Friday, November 30, 2012

Rear Elevation




It looked high on the drawings but in real life it's a tower! The block slopes about 2 metres across a 50 metre depth, which isn't too sharp, but still enough that at the end of the 22 metre house the upper floor looks enormously high.

The bottom half of the house was cut out to reduce floor space to keep the building within budget. It saved about $27K. Later down the track, when I have the funds, I would like to reinstate that so there's some additional living space downstairs.


Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Day 63 - REVEALED!


I arrived to attend the electrical rough in and the scaffolding had been taken down to reveal THIS!! Ohhhhhh!! I'm so happy to say that it looks EXACTLY how I imagined it would. I was always a little worried it wouldn't look how I thought it had been designed and I let out a huge sigh of relief when I finally saw the facade.


I looooove how the trim on the gable worked out. We had lots of options including an aluminium backing, and black background and larger widths of timber. Sometimes it's so hard to make a decision based on a brochure or website and once it's done that's it. It's a lot of pressure. What we chose for this was thinner strips of timber on a white background for a clean look. The timber is cedar and I think it came up a treat!



This week the brickies are on site completing the piers. We have changed the size of the piers from 470 wide to 350 wide. I think they look much better, but I'll write more on that when they're finished.




I look back on the blog and realise it's really only been a couple of months since they've started and the builders have made such amazing progress. Each day the site is such a hive of activity, with all sorts of tradies working alongside each other just doing their thing. I'm in awe of how hard it would be to coordinate all of these and keep everything to such a tight schedule.

With the electrical rough in and plumbing rough in completed, they will soon be finished to enclosure stage and onto fit off. This means I need to finalise my colours for the cabinetry, choose new tiles for the bathroom floor (my other ones weren't suitable) and sort out a stormwater issue that's yet to be resolved. We're still on schedule and I can finally see an end in sight to this project after almost 2 years!

*Excited!*

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Kitchen Renders


Here are the preliminary renders for the kitchen. It's a galley style kitchen with an island bench and walk in pantry.

These renders were based on sketches from Daryl and don't take into account any colour selections. The plan is to have everything WHITE. So this black benchtop with waterfall edge would be white.

Budget permitting too, the splashback would be white glass as opposed to the tiles shown here.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Guest Bathroom Basin


Ohhhhhhh *squeal* the basin for the bathroom downstairs has arrived and ta-dah....this is it!!  The Omvivo Neo 700. Sounds like a fancy schmancy vacuum cleaner doesn't it.

The downstairs "powder room" will really just be the guest bathroom and it quite small, just 1800 x 2400 so not too much room for chunky vanities. We decided on this minimalist wall hung basin and a mirrored cabinet above to maximise the space.


We've also bought this very pretty chrome bottle trap instead of the nasty normal plastic s-bend one. The rest of the bathroom is white so I'm hoping it will look clean and sleek. Hope the guests appreciate it!!

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Exterior Feature Colour

Image courtesy of Adenbrook Homes

This is the facade that the house facade was based on. The main difference will be a staircase up to the front door and a flat roof over the portico. 

When it comes to colours, the main chamferboards will all be Dulux "White on White" and the roof, facias and soffits are all white as well. The only other colour will be the garage and portico posts which will be...


Dulux "Pail Grey"!! 

Don't you love these sample sizes? They're A4 (thanks Kirty!) and soooo much better than the teeny samples you get from Bunnings. Looks like they're only available to interior designers so start making friends with one...they rock!!

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Blanca Gomez



A couple of months ago I wrote a blog post about all the gorgeous artwork I was dreaming of for the new house and the distraction it was creating. It still distracts me and I was particularly in love with these prints with London, Paris and New York themes that I saw at Oz Design. They were $115 each.




I can't tell you how much I love the internet. I think I want to marry it! I just googled "London Paris New York Prints" and found the artist is an amazing graphic designer called Blanca Gomez. AND....I can get all 3 prints on Etsy for $75 plus $12 postage. Then I would just need to find 3 decent frames which I think would be maybe $20 each if I hunted around? So all up about $147 saving $198.

I'm still in two minds on whether I should start buying furnishings now or wait until the house is finished and we move in. On one hand I think I should really be waiting until the house is finished so I can keep a tight rein on my budget. On the other hand though I can just see I will wait until the house is done and when I go to buy all the lovely things I've been waiting for they will no longer be available. I wonder too if buying a few things now will take the edge of lump sum purchases when I love in.

So many decisions....

But I still love the internet...

Friday, November 9, 2012

Day 52 - First Internal Inspection!


My first internal inspection was today and wowsee what an eye opener. Behind all that insane scaffolding the builders have been working "hammer and tong" (their words, not mine) and have made amazing progress.

Most of the internal stud walls are up and it was SOOOO exciting walk through. It felt like a si-fi moment where all those flat, paper plans projected up, Star Wars style, into a laser 3D walk through.


Rear Balcony (was sooo much higher than surrounding house) will be uninterrupted breezes!

From the front balcony looking into the master bedroom
Study nook at the top of the stairs 

Kitchen/Dining/Lounge Area
In the next couple of weeks the plumbing and electrical rough in has been scheduled, the wall cladding will go up and the painters will paint the external walls. I found out why the builder was so intent on confirming the external paint selection - the scaffolding costs $450/DAY!!!! OMG.

Of course...it's just started raining. As long as it's not a FLOOD, I'm OK. Que Sera Sera.

Rocco...the builder's dog

Monday, November 5, 2012

Day 48 - Roof Trusses Are On


I'm so used to going past and seeing something amazingly new in the building progress, I was a little disappointed this visit. It looked like not too much had happened since the last time.

It is a bit hard to tell with all the scaffolding and on closer inspection there has been quite a bit of progress, mainly with the roof trusses going on.

I've ordered the tapware and just about to order the kitchen appliances.

*Huzzah!*

50 Shades of White


I was a little surprised when the builder said he needed the paint colour for the chamferboards. I would have thought that would be one of the last things that would be done. But as soon as the boards are up and roof is on the painting will commence so I needed to select 'the colour'.

It'll be white. Easy peasy. Right?

WRONG!!!!!

How many freaking shades of white are there?????

Oh my god. I stood in front of the Dulux stand at Bunnings, mouth agape, feeling overwhelmed and confused. How can there possibly so many shades of white and is there really much difference between them?

I had to call in the experts. I laid out all the swatches in front of Daryl and he was able to decipher Vivid White from Whisper White. What we were wanting was a cool colour as opposed to a warm shade of white with more grey then pink through it.

So the final choice is...





Dulux White on White!! I don't need to choose the trim colours yet, but I'm thinking of either a light grey or very dark slate.

Actually it makes sense now that they need to do the painting now...while the scaffolding is up.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Cabinetry Designer Meets Cabinet Maker


So Daryl (Interior Designer Extraordinaire) met with the cabinet maker Nev to go over the cabinetry plans for the kitchen and bathrooms.

It was such a privilege to see these two at work. So professional and talented. I could literally see art meets life as Daryl explained his drawings and Nev's mind would tick over it for a while he thought about it, and then he would bring up any issues he could see and solutions he could offer.

They did this little dance of negotiation until they could both reach an acceptable solution. It was quite extraordinary to see and while I'm sure this is the normal process, I wonder whether anyone else has noticed this in such a literal sense.




This is one of Daryl's drawings for the kitchen. It will be a galley style kitchen and this is the cabinetry for along the wall. I absolutely love the hand drawings. I see lots of CAD drawings and renders at work, but I love the personality and creativity behind these hand drawings. My Dad is an architect, perhaps it comes from a childhood of watching him draw at his desk.

I love how Daryl's just taken my mish mash of requirements and interpreted them perfectly. This is exactly what I wanted - a simple galley style kitchen with clean minimalist lines but space for coffee machine, mixers, cookbooks, recycle bins and chopping boards. I needed a place for all of these as I hate having items on the bench tops.


Here are the plans for the main bathroom. It has that DIVINE freestanding bath with the pendant light over it. The cabinet will be wall hung with mirrored storage behind.

Rendered 3D drawings will be created for all the cabinetry, but for the moment, this step made me very happy!

Thank You

I've been so overwhelmed by the number of people and companies who have helped during this whole rebuilding process, from lending a hand to very generous discounts for rebuilding.

These are some of the companies I would sincerely like to thank. It's not all of them and there are sooo many individuals as well, but that will be for another post.