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Linea beach house on Waiheke Island

This simple yet stunning family beach home on Waiheke's Onetangi Beach that features Linea® Weatherboard, is the result of a demanding brief from the client and a response from an architect who relishes a challenge.

Waiheke architect, Ron Stevenson encourages his clients to give him a list of their likes and dislikes. In this case his clients were very clear. As well as wanting their views and privacy maintained, they required room to stow all their beach gear out of sight, including boat, tractor and car.

They also wanted an easy indoor / outdoor flow from the living area to a level lawn. All this on a narrow site with a steep hill rising up sharply behind the flat building site. In addition, the home, with its extreme exposure to sun, salt and sand-blasting had to be as weathertight and maintenance free as possible.

Ron Stevenson's solution to the first challenge was to raise the level of the front lawn right up above the road. The house is built up on poles, giving ample room for vehicles and beach toys to be housed underneath the first floor living area. The raised lawn hides the base of the house, so this doesn't look like a pole-house from the road, but rather as if it is sitting on top of a natural sand-dune. The landscaping enhances this effect with succulents planted in shell beds.

In response to the need for a low maintenance home, Ron chose James Hardie Linea Weatherboards. The client was very keen on the traditional look and feel of weatherboards, but was wary of the maintenance required. As an inert, stable product with a 25 Year Product Warranty and 15 year paint warranty (for approved coating manufacturers), Linea provided the perfect solution.

Ron says. “This is an extremely vigorous site. It gets intense sun, salt spray, even sand-blasting. So it had to be Linea to stand up to all that.”

“I also like the fact that it's such a complete system. It's so important to get the detailing right. Some places look great from the road, but when you get up close and see poor detailing it mars the overall impression.”

Ron chose to use stainless steel soakers on the corners to enhance the weatherboard profile and wider facings around the sliding doors to give a more traditional look and balance the narrower-profiled aluminium joinery.

The result is a simple, but stunning family beach home which offers all the luxuries of resort style living including 3 bathrooms, a magnificent kitchen, and a cosy open fireplace, rendered in an understated way which is totally in keeping with the great kiwi tradition of casual living ‘ at the beach'.