Wainamu was originally a simple shepherds’ cottage with a pitched roof, built in 1946 using demolition materials from around the district. It sat on a gentle knoll above the eponymous lake, and the sand dunes of Te Henga Bethells Beach. It was here that Hap and Elizabeth Wheeler – who both had generations of connections to Tāmaki Makaurau’s west coast – raised their six children, while working the farm in the hills.
As the family expanded, so did the house. Using timber milled on the land, they added a sunny wood-lined morning room to the north, bedrooms, and – eventually – a big open room to the south, overlooking the lake, with a handmade table built for 10. “Dad was part Māori. He wanted this to feel like a wharenui, a place to gather and be together,” says daughter Adair Wheeler, who now lives at Wainamu with her husband John Devine. “He said, ‘Anyone who wants to can have a mattress and sleep on the floor.’” Each Christmas Eve, 14 grandchildren did just that. “It was a home that people loved coming to, because Mum was a really good cook and a great host,” says Adair. “Our kids didn’t want anything to change.”
Elizabeth died 10 years ago, a couple of weeks before her 89th birthday. She stayed in the house until the end, nursed by the family in the big room. Each of Elizabeth and Hap’s children inherited a share of the land. Adair and John were to take on Wainamu and eventually moved out of their home in Devonport to live here full-time. “We kept it going and didn’t change it, although it was getting rundown. It was such a beautiful home, those things don’t matter. It’s what’s inside that’s important. People just didn’t notice the gaffer tape holding it all together.”
After a couple of years, Adair and John approached Jess Barter, of Bureaux, to come up with a scheme to restore Wainamu. Jess has a close friend in the extended family: she was familiar with the house, and she knew Elizabeth too. “It’s an intoxicating history and geography for me, so it was a great honour to be asked,” she says. “To be honest, I was a bit scared to touch the house at all.”
It was romantic, and Elizabeth’s gardens were beautiful. While the later additions were in good condition (Hap’s big room had not long since received a new roof), they soon realised the original part was irretrievable. The piles were pūriri stumps, and largely inaccessible. When the builders got to them, the wood turned to dust. Every winter, John had to shave a bit more off the bathroom door so it could open and close. The floors went every which way except straight. “They wanted to recreate it in a way that was a legacy they could pass down to future generations – and shore it up as a homestead,” says Jess.
Keeping the front and back living rooms was non-negotiable, but Bureaux’s plan demolished the rest of the house. They treated the big room as a mark to build up to, then designed a new square house broadly on the original footprint. They topped it with a wide hipped roof that would encapsulate the whole front of the house including the morning room, and wrapped it with a deep, generous verandah.
The rooms to the north and south were treated almost as heritage objects, altered only in the lightest of ways. Though they’re lovely spaces, they were humble rooms, and they’ve been left that way. “We had this idea that we would treat the front room and encase it in a museum-like way,” says Jess, “that we would take all the lining and the furniture, preserve it and build around it.”
That’s exactly what happened. Tasman Builders wrapped the front room in tarpaulins, propped it up and held it in place on the site while a new house – framing, insulation, cladding, roof, verandah – was built around it. The team added new timber sliding windows to replace the barely there panes of sliding glass, and a generous sunny window seat. Similarly, in the big room out the back, very little has changed. The big stone fireplace was replaced with a modern wood burner, and a post was replaced with a steel beam to free up space. The 10-seater dining table remains, but the room is slightly smaller now to allow for a new laundry and bathroom close to the kitchen. With new double-glazed aluminium joinery, it’s now toasty warm in winter. “People who didn’t know the house before don’t know anything has changed in this room,” says John, “and people who did know it feel like it’s kept the spirit of it.”
In between these two spaces, Bureaux fitted three bedrooms, a mudroom, and a proper entry – a series of rooms that revolve around a new kitchen at the heart of the home. Wainamu is still the centre of the family’s world, so this space houses a generous bank of cabinetry with two ovens, a workspace big enough for Adair and her two sisters, and a large island. Beyond that is a generous scullery; the original flour storage bins take pride of place in the new cabinetry. (Nearby is also a cupboard door made of timber from Hap’s childhood home.) “I don’t think I’ve ever been there without fresh baking,” says Jess. “Adair wanted the kitchen to be control central so she could stand there and look out to the northwest – to see people arriving.”
Adair and John’s bedroom and bathroom are on the northeastern corner next to the morning room. “I wanted them to wake up with the sun and a view to the garden,” says Jess. Two further bedrooms flank the eastern and western sides, a discreet arrangement that works well when they have guests stay. Behind the kitchen, there’s another bathroom and a generous mudroom with a door to the verandah – John and Adair spend much of their day on the land; they still run stock and work in the gardens.
Today, you approach Wainamu up the dirt road, with the sand dunes rising beside you, to a gravel parking area. Through the white gates, past the enormous old mandarin tree, you come to a house that is every inch the homestead: deep verandahs, oiled timber joinery, dark-painted board-and-batten cladding that subtly references the nearby sand dunes. Most likely Adair – ever the host – has come out to meet you, and you cross the porch, stepping through the generous front door into an unexpectedly airy space. The roof rises five metres to a skylight that floods the centre of the house with light.
There are simple details – white plasterboard walls, timber floors, chunky timber in the kitchen. Adair might have some scones on the go, and she’ll load up the trolley with baking and tea and rattle down to the big room for a chat. “We were so lucky. We had beautiful parents and a lot of love,” says Adair. “This was done simply and not altogether perfectly, and we didn’t want to make things too perfect either. We just wanted to keep the spirit of it.”
1. Verandah
2. Entry Foyer
3. Front Room
4. Bedroom
5. Ensuite
6. Kitchen
7. Scullery
8. Laundry
9. Bathroom
10. Dining
11. Living
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