I’ve been very remiss in telling you this piece of news! It happened just over two years ago – we moved into an old ‘vintage’ Lockwood. It’s a 1970s beauty, complete with the orange doors!
If you don’t live in New Zealand then you might not be familiar with Lockwood Homes. Lockwood Group was founded in 1951 and used an innovative and distinctive engineered building system. The whole house is constructed out of solid timber boards that slot and interlock to create the walls of the house giving these homes a very unique shiplap look that many people either love or hate.
The pictures below show the house as it was before we moved in. As you can see, the walls are all the original stained timber which made it incredibly dark and gloomy, except for the bright 70’s on trend orange cupboard doors. We were talking skylights and solatube to make it brighter.
We were surrounded by trees. There were many, and they were planted way too close to the house – they were literally coming into the house! So we decided to take radical action and cut some down and voilà, our house became much brighter.
Once we cut down some of the larger trees, we saw the most amazing view of the Hutt Valley. It’s stunning, and there’s not a day goes by that I don’t look out there and appreciate it. Even though we said we would never live on a hill again, we are soooo happy that we chose this house, even if it is a little too small for us. Here's the view we now have.
We are currently undertaking a major renovation of the entire house. As I said, I’ve been very remiss in sharing this with you but I’ve been busy ‘doing’ and not writing about doing. I’m going to reveal to you the after photos soon, but for now you’ll have to be content with the before pictures (click the images below to enlarge them).
We have learned so much in the process of renovating a Lockwood home especially one that was honestly was way too small for us. I'm hoping that you'll find what we've done to renovate this tiny Lockwood interesting and helpful. The important thing is seeing the potential and having a strong vision of what you want to achieve. We decided to break the renovation into stages and we are almost finished stage 1.
My next post on our Lockwood Reno will be about what we did on the outside to the forest that our beautiful little home was lost in. It was absolutely amazing what happen when this house finally could see the light of day again.
Update: If you would like to see the finished kitchen click here. Check out the Renovate section of my blog to see the progress.
I'd love to share my renovation experiences with you so please use the subscribe form below to sign up to my mailing list and to make it a little sweeter you may win a $50 Amazon eGift Card. To celebrate the launch of the new website I'm giving away a $50 Amazon eGift Card to one person. It's so simple, just sign-up to my mailing list and you're in the draw. If you're already a subscriber on my mailing list you can leave a comment on this, or any other post, to enter the draw. I'll be making the draw on the 31st ofOctober and will contact the winner by email.
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October 23, 2019
Hi, my name is Carol Karl. I live in little old New Zealand. My family and I strive to live the most ‘real’ life we can – by that I mean that we eat real food, we live real lives and just generally be our most authentic selves.
