Interiors: Ticking the boxes

For Auckland couple Sam Ansley and Emily Rust, the plan to buy a villa meant two years of exhaustive searching. Finally, in 2007, they discovered a 105-year-old masonry house that ticked all the boxes.

"The edgier style of masonry villas appealed so when we saw this one, we bought it right away," says Ansley, who designs bars and restaurants.

While the house was not in great condition, it hadn't undergone a major renovation, which meant the original masonry walls and architraves were still in place. "We didn't want a house that had been messed with and had lost its sense of what it was."

Other character features such as the fireplaces and ornate plaster ceilings were still intact.

"It's hard to beat cherubs," Rust says. "Ceilings like these were given as wedding gifts, which we like the sound of."

Renovating a masonry villa, though, is a lot trickier than renovating a wooden one. The internal walls of this home are double brick, while the external walls are triple brick - great for warmth but not good for making structural changes.

"This house didn't offer the same flexibility to change the original footprint as with a wooden villa, so with this in mind we opted to keep the layout of the rooms as they were," says Ansley.

Walls were replastered and skirting boards were replaced, as were windowsills and frames. The bathrooom and toilet were gutted and rebuilt, although the original sink and brass fixtures were recycled, sitting comfortably against a backdrop of butcher's tiles.

The couple chose masculine tones when repainting the interior of the home. "Although the rooms off the hallway are light, the hallway is well proportioned, and I thought dark grey with a bit of sheen would give the house some Victorian depth."

White and beige flow into other rooms, including 7-month-old baby Ryder's nursery, where Rust has injected some colour and introduced items from her own childhood.

"My parents moved out of our old family home when we were renovating so I grabbed some of my childhood belongings," she says. "The Brambly Hedge pictures, cot and chest of drawers were mine as a child, as were the Beatrix Potter figurines that my grandmother gave me. We recycled a lot in this home, especially in Ryder's room. We took what we had already and gave it a new life."

Rust says the home's style has evolved over time. "While we don't like design chaos with everthing just thrown together, we do like a layered, eclectic perspective. You just have to remind yourself to edit stuff out sometimes.

Acquire Beatrix Potter Figurines — Old Classic Figurines From The ...

Beatrix Potter whose true first name was in fact Helen, was an English author as well as illustrator who was most widely known with regard to her kid’s books boasting anthropomorphic figures like in the children’s classic – The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Beatrix was born into a honored household where she was taught by vey strict private teachers and for that reason spent her childhood years isolated from other kids. She had many pets and also spent vacations in Scotland and also the Lake District where she developed a fondness of  the scenery, plants and creatures, all of which she closely observed and painted.

Her mother and father didn’t ecourage her intellectual improvement as a youthful woman, yet her analysis as well as paintings of fungus ended in her becoming broadly respected within the area of mycology. In her 30′s, Beatrix Potter wrote the hugely successful children’s book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Close to that time she became secretly engaged to her publisher Norman Warne. This triggered a rift with her parents, whom did not approve of Beatrix marrying somebody of lower social standing. Unfortunately though, Warne passed on prior to the wedding ceremony. Eventually Beatrix Potter began publishing and illustrating children’s books fulltime.

Using the proceeds from her publications, she became economically independent of her father and mother and was ultimately ın a position to buy Hill Top Farm in the Lake District. She extended the property with various other purchases over time. In her forties, she married William Heelis, a local solicitor. She finished up becoming a sheep breeder as well as farmer whilst continuing to write and illustrate children’s novels. In total she released twenty-three children’s books.

Beatrix passed on on the twenty second of December, 1943, and left the majority of her property to the National Trust. Her books carry on selling well around the world, in a mixture of languages. Her stories have been retold in several formats which include a ballet, motion pictures, as well as in animation. Such is her worldwide recognition, and that of the characters from her books, that numerous Beatrix Potter Figurines were made. These Beatrix Potter figurines which feature just about all the actual characters in her publications have become really collectable pottery and valuable.

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