The Art of Crafting

Brett’s massive barbed wire bull stands guard at the Harman home, the Round House – remodelled from an old Hawke’s Bay cyclone barn: “It’s a little bit of Spanish design, a little bit of Italian, a little bit of French,” says Brett.

There’s some spectacular mould in Brett and Lisa Harman’s bathroom. It’s quite a talking point. Total strangers knock on the door of their distinctive Round House in Carterton, with its sunbaked hues and Spanish Mission look, and ask to see around. And as they go, they tend to mutter, “It must get very damp and mouldy”.

“So I thought I’d get in first with my own mould,” says Brett with a grin, detaching it from the wall and handing it to me. Like everything else in the house, it’s handmade, in this case out of EVA (ethylene vinyl acetate) foam, and dates from Brett’s time as a model-maker working on The Lord of the Rings trilogy: “It was left over from Treebeard”.


Hiding just below the rim of the mosaic shower are Brett’s handmade mould “mushrooms”; Lisa layered the walls with different colours for an aged Mediterranean look.

Nothing reusable gets wasted in Brett and Lisa’s inventive and creative partnership. Brett built the bathroom himself (as he built virtually the whole house) out of wire netting and plaster, slabs of rescued wood and bits of recycled furniture. The mosaic on the shower wall was created out of bargain bin tiles that son Finn (then aged four and a half) obligingly smashed with a hammer. The entire room cost $300.

Brett and Lisa both make things. Amazing things. Lisa’s creations are pretty and ethereal-looking: tiny birds’ nests, hand-painted lettering, tin butterflies and decorative “frocks”. Brett’s aesthetic is more art nouveau meets 1930s steam punk: trailing wrought-iron vines, chandeliers made out of old glass insulators, children’s riveted pedal cars like Flash Gordon rocket ships.


Lisa in her workroom.

The shower in the guest room looks like a Victorian diving bell or Captain Nemo’s submarine. “It’s not finished,” says Brett. “There are a lot more pressure gauges and stuff to go on yet.”

The Harmans arrived in Carterton from Hawke’s Bay in 1999, when Brett was travelling to Wellington each week to work on The Lord of the Rings. He needed a shorter commute and they both wanted a beautiful but practical home in which to bring up their two boys, Finn, then four, and Mitchell, two.

Brett and Lisa.

“I wanted a small, quiet little sleepy place, where I knew everybody and the kids were safe to bike into town,” says Brett. Land in the Wairarapa was still cheap back then – fortunately for the Harmans’ now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t budget. As for the house, well, Brett had been hired to demolish an old steel-framed cyclone barn on a farm in Hawke’s Bay. “While I was pulling it down, I thought, ‘This would make a neat house’.”

And so it did, with Lisa working as one of the labourers and Brett’s cousin roped in to re-erect the framework on their 0.6ha section. The walls at each end are made out of 25cm-thick plastered hay bales. “I didn’t do it because I’m a hippie and wanted an eco-friendly house,” insists Brett. “I thought, it was a hay barn, why not use hay?” But eco-friendly it is, especially during the frosty Wairarapa winters, keeping everyone from Nelson the English bulldog to Max the parrot toasty warm.

Brett built the kitchen island from the debris of an old bush bridge; the paintings above the stairs are early works by Lisa; their son Finn found the old scoreboard numbers at the tip and gave them to his mum, who loves letters, numbers and signs.

The massive kitchen island, which could have come from some tumbledown Italian farmhouse, is actually made of flood debris. It was once a bridge, deep in the bush, that got washed away by a swollen stream. Brett went out to saw it up one night, stepped out of the truck, forgot where he was and fell down a 2m drop. Despite the fact he’d just broken two ribs, he got back up again (eventually) and finished loading the wood onto his beloved Bedford. “Well, I wasn’t going to leave it behind! So the kitchen only cost two broken ribs and a pile of screws.”

This is a house with a hefty dose of magic. There’s a friendly wrought-iron dragon on the front gate, a pink lookout tower and a large steam train (which turns out to be a barbecue) in the courtyard. Any kid would love to grow up here and so, it seems, would the viewers of the TVNZ show My House, My Castle, who voted it Castle of the Year in 2005. Brett swapped the prize (a spa pool) for an Italian motorbike, a Guzzi racer. “What would I want with a spa pool?”

He finds the house “incredibly relaxed to live in. There are no sharp edges or cold, hard lines. I even made the builder relax when he was doing it, so things came out wonky.” Son Finn, just as bike-mad as his dad, has been known to ride his motorbike straight in through the front door and over the polished concrete floors. “He gets told off for doing it,” says Brett.

It’s probably a good thing they saved the ex-convent oak parquet flooring for upstairs. “I found a whole pile of it in an old shed in Greytown, sitting in the water,” says Brett.

Brett’s workroom, where he makes everything from garden follies to children’s steam punk pedal cars (actress Cate Blanchett’s boys have two), watched over by Diego, the one-eyed cat.

“My friends reckon I’m a mad inventor but I’m a problem solver. That’s what I used to do in the film industry. I’ve got no trade and no real skills. It’s only the things I’m passionate about that I put the time into.” As for this unique family home, it’s still organically growing: “I’ve promised Lisa that, after I finish my race bike, I’ll finish the bedroom”.

Brett and Lisa’s website is harmanandharman.net.nz

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In the house, I’m most proud of: Everything! I had a vision and saw it through. I do love my shed most though. (Brett) I like to think that all my bits and pieces make it a home. My menfolk might not appreciate my embellishments but I do. (Lisa)

If I could do it all again: Things would be very different.
I actually have it all planned out in my head. For starters, my shed would be a whole lot bigger. We’d also like a masculine den/games room for me and a pretty sitting room (probably with white couches and lots of cushions) for Lisa. (Brett)

The thing the boys liked most about growing up in the house: Having plenty of space. Now they’re both teenagers, they enjoy separate spaces. Finn even has his own summer bedroom in a whare out in the citrus orchard.

Our philosophy: I can make anything but money. (Brett)
Keep busy. (Lisa)

Brett and Lisa Harman

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