they were both working in London, wondering whether it might be time to come home, a big country house in Karaka found them.
"We were home for the Millennium and had looked around property while we were visiting family and friends in Christchurch and then New Plymouth," Joanna says. "We had friends and family all over, so there was no obligation to choose any particular place."
While in New Plymouth with Joanna's parents they were looking on the internet -- a relatively new way of searching for real estate at the time -- and saw the Karaka house advertised.
"We had lived in central Auckland but Papakura was just a sign on the motorway."
Despite that, they looked at the property and decided it would be perfect, although Joanna wondered whether buying something in the country might have been an extreme reaction to living in London.
There were many attractions. One was the privacy -- there were no close neighbours. Another was the size of the house -- at 300sq m it was going to be ample for Kent, Joanna and their children.
"And we liked the fact that it was a short commute to the city," Joanna says. "At that time New Zealanders hadn't quite caught on to commuting from the country but coming from London, we thought nothing of it."
They returned to London, finalised the sale by fax [email was quite new] and set about organising the next stage of their lives. They bought the house in April, arrived back in Auckland in July, and moved in in September 2000.
The house was even better than they remembered. A well-built, two-storey brick and weatherboard home, it captivated Joanna immediately with its views. "I'm really going to miss those views -- even the one from the back window in the master bedroom," Joanna says.
Image 1 of 5: Country living was too hard to pass up. Photos / supplied
She guesses Kent will miss the shed and she's interested to see how he copes with having to be selective about what he keeps. The shed is large enough to accommodate the family camper and is an excellent place for playing darts and basketball.
The main house [there's an additional dwelling on the property] also has plenty of room for family living. There are four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a farm-style kitchen, dining area, sitting area and a sunken lounge.
Joanna loves the sunken lounge, which has the same high-pitched ceiling as the rest of the ground floor. Because it sits at an angle it has windows on four sides and views out over the garden.
On the other side of the living area the views are across the deck to the paved terrace surrounding the pool. The outdoor living space is ideal for what eventually became the extended family when Kent's parents moved home from Western Australia and built their own house on the property.
The three-bedroom cottage with its vine-covered veranda and pretty garden has an open plan kitchen, dining and lounge and a deck that Joanna says she and Kent prefer to their own. "We tend to go down there for our barbecues."
Kent's parents are getting ready for some extended travel, but Kent and Joanna have again found something when they weren't really looking.
They saw a house for sale on the Karaka harbourside three years ago and really liked it, but at that point weren't thinking of moving.
More recently, the same house came back on the market and they found they still really liked it.
Naturally, they bought it, and Kent is now wondering what life will be like without that massive shed.
