The Guest House

When we first moved to Waiheke on 20 Sept 1997, it was nothing but a green paddock. And, because everything is booked for the summer holidays, we had to be in to a house by Christmas Eve. After securing consents to build, we broke ground on 5 November and began building the guest house. Our rental house lease expired on 20 Dec so we moved into a tent with a Persian carpet on the floor, furnished with antiques collected from our shipping container

At about 8:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, the plumber finished the kitchen (sort of) and we moved in.

Of course the land looked like a bomb site, and the house was very rough, but we were in. On Christmas Day we awoke to realise while we bought each of the workers a Christmas ham the day before, we forgot to shop for us. All we had in the house were onions and potatoes. Since then, that has become a Christmas breakfast tradition.

Why a guest house? When we had a summer place in Jamestown RI, we appreciated the architecture of separation. Between us and our next door neighbour we had 20 bedrooms, so the summer weekend parties were great. Especially because the guest bedrooms were separated so we all could enjoy each other’s company, then retreat when we needed the space.