The sea is your pool

105 The Esplanade - Big Manly Beachfront. Photo / Supplied

Sometimes Toni Cole will be in the kitchen, gazing at the ocean, and she drops everything and goes for a swim. That's one of the big pleasures of living across the road from the beach.

The road is a private one, and more like a service road so it's only a few steps away for Toni. After her swim, she'll come back and pick up what she was doing.
"It's quite special," she says.

"It's the spontaneity of it and also the proximity."

The sea is her pool, and even though the property is big enough to put in a pool, she sees no need.

"We could go twice a day. Graeme [her husband] will look out the window and say, 'Let's go for a swim' and off we'll go, or we'll take the kayaks out.

"It's like you're living a carefree life."

Graeme, an optometrist, goes to work five days a week but they both feel they are perpetually on holiday.

Although there's a lot of action with kite surfers and dog walkers, the location and outlook means it's almost like having your own beach, she says.

"It's very special, and I've lived on the lake in Queenstown. I love Queenstown, don't get me wrong, but I would choose this."

Toni and Graeme's children thought they were mad when the couple bought the Whangaparaoa Peninsula property.

Six years ago it was painted a dark brown but it was in great shape and had uninterrupted sea views.

105 The Esplanade - Big Manly Beachfront. Photo / Supplied

Toni's originally from Perth and Graeme is from Remuera and they had both grown up near the sea. They always yearned to go back to the water but lived in the South Island, so their children were brought up in the mountains.

When their youngest child was in his final year at university, they went house-hunting, and in 2011 Graeme saw the bach online.

A daughter was with them when they visited, "and she stood outside and she said, 'You two must be off your rockers'."

They bought the bach anyway and now it is unrecognisable.

"We probably, in the end, did more than what we planned to do but we don't regret that."

Toni became the project manager for the rebuild. She thinks the bach was built some time after 1928 and was one of the original ones in the area.

They got in an architect and asked for a modern house that still felt like a bach by the beach.

They took out walls, moved the kitchen, added bathrooms and bifold doors and windows to open the whole house up.

Now there is a large, open-plan space for the kitchen with multiple living areas in the lounge and sea views from nearly all the windows.

There are decks front and rear, and the master bedroom looks out to the sea. It has a walk-in wardrobe and an en suite with a big bath - a bath with a view was important to Toni.

Two more bedrooms have access to another bathroom, but the family is "all about recreation" so they made sure there were plenty of places outside to entertain, plus they added an outdoor gas fireplace and an indoor wood burner. They have concept plans to add further rooms out the back.

They think they might find another place to do up, plus do a bit more travelling, though Toni says she would be equally as happy to stay in her now thoroughly modern bach by the beach.