Bring back the glory

Damaged by the earthquakes, boarded up for three years and stripped by vandals, the century-old, two-and-a-half storey California bungalow in New Brighton was rather down at heel when Matthew Ayton and Tanya Boe bought it as-is at auction in 2014.

“As soon as we saw it, we fell in love with it,” says Tanya, explaining how the quakes that rattled the city for nearly a year put on hold their plans to build a house on their 40ha block in the picturesque bush-clad Okuti Valley in Banks Peninsula.

Tanya lost her shop