Before and After: Freemans Bay Double Villa

A diamond waiting to be polished.

That was how the listing described it when this Freemans Bay property first came to market. And it was right. Set on a generous 717sqm site in one of Auckland’s most coveted streets, the 1910 double villa had everything: grand Victorian proportions, high ceilings, original kauri floors, decorative cornices, and glorious views to the city skyline. But time had taken its toll. The kitchen and bathrooms were well past their use-by date, and the home was in need of some serious love. It was full of potential and ready for someone willing to see it.

It also had no garage. No off-street parking. No security. And no separation between the front door and the street, the ivy-covered fence doing little to create the sense of arrival a home of this calibre deserved.

The listing ended with a line that turned out to be prescient: “Move in, enjoy and then once you’ve gained a feel for the home, call your architect to take it to the next level.”

They did exactly that.

Freeman Bay Double Villa Before Photos

The Brief

When the clients came to Macfie Architecture, the challenge was clear. The bones of the villa were exceptional and worth protecting absolutely. But the home needed to be brought up to the standard it had always deserved, healthier, warmer, more considered, and ready for a growing family.

The scope was twofold: address what was missing at the front of the property entirely, and comprehensively renovate the interior while creating a garden and pool that finally matched the ambition of the site.

The Design Response

Arriving. The boldest move came first. A double garage was excavated from street level, a significant engineering undertaking on a sloped Freemans Bay site, and a retaining-walled front garden was established above it. The result is a defined arrival sequence: gated security, established planting, and a quiet authority that separates the home from the street without closing it off from the neighbourhood. Above it, the villa’s original verandah and fretwork were restored to their rightful presence.

Inside. The approach throughout the interior was one of careful stewardship. The original kauri floors, decorative cornices, and heritage rooms were retained and honoured. New bathrooms and en-suites were designed in careful dialogue with the villa’s character, considered in detail and unhurried in feeling. A new walk-in wardrobe brought a quiet luxury to the master suite, which opens directly onto the original balcony where the Auckland CBD sits precisely in frame.

Critically, the home was made healthier from the inside out. New double-glazed joinery was installed throughout, and the home was fully insulated, transforming a beautiful but draughty Victorian villa into a warm, comfortable home fit for a growing family.

Outside. At the rear, the garden was reimagined entirely. An infinity edge pool and built-in spa anchor the upper terrace, while a sunken outdoor entertaining area creates a sheltered, intimate space for gathering. Large format stone retaining walls ground the scheme, and the whole composition opens to the sky, a garden and pool that the site always had the potential for but had never been given.

The Result

From the street, the villa looks exactly as it should, a beautifully restored 1910 double villa in one of Auckland’s finest neighbourhoods.

Behind it, everything has changed.

The excavated garage and arrival sequence gave the home the presence it always lacked. The interior renovation honoured what was already there while making it warmer, healthier, and genuinely liveable for the long term. And the garden and pool created something the site always had the potential for but had never been given.

This is what good architecture does. It doesn’t impose. It listens to what a home is trying to be, and then helps it get there.

Project scope: concept design, developed design, resource consent, building consent, on-site monitoring.

Build: Elevate Projects. Pool: Alfresco Pools. Photography: Sam Warner.