Staying Power

This Christchurch cottage was supposed to be a quick post-earthquake do-up and flick. Now its expat owners are happy to call it home

- Ady Shannon

From red zone to dream home

Walking through the door of Simon Beeton and Rachael Risdon’s warm, inviting Christchurch cottage, you’d never guess that nearly seven years ago it was on the verge of collapse.

“The house was on a tilt,” says Rachael. “The piles had gone. We would roll a ball to our cat and it would roll into a corner. Eggs slid to one side of the pan during cooking.”

The 2011 earthquakes had turned this solid heritage home from a simple do-up into a full-on rebuild, and the worst part was that it was the second time the couple had had their lives ripped apart by Canterbury’s fault lines. In September 2010, the land beneath their then home, an old Avonside villa, was deemed uninhabitable as a result of earthquake activity.

Despite being traumatised by the experience and keen to return to their native UK as soon as possible, the pair were tied to their adopted city by a condition of their EQC settlement which prevented them from taking a cash payout. They decided to purchase another property so they could pocket the profits and move on, and this character cottage by the Heathcote River in leafy Beckenham seemed like an easy ‘fix-up and flip’ prospect.

A month later, the December 2011 quake scuttled their plans. Moderate damage to their cottage became major as the home slumped on its foundations. A simple redecorating and repainting project became a total rebuild and the couple embarked on what was to be a years-long process of insurance wrangles. “It took 35 inspections and years of negotiating before we could come to an agreement with our insurers,” says Rachael.