The house that Viriamu built

Our guesthouse and home was built by my husband Viriamu, pretty much single-handedly. It's a beautiful big house, set in a magnificent coconut grove, complete with the family marae at the back (a Polynesian sacred site) and white sand beach with sunset up front. Since moving to Rurutu we've been tackling a lot of maintenance work, that hadn't really been attended to for the past five years or so. I've also been trying to make the place a bit more my own. Most people are pretty incredulous when we first tell them that Viriamu actually built the house, it's true he has the appearance of a very simple-natured person, he's not had much of a schooling, but he's definitely got the smarts, just not necessarily in the conventional sense. Of course, he'd be just as happy living in his little corrugated tin shed as here in the house, but he has really good taste and whatsmore is a marvel at rigging things up using just what he's got to hand. Most of the furniture and fittings are coconut, or other local wood, and we try to keep in with the Polynesian flavour as much as possible, while also catering to the comfort of our visitors. At the moment we've been focusing on the living/dining room area, which for me was a bit dark and austere, lacking comfort - Tahitians like Viriamu just don't really believe in the need for it. The concept of a sofa that you actually sit on (rather than dress up with Christmas decorations and stare at), has not really caught on with Viriamu's family! So, it was a struggle but I managed to get Viriamu to agree to buying a bamboo corner sofa, it took more than three months from ordering to arrival on the cargo boat, but now it's actually here it has turned out to be so enormous that we have had to seriously re-model the rest of our living room to accommodate it. All in all I think it ties in OK with the rest of the decor and the kids have been just LOVING IT! Tuati and Iro were begging me to let them sleep on the sofa, 'cause they reckoned it was even better than the bed.

I'm still trying to work with the furnishings to get something I like. I've been making leaf-print cushion covers for a while now and really liking the results, but I need a throw or something to cover up the completely impractical (albeit washable) cream seat covers.......and some more side cushions, the citrus greens give the required lift, but now I want to work on some curtains, the lace affairs that we have now are pretty horrendous.

We've also been juggling around wall decorations, our rather unusual oil-painting (painted for Viriamu by an Italian family who stayed with him some years back) looks good above the sofa, but left a gaping void the other side of the room above our enormous coconut and Hibiscus dining table. So, we made a wall-light using the trunk of a tree-fern, we have several kicking around here.

Last year we put in the corner cubby, closing off a superfluous door into one of the guest rooms, an addition which I love (I'm keen to develop our library a bit more), but which desperately needs a novel lighting solution, I'm trying to get his mum to weave something in niau (coconut-leaf fibres).

I'm also hoping to start collecting art pieces and curios from around the islands, to start adding a bit more character. I already absolutely love our shell 'chandeliers' from the Tuamotus, as well as our local poi-pounders, Moorean bamboo lamp and a beautiful Balinese whale batik that my parents bought for us.

It's so much fun working with the house, it's just a question of finding the time to get everything finished! We're not done yet, but I'm liking the progress that we're making.