When a kitchen designer and an interior designer create a family home together with a passionate cook, the result is really something special.

Words Brenda Ward     Photography Fredrik Larsson

Walk up to the entrance of the Wanaka holiday home owned by Gaynor Rodgers and John Wilson, and it makes a very quiet statement. You see plaster, raw concrete blocks, steel beams and a bamboo walkway. Nothing more.

“There are no windows and no door handle – it’s very minimalist,” explains Gaynor. But there’s a surprise to come.  “Then you step inside and it opens up to a fully glazed north-facing view and the back yard – and it’s got an abundance of light,” she says.

The pair wanted the south-facing street frontage to be simple, says her partner John.

“The idea was that we introduced there the materials that we used through the house – plaster, concrete block, bamboo flooring and steel. You see those elements as soon as you open the door. Then you can see straight through to the view, which is where you get the ‘wow’.”

Amazingly, this house is nothing like the home John and Gaynor originally planned. They had designed a renovation within the floorplan of the 70s brick holiday home they had bought as a project. But soon after they started digging the foundations, trouble struck. A wall they expected to be there, wasn’t.

Says John: “Our intention was to keep all the framing, but in the end we had to clean the whole floor down to the foundations.” Suddenly the project became a total rebuild, resulting in a house that looks completely new, but is still faithful to the original modest floorplan.

With the creative input of Gaynor, a trained interior designer, and her daughter Melanie Craig, an award-winning kitchen designer, the interior was bound to be spectacular. In fact, the kitchen is the Supreme Winner of the 2011 National Kitchen and Bathroom Association awards.

John and Gaynor are passionate cooks, Melanie explains, and this is a key component. “The kitchen is on display from all areas and I kept in mind that John and Gaynor love the materials of mid-century designs. “The design evolved from the structure of the island. We created an architectural workbench of exposed plywood and stainless steel, supported by a trestle leg.”

The main bench stretches out onto the deck, seemingly passing through glass sliding doors to turn into an outdoor barbecue kitchen.

John says he’s serious about cooking: “We do a lot of entertaining, so we wanted indoor-outdoor flow to the barbecue. I also specified both a steam oven and a conventional oven with a pizza stone.

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