Hayley reveals highs and lows of her six-year renovation challenge

The Hits host Hayley Bath and her husband juggled tearing down walls with pregnancies.

The Hits daytime host Hayley Bath is selling her Wellington home as she quits the capital for a new life in Tauranga.

The farewell to 40 Aparima Avenue, in Miramar, will be tearful. Bath and her builder husband Chris have spent years bringing the house up to scratch and turning it into a beautiful family home.

“We bought this house as newlyweds in 2018 – five weeks before our daughter Charli was born. I was very, very pregnant,” Bath told OneRoof.

“Before we had her, we tried to make the house as liveable as possible.”

Their cute solid concrete house was built in the 1920s using shells and sand from the local beach. Bath believes it is one of a cluster built around Miramar for returning war veterans. Before they bought it, for just under $700,000, it had been owned by the same family for more than 60 years.

“There was a lot of mustard and brown and patched up wallpaper, old Axminster carpets - everything was in a bad state. The huge old laundry had mushrooms and fungus growing out of it. There had been a loft conversion, but you could only reach it from the outside,” Bath said.

 The couple put their renovation plans on hold after Charli was born, but returned to them in earnest a year later, ready to rip out the “absolutely horrific” bathroom.

Lockdown was spent jackhammering out old chimneys (the bricks were used to pave the front paths) and painting long into the night. Halfway through stage two, they discovered not just one, but two babies were on their way.

“We ripped it all apart, and then I found out I was pregnant with twins. It was absolute mayhem. I got to the point where my belly was growing so fast with the babies that we were days away from me not fitting into our shower.

“The plumber said, ‘We can’t quite get the new shower plumbed up before the old one is disconnected’, and Chris said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’ll hose her off on the lawn’.”

A shortage of NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) beds at Wellington Hospital saw Bath airlifted to Palmerston North hospital for the twins’ birth. The arrival of Jules and Beau put the project on hold again, but at least Bath came home to a new shower.

When they were ready to pick their brushes and tools again, they finished the bath, built out the attic, and created a bedroom for the boys. They also added a bathroom, a living room, and an office. Bath’s father, another builder by trade, helped out and installed a new internal staircase for the couple.

“My dad built our winding internal staircase in his garage in Auckland and drove it down the country on a trailer. It fit perfectly and has never once creaked.”

The couple finally put down their tools six months ago, Bath said. “We’ve had a lovely summer. Our favourite thing to do at weekends is to be out enjoying the sun in the backyard. We just sit in hammocks under the tree and the kids are in the paddling pool playing.”

Bath said their six-year renovation project was tough on their growing family, but being in a great neighbourhood helped. “It nearly broke us, but it was worth it in the end,” she told OneRoof. “We renovated it with the idea that we were going to be there long-term. Our neighbours are incredible, I wish we could take them with us.”

She added: “This house has so many lovely memories, all the newborn babies. It is a lovely home and an idyllic life - that’s what held us in Wellington.”

Leaving will be tough, but Bath is excited about her move to Tauranga, where she’ll broadcast from NZME’s new studios in the city. And even though they swore they’d never do another renovation, they can see another do-up is on the cards.

“To be honest, we are so fussy. It seems that the houses we are looking at, the larger family homes, most of them are a project,” she said.

- 40 Aparima Avenue, in Miramar, Wellington, is for sale, tender closing May 21

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This article was first published on OneRoof and is republished here with permission.