Demolition Doubts Dissolved

Several weeks ago I would have left the title of this post as ‘Demolition Doubts…’ because for a moment there it seemed that our house would never get demolished. Fortunately now things are moving (the asbestos cladding is being removed). It’s a good lesson on how things can tend not to go according to plan. In my how to demolish your house post (written in December 07), I said that our house would most likely be demolished in January 08. Yes well…

Photos being taken as I write (thanks Phil and John) to be posted as they come through.

The Beguiling Tile

 

I have to admit that I was deeply apprehensive as I walked into my first choice of tilers during pre-start selections. Most women seem to know their dream tile intimately. I on the other hand was a more insecure candidate. A ‘’something like” ”maybe” ”not bad” kind of candidate who was happy to put complete trust in a total stranger who happened to be working there. The stranger was one Meredith Splatt.

Her name struck me as being highly Tolkienesque . Was it even real I thought to myself? For this expanse of room… these tiles of all shape, colour and texture… these lights…beaming like a UFO… were all quite and completely surreal.

There seemed to be three ways to go.

The first was the simplest option: the 40 something dollar tile allowed for in the builder’s specifications. Not much choice but highly practical with all the tiles displayed together. Plenty of white, patterns and mix and match options.

Second choice was the buyer’s market. Someone who didn’t want something in the first section but also didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for the look that they were after. It was probably there for you if you could find it. That was me.

Choice three was the ridiculous. Beautiful tiles of all shades and textures that turned the humble ensuite into a Roman Bath and made the hallway so alluring that it whispered ”Come hither, come hither…” as though Heathcliff were waiting ten steps beyond.

And where was my Meredith?

She was everywhere.

”Natural” I explained…”Almost as though I could be outside…”

And ”natural” Meredith produced from those busy walls that I could find nothing on. She produced natural for a hundred dollars and she produced natural for half the price. More to the point she found me exactly the tiles that I wanted for exactly the price that I wanted to pay.

By the time that we were finished (several bathroom floors, cabinets and a laundry later), we were exhausted. Meredith gave me a look that said I could eat a horse but I’ll probably have to settle for a salad which meant that it was time to go.

I walked out of my first choice of tilers in a slightly tipsy manner. It could have been starvation, or dehydration or both. But whatever it was, I was beaming like the lights had been earlier.

For I had achieved the impossible. I had my tiles…in a thousand shades of sand.

A Concrete Reminder

Well it was a fairly mad time in Perth but it felt good to get stuff done and meet more of the people that will be responsible for the build. Nor did it take long to reacquaint myself with Osborne Park and its amazing compliment of absolutelynecessaryshopstovisitifyouarebuildingahouse. I mean really…what isn’t there? Within a camel’s breath of each other I found tilers - all conveniently located on one street - carpet shops, wood flooring dealers, Rick Hart, Tilly’s Lights, bathroom showrooms, the Laminex showroom and last but not least, Ross Griffin Design Solutions - and Rene, who designed our house.

That’s sidetracking though.

One of the highlights of my week was of a far more humble nature. I met Gordon Stimson of Enviroplumb at the house to go over the underground water tank scenario. I discovered amongst other things that garden space really is to be valued. Gordon let me know that the cost of one 14,000l round above ground tank would cost in the region of $5,000 less to buy and install than 2 x 5,000l underground tanks. Oh so tempting…

But wait. If you put a 14,000l water tank on an area of approx 2.5m squared you are essentially losing that bit of land for all other purposes. Yes, there’s creeper cover…and a great passion fruit already thriving in the area, but most importantly, what happens to the feeling of space? As I mentioned in an earlier post, House v Dream House, there are subtle differences between building a dream home in the bush where space is of no matter and building on a narrow surburban block. The question is, ”Can we afford to give away this space?” And the answer is ”No!” The space is worth more to us than the money it will save. This is all worth taking into account when you size your garden to your house.

But now the piece de resistance.

In a previous post I mentioned how sad it was not being able to salvage more from our house due to the fact that we live overseas.

Take a look at this. Gordon to the rescue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A picture speaks a thousand words… Great stuff. We have Jess Willow’s hand back in the family.

PreStart (a few days late)

Have you ever watched Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory? (Early version with Gene Wilder).Well if you have ( and surely you can’t not have..)you may remember some scenes in the film of Grandpa Joe and all the other Grandmas and the other Grandpa tucked up in bed together. Well that was us at the end of the week. Sick as sick could be. Not good. But we’re on the mend and not a minute too soon as I leave for Perth tomorrow and the PreStart meeting.

This is quite an important meet…for us anyway seeing as we can’t just pop in and organise another. The meeting is to discuss the plan and any last minute changes. In other words, if we decide that we want to move a window or change a wall, it’s a pretty good time to say so.

It will be a manic week. New Caledonian resident let loose in Perth for a week without her kids. And oh so many things on the shopping list….

solid wood flooring

water saving showers

himalayan sandstone tiles

water tanks

present for Jess Willow’s 8th birthday

fire box

bench tops

cooktop

laksa paste

front doors

decent clothes to wear for my new job

oven

and so on

So au revoir from Noumea. And here’s to a week of fabulous Australian tucker…starting with the Maya Masala (eat your heart out Kim), followed by The Wild Fig……..then the……..rounded off with a ………from the …………Too exciting for words.

4/30 L’Ile aux Goelands / 5/30 Demolition Update

L’ile Aux Goelands

 

No excuses, I’m behind schedule. But hey - if you had the choice between being the first to set foot on a local picture-perfect island just re-opening after being closed for 4 months for birds to nest, OR take up the opportunity (on a boiling hot humid day that is yelling loudly in your ears GET WET) of turning meekly to the computer to look deeply into yourself to find out why you are failing to keep up with something so seemingly attainable as Post 4 (a day late) of Thirty Days of Everything…..WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE???

So instead of dwelling on the finer attributes of failing, I’ll concentrate on the pretty fish I saw snorkelling. Nemos in their hundreds of course and Picassos. Only the one turtle today and no sharks. Many beautiful butterfly fish and lots of blue fish. If I’m not careful then this is going to become Seuss’esque.

Demolition Update

Photos have recently come through of our floors (thanks Mel). Good to know that they are moving on to a new home as there is very little of them left in ours. As we see this we wonder if we shouldn’t have tried to keep more things from our house. But the truth is it’s harder from overseas, and in the only flying visit we have had we were sleeping on those floors.

Demolition is due any time now (have you heard this before?). The plans are almost in to council and we must start deciding prestart stuff. What is prestart? I’ll tell you tomorrow.

3/30 The Recycled Chair

I’m addicted to this chair.

I found it in the Townsville tip some 10 years ago and it has wandered around continents with me since. Most of the colour has come off on my bottom and it has been retied to stop collapsing at inopportune moments. A most characterful chair.

Have you got one?

2/30 Nautilus

These are beautiful deep sea creatures that live in New Caledonian waters. Some species such as this one, Nautilus macromphalus are endemic to New Caledonia. 

They make staggering works of art and if you are lucky you can find a nautilus shell washed up on the beach. If you ever make it to New Caledonia they have a great breeding program at the local aquarium, so you can see nautilus babies bobbing around during their night (our day).

Thirty Days of Everything 1 - Polished Concrete

I was checking out a friend of mine’s blog and liked what she did with this idea. Thirty Days of Everything involves a 30 day period of  documenting photographically things that you do/see on a regular basis.

My Thirty Days of Everything is going to be a little different. It will be a photographic journal of things in the building/decoration domain that catch my eye.

The Polished Concrete Floor

This is Benetton’s new polished concrete floor in Noumea. Pretty nice I think.

I did try to get some info from the tradesman on how this effect was achieved but suffice to say that his french was a different variety to mine and I put the phone down little the wiser. If you know anything about polished concrete and how this look was achieved please drop me a mail.

Why polished concrete anyway?

Polished concrete is trendy, easy to clean, low maintenance, good for allergy sufferers and open to limitless special effects. It also has thermal mass, meaning that if it is positioned correctly (Northern side in Australia), it will stay cool in the summer when the sun is high in the sky but will warm up in the winter when the sun is lower on the horizon, thus helping to keep the house at an ideal temperature.

Choosing A Water Tank

It’s our great debate. Underground or overground? How big? What material? How much?

Costs and Rebates

Starting with finance…you are looking at anything from $500 (around 600 litres) to $15,000 (10,000 litres) installed. All states have some kind of rebate for installing water tanks though the specifics are constantly changing. In WA you get a rebate of $50 for a tank between 600l and 2,000l that is not plumbed in. Tanks over 2,000l that are plumbed in get a rebate of $600 or 50% (whichever is the smaller). So there’s the incentive! A good one for a small tank where you pay half price…a pretty ordinary one for big tanks where the rebate is fairly insignificant. For more info on that and other water rebates go to the Department of Water WA website.

If you are from another state find out about your rebates here.

Size

There’s an excellent guide to how much water you use on Polyworld’s website. You can use this along with your state’s annual rainfall to find out how big a tank you should get (prepare to be afraid). Remember a tonne of water is 1000l or a block of water 1m by 1m(approx 2 queen-sized matresses).

You also have to decide what you want to use the rainwater for. Many options are available now, the most common being to water the garden and to replace mains water where possible within the house for flushing toilets and running the washing machine. But the sky’s the limit…With enough tank…and frequent enough rainfall, you can replace mains water altogether like they do in the bush.

It seems the essential guide is to buy as big a tank (or interconnected tanks) as you can afford or have space for.

Underground, slimline, bladder, steel, concrete, poly?

For some good products and information go to this environment friendly website. It has done a lot of the research for you. If you have a big garden (and therefore probably need to water a lot) and room for a humoungous above ground water tank, then this is a good option as you can feed your garden directly from tank connections.

With a smaller garden you may choose to go with a slimline version, one that sits under the eaves of the house and is modular so you can add or shrink the capacity depending on changes you need. They have even been made to resemble a wall if you want to make them a feature.

Underground tanks are great for small gardens or those where you don’t want the tank to be visible. They can be buried beneath the garden, a garage or alfresco area and topped with a manhole. Also modular, these can be interconnected to give you the volume you want. Some of them are shallow so they can be buried without much excavation (doughnut-shaped) while others are chunkier and need more excavation before house construction gets underway. As you are advised to keep water tanks out of the sun to prevent them from growing algae…burying them is obviously an excellent solution!

If your house or deck is already off the ground then bladder tanks offer a solution for storing water (retrofitting possible) in the underneath space.

And finally…we chose…

A 10,000l underground tank is the fave (if we can afford it…) . Watch this space.

PS. I seem to have forgotten to mention the word sustainable.

House Design Priorities- My Top Five

 

We are just about to pay out our first big wad of cash. This is mainly for the drawings needed to go to council for approval. We have worked with the designer for several months fine-tuning our house design and the time has come when we have given the thumbs-up and we’re on to STEP 2.

Step 2 seems to be this:

nervously considering

-the insane amount we are about to owe the bank

-our design and whether we’ve got it right

-the hours of research we now have to put in to pinpoint fine details such as flooring, benchtops, cooktop, stair covering etc…

House Design Priorities - My Top 5

• House Size

It’s oh so easy to get an enormous house with a piddly bit of lawn at the end. But wait…a smaller house is more eco-friendly, smaller to clean, heat, cool and cheaper to build. It’s easy to go bigger but it’s harder to go smaller. Contemplate seriously where you need your space.

• Tv Area

We have made a separate Tv living upstairs so that we/I   are/am not inflicted with kid’s TV, fishing Australia, Rage and cricket when they are on the agenda…

• The Master Bedroom

Build a new house - go for gold. Get the ensuite, robe and balcony that you dreamed of.

• Storage

If you’re a family that needs to house a lifetime’s worth of stashing then you’re like us. It took many changes before I was satisfied that the amount of storage provided could take us on.

• Solar Passive

Should go without saying. House facing North. Catch the breezes. Solar hot water. Rain tanks. More if you can afford it. Sustainability doesn’t come cheap.

Are you building a house?

What are your Top 5?  Write and let us know.

You’re not building a house?

Still write.

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