Turning A House Into Our House V1

Fortunately it was P to the rescue.

Rather than continuously trying to model and redesign the existing plans he drew up the building envelope which allowed sufficient space down the back to fit his shed in and space down the side of the block for the driveway.  We also had to allow an adjustment at the back so the cars had a space in which they could turn into the garage.

In addition to that we also got some suggestions from friends including one very helpful one that was - the front door does not have to be at the front!

So P did up the first mud map of the house within the building envelope and came up with this design.  Which I then drew up to scale on the computer.

 

Successful First Draft Plan

The inspiration for the kitchen was this one.

This one met all the basic requirements - size was in budget, fitted in the building envelope and it met several key requirements:

• Separate kids area that they could access without going through the whole house.
• Great open plan living with a good size kitchen.
• Study / guest combined with access to the ensuite
• Deck / alfresco.
• Great size kitchen (and laundry).
• Powder room accessible without going through bedroom areas.
• Separation of kids area and adult areas.

But you know how it is it just wasn't quite right.  We got some good suggestions from friends and family including:

• Create a sound barrier between the kids and parents area by putting the pantry in between the kitchen and activity room.
• Remodel the study / parents area to make better use of the view out the back of the house.
• Create a privacy to the door into the powder room.

So we went away and had another think.

Designing A House

Steve gave us a great start showing us a design that had been drawn up for a person who was previously looking at our block.

 

Early Ideas

The idea was that the garage was down around under the house, building up the lower sloped area of the block, then the main components of the house were built at street level.  So the front of the house was single story going through to double story at the back.

We really liked this idea as it made an access way to the rear of the house so P can bring things down to the shed and kept the house up high to take advantage of the views.  It also means we can have all the living areas on one level, unlike our current house where we are constantly going up and down stairs.

We then started playing with designs.

The initial challenge was getting the features in that we wanted but also to stay within the both the budget and the limitations of the block.  The first design was way over on price, based on a base figure of $1000 - $1200 per square meter.  I worked on the basic house design could not exceed 75% of our budget so that we could then spend the other 25% on the finishes that we wanted.  Having moved into "a shell" in my first home and knowing the hours we work, I knew we would not have time to spend months finishing things off.

You would think that being able to design it yourself and having a decent budget it wouldn't be that hard but its amazing how tricky it is to get the design right and stay within a building envelope size and the budget.

We sort of got stuck as each time we adjusted the plan to meet one parameter another one would become unworkable.  So a radical rethink was needed!