Hugh Bagley has been a builder for more than 20 years but nothing has been as rewarding as completing this Wānaka home for his young family.
Wanting to "push the boat out" in terms of the design, he and wife Zoe created a stunning house with high ceilings and natural materials. There are also plenty of complicated angles that he says took time and patience to get right.
"I’ve never used a sliding bevel on a build more than this one."
The couple had previously built two other homes in the Kirimoko Heights subdivision, using them as stepping stones to make their next house more affordable and to end up in a position where their views would not be compromised.
On each occasion, they used Christchurch architect Bryce Monk. Their two businesses, Bagley Construction and Threefold Architecture, have also worked together for years on builds for clients.
Mr Monk says the couple gave him very little in the way of a brief but Mr Bagley was keen for builder and designer to extend themselves by taking on more complexity.
The living area is slightly sunken to give a sense of volume and to "interrupt" the typical open-plan layout with a vertical change as opposed to just a horizontal change, Mr Monk says.
The high stud there and in other areas was also designed to give Mr Bagley space to display his collection of trophy heads. Growing up on a farm, he was always out shooting pests. These days, he hunts deer and chamois near Wānaka.
The mid Asian ibex above the fireplace was shot during a 10-day-day horse trek in the mountains of Kyrgystan while the bull tahr in the dining area was from one of his regular trips to the West Coast.
While he felt the head complemented an aerial image below it, his wife was not so sure: "I managed to talk her around to the fact that seeing it’s of the West Coast, where I do all my tahr hunting, there should probably be a tahr above it but it caused an argument, I’m not going to lie."
What the couple did agree on was bringing the outdoors in through earthy tones and natural materials.
Western red cedar and stone were used inside and out, and most of the internal walls were rendered in a limestone plaster.
Mr Bagley says they used more cedar inside than they originally planned, partly because they had ordered extra for the exterior to ensure they had enough during Covid shortages, but also because they liked it.
Building most of the house on his own at weekends, together with material delays during the pandemic, meant the build took two years, or twice as long as it would have if he was building it for a client.
"It was a bit of a grind but it was also quite satisfying. You don’t really start appreciating it until you’ve moved in and you’re sitting down on the couch with your feet up . . . "
One of his favourite spaces is the media room, with its drop cedar ceiling and LED lighting. The other is the first-floor office, which is "out of sight, out of mind" for his daughters, aged 6 and 3.
"I had a little room in our last house, which I called an office. But it was also the kids’ TV room and it got painfully frustrating when you went to do office work and all your quotes had been scribbled on with highlighter."
After moving three times in five years, this time the family plan to stay long-term.
Mr Bagley says the features he likes most are the sharp angles and clean lines and that each elevation is completely different.
"It’s quite subtle from the street and then you go through the house and you’re outside on the lawn looking up and it’s not what you’d envision."
