When a worker arrived to install a satellite dish at a new home, owner Anne Stevens took one look and knew it wouldn’t work.
"He’s standing there, holding this grey dish with a grey stalk and I said, ‘Well that won’t do."
Mrs Stevens told the man it was the wrong colour. It needed to be "wet 'n wild", a bold blue that shimmers from the roof and adds sparkle to the retro-style fridge in the kitchen.
"So he took it away and got it painted. I think he thought I was mad."
"I just love colour and most people’s roofs are grey," she explains. "They’re either green-grey, blue-grey, red-grey or just grey."
Mrs Stevens’ brief to architect Tim Ross was a new house that looked like a cottage — small, homely and welcoming, with a honey-coloured exterior reminiscent of cob buildings.
Along with the bright-blue roof, it had to have an asphalt tennis court — playing with friends is a regular weekend activity.
The certified passive house stands on what was the site of the Chingford gatehouse in Dunedin’s North East Valley.
The nearby homestead, bought by Dunedin importer Percival Neill in 1877 and later taken over by the Dunedin City Council, was allowed to fall into disrepair and demolished in 1968.
The smaller house at the entrance to the property deteriorated, too, and by the 1930s had been substantially altered. Mrs Stevens bought it as a rental in 2014 but her plans changed after a personal crisis. Looking for a project to boost her self-esteem, she investigated if she could demolish the "damp, run-down bungalow" and build in its place.
Backing on to what was Neill’s 10 ha estate and is now a public park, her two-bedroom, two-bathroom home is surrounded by mature beech, maple and yew trees.
"I was worried about leaving three acres of rural setting [on Mt Cargill] and coming into suburbia," she says, "but it feels like I live in the park".
The serial renovator is no fan of the present trend for all-white interiors.
"No. Absolutely not. If I wanted to run a surgery, I would."
"It’s like buying a really good vacuum cleaner instead of a cheap, nasty one. You spend more at the beginning because you know it’s going to last . . . We do this with all sorts of things but we don’t do it with houses and they’re cold and not healthy."
"I come in from a long day in court and it’s just warm. It makes such a difference to your psyche."
A barrister since 1988, Mrs Stevens has been involved in more than 140 jury trials and can often be seen riding her bike home from the Dunedin law courts with toy poodle Louis in the front basket.
She also holds strong views on New Zealand’s contemporary architecture. Buildings should enhance the environment but many in New Zealand do the exact opposite, she says.
Everything we do has consequences and the more carefully we choose how to do things, the better those outcomes, she says.
As far as her own build went, some of the results were as anticipated: "It did build my self-esteem up again. It’s very empowering doing something like that as a woman on your own."
But one was unexpected.
A few weeks after installing the Sky dish, the audio visual company got in touch, she says.
"I got an email, saying ‘It looks so good, could we put it in an advertising brochure?’.
"I said, ‘Sure, the more colour, the better’."
"We need less grey."
