Villa love...

This was my favourite Auckland house, not mine of course.

Fit for a princess, it's in one of the city's most expensive suburbs and those beautiful windows look out over the water.

When I first moved to Auckland it was a little rundown with peeling paint and a neglected garden but over the two years we were there it got a little love.

And a lot of love from me, from afar.

Door stalking...

Remember the copper door I showed you? I've been at it again - door stalking in our neighborhood. Lovely for me and infuriating and embarrassing for those walking with me.

I've always liked this etched front door. It looks very cool and retro and maybe is actually retro. Shameless as I am about taking photographs, I am a little too embarrassed to ask.

Normally you see glass etched with exotic birds, flowers or twiddly embroidery style patterns. This is pretty offbeat.

On reflection (no pun intended) I should have waited until they'd given it a wipe down with windex or vinegar or whatever you do with grubby windows but I could hardly knock on the door, camera in hand, and ask them to clean up their act for my blog... could I?!

Black and white...

Paint colours are never just black and white are they? The very thought of having to choose a new paint colour for the outside of our house fills me with dread. I'm not. But two of my friends are so this post is for them.

I have always loved this image from Skona Hem...

And then found this beautiful Kiwi version in NZ House and Garden. It just sits so well against green.

And it must have been a heart in the mouth moment when buying the paint for this villa. It's an awful lot of dark, dark paint. 

It's a look you don't see much on the lovely villas here and I don't think I would have had the confidence to do it but it works well. Most, like the ones I have shown you already, are white, taupe or grey. Or like ours, a combination taupe-grey. 

I found this in the real estate pages online.... It's rather a little Kiwi house but quite Scandinavian - perhaps they saw the top image too. 

I like it. It makes much more of what really could be a rather ordinary house if it was plain white or in the dreaded cream. 

What these pictures prove is that black or charcoal with touches of white really needs rather good architectural detail to work.

Good bones. Good shoulders perhaps. Rather like a sharp charcoal grey and white pin stripe suit on a fat City trader. Nothing worse.

(Image 4,5,6 found here)

Villa doors...

I took a shortcut home the other day and found this...

I can't decide whether it's simply fabulous or not fabulous at all but I have certainly never seen anything quite like it on the lovely Auckland villas I showed you here and here.

Sadly, my first thought is that it looks a nightmare to clean. When did I turn into a 1950s housewife and if I have why does my own house look a lot less clean than I'd like?

I will leave you to ponder just how much copper is enough while I take my boys back across the ditch to Australia for a spring break. Friends, family, a christening, my school reunion, free and willing babysitters and hopefully a little sun.

I may blog sporadically and I will probably visit you and your blogs. I will definitely finish the darn Martin Amis book that has been putting me to sleep most nights.

Villa love...

We took the boys for a walk over the weekend down to the small beaches that line the harbour front in Auckland's Herne Bay. While they were running and bouncing along with Daddy I was house shopping. Just browsing of course.... Herne Bay is rather nice but pretty pricey.

I've shown you the villas in My Villa Life before and thought you'd like to see more. You'd have to agree the details are to die for. And how do you like this colour for a front door? I would have skipped past it in a colour chart but it looked divine with the magnolia blossoming in the garden.

Once I'd started spotting doors, I found more and more I rather liked...  

I'll go for a walk again sometime soon and show you more.

The villas in My Villa Life

I had no idea how beautiful the homes in New Zealand are. Auckland has suburb after suburb of beautifully restored tradition wooden houses - known here as villas.

We fell in love with the villa and were lucky enough to buy our own. Villas can be drafty, cold, noisy and damp. But they have soaring ceilings, lovely proportions, gorgeous detailing and many have been beautifully done up with fabulous extensions to the rear. Well almost all have...

They were built in suburbs like Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Herne Bay, Mt Eden and Devonport between 1880 and 1940 - ours is a 1910 gem. Many are now painted in fashionable greys, whites, taupe and cream with the windows and lacework trimmed in white or black. An old man told me with some regret that they all used to be painted in ice cream colours... I think I prefer them this way.

Most are immaculately kept. Our neighbour has spent the summer painting her already sparkling white villa. I fear our mouldy white fence is letting the side down...