What the lady likes |
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Chloe Wright’s new country home has a whimsical charm that’s all her own
Don’t be fooled by Chloe Wright’s affectionate moniker for her second home, at the foot of the Kaimai Ranges north of Tauranga. The Farm House, as it’s known in the Wright family, bears no resemblance to those utilitarian buildings or draughty piles plonked in paddocks around New Zealand. There is no whiff of animal manure and certainly no dirty overalls in sight. Instead, Chloe’s home has an air of whimsy.
This is a chocolate box, English fairy tale version of a farmhouse, with a handcrafted bird house alongside antique chimney pots and a hefty door knocker carted back from a holiday in France. Chloe and a team of tradesmen spent two and a half years reproducing the mental image she had developed, then sketched, after cycling through picturesque French villages and ambling around old English towns.
“I drew it up in about an afternoon. I’ll often see something completely finished in my head. I like to design and I like problem solving.”
Chloe knew from the outset the house would sit close to the country road that runs past her 16ha property, a 10-minute drive from the home she shares with husband Wayne. The Wrights’ primary residence is a large, ivy-covered dwelling that borders Omokoroa’s golf course, with vast gardens inhabited by chickens, ducks, doves, Ozzie the golden retriever and Inky the cat.
 But it was horses that propelled Chloe to buy the land where her farmhouse sits. Seventeen years ago, she was looking for a place to ride and keep the largest animals in her menagerie. She has since developed stables, trails and jumps that are shared with the local pony club and children learning to ride. Several hundred exotic trees have also been planted, offering bursts of colour in autumn and spring. The house is a more recent project. As soon as it was completed, in early 2008, Chloe wanted to move in.
“I love it. It’s got such great energy,” she says, standing in the light-flooded, high-ceilinged area she calls the great room. “I can relax more up here.”
But she couldn’t convince Wayne to leave the family home they both love, with its amassed memories and the wide staircases their grandchildren like to slide down on mattresses. Four of the Wrights’ five adult children and all six grandchildren live in the area. So she makes do with the occasional overnight stay and frequent visits to the farmhouse. She has cooked dinners for friends and hosted a reunion for 19 people in the house. The Wrights have also held several parties – including a birthday bash for Wayne – in the adjacent barn.
During the construction phase, Chloe was onsite – and hands-on – almost every day.
She and youngest son Ollie worked with bricks and scaffolding to create a herringbone pattern in the outdoor fireplace chimney, three storeys high. She also helped with brickwork above the front entrance and pitched in to operate the small mobile cranes that hauled her 700kg ceiling beams into place.
The chestnut dining table was made for the Farm House by a young man who was self-taught but with an “artisan’s skill” says Chloe: “I love pieces that incorporate the passion and commitment of their makers”; the china is Minton.
“I had to get up there and stain the timber detailing in the ceiling,” says Chloe, staring up at the interior stud about 9m above her. “Everyone always says to me, get someone to do it, but I actually like to do it. I love stone. I love to build.”
Atrium Homes builder Allan Shaw says his client was so involved in the project that he and his crew bought her a pink builder’s apron with her own hammer, tape measure and other tools. Chloe earned his admiration by tackling high jobs, initially clinging tight to railing, then relaxing as she grew more confident.
“It just shows the determination of the lady,” says Allan. “Scaffolding and ladies don’t normally go together. She was in there, boots and all. She wanted to be part of everything. That’s the sort of grit the lady had.”
Chloe’s presence affected the job site in other ways. Some sub-contractors had to clean up their language or risk being sacked. She gave the plasterers an award for playing the best music on the job and insisted on providing good stemware and canapés for the roof shout.
Allan loves the results. “It’s spectacular… a craftsman’s house. It has a special place in my heart. As a builder, you don’t get to build homes like that very often.”
Though the exterior needed to look like a centuries-old cottage, Chloe quickly decided interior rooms would be much larger and lighter than tradition dictated, with high-ceilinged, airy rooms and plenty of en suite bathrooms. She also took charge of the garden and the interior design, ordering a staircase from the US, stone floor tiles from Turkey and antique chimney pots from Auckland. She had poplar trees from the property milled to create flooring for upstairs and bought an entire disused, 1903 bridge from a Westport trader – select pieces of it, complete with rusted pins and bolts and hunks of metal, can be found in door frames and ceiling beams around the house.
A mezzanine library fits comfortably beneath the Farm House’s 9m-high timber ceiling and has a “lovely sneak-away-and-hide feel to it,” says Chloe; the railings were hand-forged in Tauranga.
Originally, Chloe thought the house would be used for boutique accommodation and harboured romantic notions of flitting over to the house each day to prepare gourmet breakfasts for guests. Her husband talked her out of the idea, reminding her that they like to spend large chunks of the year overseas and that she’d hate being tied to a daily routine. “I have an incredibly busy life and I don’t like commitment.”
She hasn’t given up the idea of hosting people, though, and recently employed a chef to cook for paying guests. Longer term, she hopes that the grandchildren, who now build huts in trees around the farm, will some day bring their own offspring to stay at the house.
“I know all my family would treasure it because they know I built it. And I’m still hoping the day will come when I will live here. It’s where I’m most at peace.”
Staff at the local paint shop told Chloe they knew her home as the “Hansel and Gretel house”. Chloe loves the look of the stone used in her new home.
For web-exclusive images click on the "photo gallery" link above
Story: Sue Hoffart
Photographs: Jane Ussher
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