Showhomes > At home in the Canterbury landscape

At home in the Canterbury landscape

In 2000 Mary and John Harris bought 30 acres of land at Mt Grey Downs in Canterbury with a long-term goal of building a home there when they retired from their poultry business.

“We created the lake and put in the road and power, and were content to wait a few years before we started to build,” says John. “But the business sold much sooner than we thought and within a year we were looking at house designs.”

The Harris's had a good idea of what they did and didn't want.

“Nothing pretentious or ostentatious,” says Mary. “We wanted a home that fitted into the landscape and felt like it belonged there. We wanted to use weatherboard and schist. At first we thought of cedar, but then we visited the Landmark Homes showhome and saw Linea and decided that it would be a better option.”

“We'd looked around at all sorts of showhomes, but we didn't want anything that was bog standard,” says John. “We really wanted a home designed to meet our own needs. When we met Lorraine Parry of Landmark Homes at their showhome we felt confident that they could give us what we were after. We liked the quality – and the idea of building with Linea appealed immediately."

"The weather here is extreme; cold and frosty with occasional snow in the winter months and hot dry winds in summer, so Linea made sense because it wouldn't give us the maintenance issues that we would have with timber weatherboards."

“Eighty to ninety percent of the homes we build are designed from scratch,” says Lorraine Parry. “People come through the showhome, get ideas and see what can be achieved, then they sit down with our designers and start talking about what they have in mind, either using one of our plans as a starting point, or starting from scratch."

The great advantage of a company that designs and builds is that you get the flexibility and choice, but at the same time you can keep an accurate grasp on the budget, because the designer and builder are talking with each other about it when the plans are still at a conceptual stage, so nobody's going to rush off and design something that's going to be way over budget to build.

Landmark Home's designer came out to the site, met with Mary and John and got a good idea of what they were after, and what was going to work best in the location.

“Our children have left home now,” says Mary. “So we wanted a home that would work well for us when it's just the two of us here, but with spaces and bedrooms that could be opened up when the whole family get together. The design that Landmark came up with is great because there are two bedrooms and a bathroom in a separate wing which can be shut off when we're not using them.”

“The outdoor spaces were important too. We get all day sun moving around the house, so we wanted to make sure that we had a variety of outdoor spots that caught the sun, shelter depending on which way the wind is blowing, and a swimming pool as a focal point for family entertaining."

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