EYES ON THE FUTURE

Meticulous organisation and attention to the small details paid off with this home extension

- Debbie Harrison

When Mark Banbrook and Skye Ross forged ahead with a 61sqm extension to their bungalow in Devonport, Auckland, Skye didn't really understand what she was signing up for when she put her hand up to be the on-site decision-maker.

“I didn't really realise that would mean I'd spend literally hundreds of hours driving from shop to shop all over Auckland, scouring showrooms, selecting options and taking home samples for Mark and me to look at. I didn’t anticipate how full-on that would be,” she says, adding that this was all done with her patient then one-year-old daughter Tully in tow.

“I also underestimated the amount of decisions that needed to be made - from how big I wanted the architraves to be, to how low to have the lights hanging, to where the shower niche should sit. I really wanted to be considered with my choices and to make the best decision on everything. Mark would say, ‘You're way overthinking this’, but I didn't want to compromise on any of our choices.”

Builder Hugh Nisbet from Salt Construction understood this and came up with nifty ideas to help, including nailing a rectangular piece of cardboard to the framing in the shower for Skye to judge how a niche would work there, to hanging various sizes of architraves for the couple to ponder overnight.

At one stage, she'd searched every reclamation yard in Auckland and scoured Trade Me and Marketplace, hunting for an elusive aged-brass door handle to match the ones in the original villa (good news, she found one).

“It was so much work at the time but it made the difference. No one else would notice but it was important to us,” she says.