The Ultimate NZ Moving House Checklist

The average Kiwi will move house multiple times in their lifetimes. It starts when we first leave our family nest and continues through all the years with our own families. Once you buy your first home, through all the subsequent flips and new home purchases, you are likely to want to do some renovations. Templer Interiors, and this website, can help with that. But what about that move? There are hundreds of decisions, and months of planning, needed with every house move. Now there is a website that can help.

Smoove Move is just that resource, with handy tips and tricks to make that process less stressful and less expensive. Check out their blog post, The Ultimate NZ Moving House Checklist.

Then when you are all moved in and ready to renovate that kitchen, bathroom or just need a little advice on a new sofa, Templer Interiors will be here to help.

Sneak Preview

I have been working for some time on gorgeous Remuera home. It's a classic villa, built in the '30's, with traditional and bungalow features. The home needed a lot of work and a lot of work has been done to it. The project is still underway, as the client and I turn our attention to soft furnishings. Professional photos are still some time away so here are some images of the ongoing work - it's just all too nice to keep under wraps. Please excuse my lousy photography ;-)

Kitchen - as expected this is the centrepiece of the renovation designs, highly traditional with unique features and beautiful fittings throughout. The splash back if of mosaic tile from a US company, one of my all time favourites, Oceanside. I was thrilled beyond measure when this became available in NZ (through designers only for the time being) and it has been used throughout this home with the most dramatic style shown here:

There was to be a scullery behind the kitchen but the main wall that had to go for this to happen could not be moved. The compromise is that the large existing laundry space is now a combination laundry and scullery. It's a long narrow space but has been fitted out beautifully. And the cabinets going almost all the way up to the 3 metre ceiling height offer storage galore. And the owner got the butler sink she loves but that didn't work in the main kitchen. The home has four gorgeous bathrooms, three of which are finished in white marble tiles. Here is a photo of just the very custom, very personalised and seriously beautiful vanity in the downstairs bathroom. More photos of the bathrooms to come in my next blog post, so keep an eye out for that.

Templer Interiors in Habitat – Alternative Design Solution

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I really enjoyed this one, although it was hard work!! Resene’s Habitat magazine, which comes out only twice per year, includes a regular feature called “Alternative Design Solution”. The way it works is that select designers are sent a photo that will be appearing in the next issue. The designer then comes up with an alternative look for that room. The submission has to include actual products specified, a statement of why this design was chosen and what you are trying to convey with this look.  And you need to submit drawings of the new proposed design – including a 3-D rendering!

That last one did my head in. I’m afraid that three dimensional perspective drawing is something that I have never been able to master. I had a class in design school, I even took private lessons, but my mind just can’t seem to think that way. Vanishing points and figuring out the relative sizes of things in the frame when drawing in three dimensions is bey0nd me. I’m really good at floor plans and 2-D elevations, and I am lucky that I have managed to do the work that I do for 20 years without needing to do perspective drawings. And even luckier that Habitat magazine does the drawing for you!

Not having seen it, except in my head, until the magazine was published, I am really happy with the way my room turned out. I love the products I selected, I think they go together really well and it was exciting to see them rendered in 3-D colour, bringing the images in my head to life! Usually that only happens when the real life room is ready. I suppose I have been really lucky that those images in my head always end up looking just right in life ;-)