How Kiwi Live: Dame Sophie Pascoe’s Christchurch Home Blends Family, Accessibility & Design

Step inside the Christchurch home of New Zealand’s most decorated Paralympian, Dame Sophie Pascoe. Far from a museum of medals, Sophie describes her living space as "cozy, welcoming, and open" - a sanctuary defined by whānau, resilience, and a vibrant open-door policy.

From navigating DIY renovations and integrating her husband’s Fijian culture to the non-negotiables of accessible living, Sophie opens up about how she and her family are turning a physical structure into a forever home in the heart of Canterbury.

Your Home Style In Three Words

I think our home style is cozy, welcoming and open.

What Does Home Mean To You?

Home means family to me. So wherever my boys are and my family, that is home. We're very grateful to have this beautiful house that we live in, and that is our physical home. But, you know, we go camping, and that is also our home. We travel a lot together, and that's our home.

I'm very grateful that we have a very loving and big family, and we all get to share that in many different places.

On Entertaining In The House/Manaakitanga

We've got a toddler. So this house is full of entertainment. We're very grateful. We've got lots of toys that have been given from family members. Hand-me-downs. Our house is full of making amazing memories with our son.

Both Rob and I also enjoy cooking. When we do get some time to ourselves, while our child is asleep, Rob and I actually love movies, and so entertainment for us is also getting to just sit down, watch a movie, switch off the phones and just enjoy a bit of quiet time.

We've always got our door open for our family and friends. And so I would say our house is very full in terms of having lots of people come and visit. So, yeah, we love entertaining. It's actually why we chose this house.

What You’re Most Proud Of In Your Home

What I'm most proud of in this home as actually the commitment to making this place our home. When we first bought this house, we had grand plans and ideas to make it from a house into a home. We've had so many people come and help us start making it into our home. So, for instance, the deck has been built by my dad and our friends. So many people committed to making this place how we dreamed of it and it's all coming together.

Also, Rob and I have also put in so much work as well. And you get to look at the final completion of it and just be like, yeah, I'm proud we all did that. So, yeah, I'd say I'm proud of my family and friends for all getting behind Rob and I to make this place into a beautiful home for our family.

How And Where You Start The Morning

I start my mornings by the coffee machine. The first thing I do is actually get our toddler to press the on button for the coffee. He knows "mama coffee." And, yeah, I start my morning with a coffee while I get his breakfast ready, and then we sit down and we have breakfast together. The coffee machine is actually quite a story in itself. I found this coffee machine online. It was brand new, and I got it for half the price that I could in-store. Ever since then, we've kind of become coffee snobs, I would say. It's about making the best coffee in the morning just to kick off the day.

On Ending The Day

At the end of the day when we've got our toddler to sleep and we finally get some time to ourselves. We usually just crash out on the couch and watch a good movie. Into bed early and get a good night's sleep.

On Living In Christchurch

I was born and bred in Christchurch, so I am through and through Cantabrian. Which, as we all know, the stereotype for that is, you know, it's pretty hard to take the Cantabrian out of the Cantabrian when you leave the city. That is true because I've lived a very full life and traveling and I only see Christchurch as home. I grew up with my family here, but it's a beautiful city. We're so lucky to be able to have the likes of Hagley Park, where you can just go and spend some time, and then enjoying the cafes around the city.

And it's also been amazing to watch the resilience of Christchurch itself grow from the earthquakes and being able to see the rebuild. Yes, it's been a process. It's been a long process. But it's been a thoughtful process and everyone has backed one another to be able to make this place into a new, thriving city, which is just beautiful to come to. What I love about it is that when you do go and tell people that you're from Christchurch and people say, "oh my gosh, you know, I went to Christchurch the other day," I love saying that the city is so vibrant now. That just makes you feel proud to come from Christchurch. So yeah, I am a proud Cantabrian and I love living here. I love that we're close to the mountains. We're close to the beach. But we have this awesome growing city that you can expect to be, I would say, the best city in the world.

Grand Plans

Our home is unfinished. We've been working on the outdoor area this year and then next year we're focusing on the indoor, and we have grand plans for the indoor. We are going to move out of the home. So all the aesthetics are going to be redone, all the walls are going to be repainted. New carpet, new bathrooms. It's going to be like a new home really, for us, on the inside. Which is exciting because we had grand plans when we walked into this home and we knew that we were going to be able to make our mark. That this is going to be a new place for us to thrive and feel grateful.

Bringing Culture Into The Home

The importance of culture is huge for us as a family because my husband is from Fiji and his family still live in Fiji, and we get to spend a lot of time over there as well. We've brought the Fijian culture into our home in certain ways. Rob and I even got married in Fiji.

We've brought lots of different parts of Fiji into this home through aesthetics that have been given to us from family members that mean a lot. We've got them proudly hanging on our wall, or on display. That's the point of bringing a home together through collaborating our cultures as one. I'm really proud that we've been able to have meaningful things from Fiji on display.

Your Dream Home

A dream home... Go on Trade Me Property, type in "Highest Price", and then you see all these dreamy homes.

Big, spacious, big indoor-outdoor flow. Lots of rooms for all of our family members. Family is our number one value. So it would be a place where we can host everybody and have them all come and stay. Maybe a pool would be nice as well. But also another thing, I suppose for me is single storey. I actually do appreciate a single storey house. Just with obviously having one leg and coming from living in two storey houses prior to buying this house, that was also a non-negotiable for the purchase of this house - it had to be single storey.

So, dream house would be big, beautiful, lots of space for kids to run around and our family to just enjoy.

Your Favourite Item In The Home

So my favorite item in the home is actually our bar cabinet. We actually bought our bar cabinet off Trade Me Marketplace when Rob and I had been together for a couple of years and we decided to do a project. It was quite a run-down bar cabinet, and we decided to strip it all back and make it a project. Now it's like a focal point in our home, and people say, "oh, cool bar cabinet." And we go, "yeah, we made that together." We love a project together. Now I look at it and love it. There's just been so much love….Tears, too but so much love has been put into that bar cabinet.

Favourite Memory In Your Home

That’s hard, there's been so many memories of our son here. Watching him walk in this home. Watching him grow and learn and talk. Then once we’ve got the doors open, he absolutely loves the deck and just watching him run up and down the deck. Watch his Grandad come and build the deck.

Yeah, it's become our home because there's been lots of growing memories. So, there’s too many to count... which I think is the beauty of what a home is, right? You create so many memories that you're able to tell so many stories of what goes on within your home and share them with the family and friends.

What’s The Best Seat In The House/Tūrangawaewae

The best seat in the house, I would say, is actually where I am now on the couch. Lying down and getting to watch a good movie. We are very grateful (and not so grateful) to our son who broke our TV, and so we had to go and buy a new TV, which obviously means we could slightly upgrade. So we get to watch great shows on a great TV. It was not my fault. So I will blame the husband for this one. He smashed the TV by throwing something at it. Young, obviously. When I went shopping, it was the same price for the bigger version than the smaller version. And so, you know, I got sucked into that style of getting a larger TV than we actually need but because we love movies, that's actually worked in our favor.

What Was The First Thing You Bought For The Home After You Moved In

When we bought this house, this house had no curtains or drapery or blinds throughout the house. So the first thing I did actually get was somebody to come in and do some full measurements, and now we have curtains and a little bit more privacy. It makes the house soft. Homely. Curtains bring a home to life I feel.

What’s The Biggest DIY Win… Or Fail You’ve Had Here

This is an easy answer because I decided to do the painting of our fences, and that has just been a massive job because it's literally been all four sides to our property—the front fence, all the sides and the back, and none of them were done prior. So I decided to do it with a paintbrush. I'm quite a perfectionist, and I like to get in the grooves. And so it's been a bit of a love-hate relationship project, because obviously I've loved seeing the final completion of it. But during the process, it was quite tedious, and obviously very time consuming. So that has been a proud project, but also a love-hate relationship project. And everybody's heard about it.