After investing four years and more than $11 million into historic "Earnscleugh castle", its owners are finally ready to open it to the public.
The painstaking restoration project by Ryan Sanders and Marco Creemers included nine months battling the Central Otago District Council over the exterior, 18 months completing earthquake strengthening, three years living apart and one point where they seriously considered walking away.
Now most of the work is finished, they say they are "ecstatic".
"The dream we had four years ago has come to fruition exactly how we envisaged, just slightly more fabulous."
Founder of the Haka Tourism Group, Mr Sanders first learned the abandoned mansion between Alexandra and Clyde was for sale when one of his staff flagged it as a possible site for luxury backpackers’ accommodation.
He had other ideas, sending the link to his husband with a note saying, "stuff that".
"We’ll live there."
The couple had been living in an Auckland apartment for 35 years and searching for a Central Otago home for eight.
At their first viewing the early 1920s property had been vacant for seven years and resembled a "really bad student flat" with rotting carpet, black mould and collapsed ceilings.
Unable to find local accommodation, they made half the house habitable for their contractors. But the renovations got off to a rocky start.
"They spent the first week in there but then refused to live in it because they thought it was haunted," he says, adding they’ve never sensed anything supernatural themselves.
The Earnscleugh story is one of bold dreams and changing fortunes.
Otago magistrate Alfred Strode, who leased the sprawling sheep station in 1862, grew rich supplying the needs of goldminers.
But within just a few years, rabbits reportedly introduced for sport by his farm manager and partner, William Fraser, had begun to strip the hillsides of vegetation.
At first, Fraser protected the rabbits to the point of prosecuting poachers. By the time he and other farmers realised just how much trouble they had created for themselves, it was too late.
The next leaseholder walked off the property, reduced from wealthy to near-penniless after a harsh winter killed much of his flock and rabbits had grazed the hills bare.
Then came Stephen Spain, who was born in a tent on the banks of the Clutha River during the gold rush.
He took on the 28,000ha run in 1902.
Initially, he cashed in on the skins but during World War 1, he opened a canning factory in Alexandra. At its peak, the plant employed 90 workers and could process 15,000 rabbits a day.
Spain secured a lucrative contract with the British War Office but the marketing behind his success was questionable: British troops believed they were eating chicken and cans destined for France were reportedly labelled "poulet".
He commissioned noted architect Edmund Anscombe — the man behind Otago Girls’ High School and several University of Otago buildings — to design a large house for his family.
A combination of the Jacobean and Elizabethan styles popular at the time, the house was not officially a castle but dubbed one by locals.
Heritage New Zealand says the 21-room mansion was an "eccentric" design that had an imposing frontage but was just a room and-a-half deep.
The first-floor bedrooms were accessed from open balconies instead of internal hallways, which must have been invigorating in winter.
The grounds, including a sweeping, tree-lined drive, were laid out by one of the country’s most influential landscape gardeners, Alfred Buxton.
Anscombe’s plans included a plastered facade and columns but Spain was unable to complete the building.
As the station’s fortunes faded, a deep rift reportedly tore through the family. After Spain’s death in 1940, his children and their spouses built a brick wall through the middle of the house, across the front veranda and out into the garden.
The current owners bought the Earnscleugh Station homestead and 12ha of land for $2.5m.
The homestead itself had 10 bedrooms but only three bathrooms. With the support of Heritage New Zealand, they revamped the first floor to make seven bedrooms, each with its own en suite.
They also removed internal walls on the ground floor, turning five former staff rooms into an open-plan kitchen and lounge.
To honour the original design, they also opened up the first-floor balconies which a previous owner had closed in. However, a recessed glass wall with French doors now offers protection from the elements in winter.
Wanting to embrace imperfections and decorate in "faded glamour" style, the couple filled the house with embossed wallpapers, heavy floral curtains and antique furniture and lights imported from England and Europe.
Each room is painted a different bold hue: gold, red, mustard, copper, deep blue and olive green.
"It’s a 1920s building and those properties had a lot of vibrant colour," Mr Sanders says.
The completed house includes an impressive formal dining room, a library with floor-to-ceiling timber shelving and a ballroom — once the Spains’ billiard room — which they plan to use for functions.
One of the biggest transformations took place in the entry, where they raised the ceiling above the central staircase and installed a 294kg French chandelier with 39 light bulbs.
Outside, they refurbished the dilapidated pool, added a terrace off the ballroom and rabbit-proofed the garden.
The "biggest drama" was their battle to be allowed to plaster the exterior of the house, as the architect originally intended.
While they eventually got consent and hope to make a start next summer, it delayed work by a year, cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars and caused a lot of stress.
"Before we decided that we were going to fight it, we were in a dark place."
"We thought we should maybe put it back on the market."
Because the property was always meant to be plastered, lower-quality bricks were used and the brick mortar was left rough and exposed to the weather, Mr Creemers says.
The $700,000 worth of plastering will not only reduce dampness and draughts but be part of the earthquake strengthening work.
Renovations cost about triple what they had budgeted. The previously mortgage-free couple now have a mortgage and are preparing to welcome their first guests in September.
"We pretty much sold everything we had to fund our retirement — businesses, properties and stuff — to finish the house," Mr Creemers says, admitting they might not have started if they’d known this at the beginning.
More than 100 years after Spain built his stately home, the pair are pleased to have "finished the job" he started.
"From what I’ve read, it sounds like he was a bit of a rogue ...," Mr Creemers says, "but it [seems] like he was a good family man and into leaving a legacy".
"We have a lot of admiration for him because he was entrepreneurial. He turned something that was a problem into something that was very profitable and that’s clever."
