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.

Draw a Floor Plan

Shopping for a house off the menu offers some variation, but in general if you are serious about living there once its built, it’s not always possible to find what you want, and most “off the menu” building companies don’t like major changes to their stock designs.

Whatever end of the spectrum: standard ‘menu’ house or professional architect build, it makes sense to play with floor plan layouts, just for the exercise of seeing what you want, and seeing how you can make it fit together, based on your needs, experience….and the magic ingredient_SPACE. It will allow you to see your future, the way it works, down to how the spaces interconnect, air flows, and light spills in.

Graph paper isn’t going to do the trick,…so you need software to help you get it down in a useful form, and allows for the constant updates, variations and iterations that naturally follow the process of designing your future.

I found the software market limited. Many dodgy house design CD’s from the States – set up for feet and inch layouts which I found in-flexible for my non-professional skills and deficit in patience. But user-friendly, low-end floor plan software does allow you to create a decent mock-up, good enough for you to be happy with anyway. You can always let a draftsman move it into a more professional product later. We got ahead with the following.

Drawing features in Microsoft power point (could even do it in MS word, but power point allows you too copy and paste the whole slide – so you can look at subtle differences by flicking between slides) - handy as you can draw over jpgs or Pdf scans of the layout of your block, or the outer walls of your proposed house. To do this just import your ‘to scale’ outline as a jpg or Pdf into an MS Power point blank slide, then draw walls, or drop in furniture as jpgs. To ‘rub out areas’ just draw a box over the offending article and make the box white without an outline. Cons of using such a simple generic product include difficulty in getting the scales correct for all the internal walls etc.

2) SmartDraw is useful and not too expensive, and the company gives you a free trial period to play with the software to see if you like it. You can even export your mock-ups in a software format that is recognisable by high-end drawing programs. Also good assistance (helpdesk), even while you are on the free trial period.

3) Google sketch up - nice to play with ideas, and will awaken and test your CAD skills (read 3d), not much good for real work-ups. More an exercise in creativity.

In reality the full on CAD programs (like AutoCAD, ChiefArchitect, VectorWorks etc) are expensive and perhaps beyond our capacity or need. Especially as we are only really after an adaptive floor plan design.

Developing some skills to draw these floor plans is worthwhile, as it gives you many chances to play and generally refine ideas in a real and useable form. Doing it only in your head, or on a paper scrap in a restaurant is often worse than useless, as it needs to be to scale, or it won’t help you form a REAL house (one that can actually be built on your block anyway). This didn’t stop us spending hours with scraps of paper mind, and won’t stop you either.

Getting your ideas down, then refined in a ‘to scale’ floor plan involves numerous tugs of war between needs and wants. You will also be involved in untold amounts of negotiating with your partner over what goes where and what goes out the window. But it’s creative, beats watching the Bill, and that’s half the journey.

Word of warning, don’t like us think your floor plan is the blueprint for the builder to go to work. It will need their input too. For example, they like to have space for plumbing, and have a better awareness of how your plan might be challenged by the council planners etc. They also have a much better grasp of how the layout will affect the build cost, and can make small changes that offer big rewards.

Related links:

http://architecture.about.com/cs/cadprograms/tp/designsoftware.htm

How to Demolish your House

There’s more to demolishing than meets the eye…

Before you demolish

Have a good think about what is really going to happen to your house.

It will probably be totally destroyed with nothing to show for x years of contented (?) hassle-free(?) living. Is there anything you can do to lessen the blow to yourselves and the environment and help people who may need a house just like yours? (Helping people is good for your health too - I’m sure I read that those who give to charity live longer)?? So, advertise your house in the Quokka to see if anyone can take it away and use it. This will not let you off some kind of demolition / clean-up work but it’s a pretty good start. If this isn’t possible think about anything you may like to keep from your old house…door frames that you have used to measure your kids growing from 0-7…floorboards, leadlight windows, you name it…

When we were last home we found our eldest daughter’s handprint in some cement near the shed. We’d completely forgotten about it. It’s hard to reproduce that kind of history.

Bear in mind that the demolishers will check your house for items that they can salvage and sell. Their estimate of these will reduce your quote accordingly.

Lastly you must arrange to have the gas and the electricity disconnected. An alinta gas disconnection cost us $297 inc. GST.

What do demolishers do?

Sounds obvious. They demolish…but they do a lot more besides. Most demolisher’s contracts cover similar things, mostly in response to the requirements of the council. We are under City of Stirling whose demolition information sheet can be found here.

These could be (but may not be so be sure to read the fine print):

• rat baiting
• cutting and sealing sewer
• water and power disconnection
• dry leach and septic tank removal
• licensed asbestos removal
• cartage and tip fees for removal of rubble and trees
• full insurance public liability worker’s compensation

The demolishers demolish everything up to 300mm of the boundary fence. Anything that isn’t marked to be kept will be knocked down so you must carefully mark trees / shrubs that you want to keep on your property.

In Perth there is a fair backlog of work for most demolishers. We have contracted a company who will most likely get on to our block in January 08.

There are many difficulties associated with building your house over the internet but watching your house go down is not one of them. Another reason why it would be so great to have someone else take your house. (Read here to find out why giving our house away fell through for us).

The cost of demolishing

We had a number of quotes to clear a 900 sq m block of land. They ranged from about $13,000 - $15,000. In the time it took us to action our quotes one company’s price leapt from $11.055 to $15,455 due to “demolition contractors unable to take timber waste to landfill”. Most quotes are valid from 1-3 months, so keep an eye on time passing…

It’s important to remember that quotes vary a lot depending on the size of the land, land accessibility, the presence of asbestos sheeting, the amount of trees to be cut down and the amount of salvageable items in the house.

Thinking about your House Design

Most of you reading this probably have designs coming out of your ears…When we were renovating we started a file with magazine cut-outs.  It was nice to thumb through to gain inspiration   and it included technical aspects such as pics and info about hot water systems, dishwashers etc.

When you are building I think you suddenly see everything through house-building-coloured spectacles. And you find yourself doing odd things in the name of research…

These include:

• doodling indiscriminately on paper napkins
• scouring the web for hours turning up heaps of unuseful information that you read anyway
• taking photos of balconies that are “just what you are looking for” (even when they’re not)
• spending hours on powerpoint or Smartdraw drawing up would-be residential palaces that don’t fit on your block
• pontificating about the pros and cons of North South East and West-facing rooms
• googling bizarre phrases like”eco sustainable non-wood termite-resistant decking”, “hippie solar lamps” and “remote-control skylight over bed”
• knocking on doors of houses that you like the look of to attempt to wrestle information from the unlucky occupant / owner

We even ( I kid you not) took a measuring tape and a few balls of string to Hampstead Heath while we were on holiday to lay out the ground floor of our plans in progress.

   Lucky really because it was horribly wrong. (Only attempt this yourself if you have a pint of beer and a few packets of crisps handy to retain the sanity factor).Really though. Despite the fact that you will probably go through an architect, designer or draughtsman…the design factor is all about YOU.

You only get one chance to decide what is really important to you about your house.

Is it the master bedroom with that  ensuite that you have always dreamt of?

The lap pool lapping at the side of your house with designer surrounds?

The island bench?       

The double garage? The walk-in pantry? The wall of bifolds? The concrete floor? The photovoltaic panels? The grey-water recycling system? The chance to build sustainably?

There are a thousand options out there all crying me me me.

But it’s up to you.

Two Things

Just two things.

Firstly the links in my posts aren’t showing up. Sorry - I will get on the case, or change the theme, or both.

If you hover your mouse in the obvious places, especially in the Subdivision post which outlines the subdivision process in Perth you should find the links, but I will work on changing the colour…

Click here to see how the link looks.

Secondly Kim has gone off to South America to talk about sea cucumbers.    

He kidnapped the camera (with my blessing admittedly) so I am cameraless.

Update

Links now seem to be visible. Thanks Tina.

Trying not to Demolish - the Sustainable Factor

Demolishing is pretty final and it’s a big shame to demolish a house that could be someone’s home.

Upon deciding to build we also decided to try to give our beach shack away. If anybody wanted it…

We put an ad in the Quokka online.

Weatherboard house going free if you take it away

We had about 8 emails expressing interest - mainly from folk that had a rural block of land. You can imagine how great it would be to have a wee house delivered…a home for the cost of the transport.

As it turned out with our shack it would most likely have to be split into 3 pieces for the journey.All fine but the problem came with the asbestos content. Cutting the house up was potentially risky with the prospect of asbestos fibres floating around.

So our great ethical plan was a no go.

Bit sad really. It would have been nice for the house to have lived on.

The Subdivision

We used to say that we would never subdivide. We jeered at people cutting their blocks up in get rich quick schemes producing ugly non climate-friendly concrete boxes. We’ll never do that we said. And we’re not…exactly…

That is…we have decided to subdivide. But we’re not building ugly concrete blocks (though this is obviously subjective) and we’re not selling the other side so that someone else can build an ugly concrete block (also subjective).

We took a look at our pros and cons.

Pros

• financial gain / asset (it can’t be disputed but we will feel pinch rather than gain for most of our lives)
• a smaller garden is in keeping with water restrictions and with beach and bush nearby we have spaces to run around in
• we could try to keep the second block in the family - failing that we could at least control how the house looked

Cons

• why contribute to higher density building in a lovely beachside suburb
• we love space - a subdivision could leave us feeling claustrophobic
• the block we created would be long and narrow with fewer design options
• the gum and other small trees would have to be removed
• hassle to organise
• potential capital gains issues (we are still trying to get to the bottom of this with the ATO)

It’s ironic that the cons outweigh the pros.

So how do you go about subdividing in Perth?

The first thing you need to know is the zoning of your area. Go to your city council website to check your zoning and see if you are allowed to subdivide with the land available. Next find a surveyor to do a contour feature survey. This is needed in the Application for Approval of Plan of Subdivision.

The Western Australia Planning Commission (WAPC) deals with subdivisions. The rules vary a little if you are creating multiple lots but for 2, 3, 4 and 5 lots the following is the process at the time of writing.

Applications for freehold and survey-strata subdivision must include:

• Application Form 1A
• the application fee (presently $1,295 plus $30 per lot
• 8 copies of the subdivision plan
• possibly an acid sulphate soil assessment

Your surveyor will be aware of these requirements and guide the process accordingly, but it’s nice to know what’s going on.

The plan must be certified correct by the Western Australian Land Information Authority (LANDGATE) at which point the WAPC should approve your application (hopefully), which will take between 1-3 months. Once you have met the conditions that apply to the approval, you can apply to LANDGATE for new titles (Green titles: $85 for the application, $6 for each lot).

Subdivision approval is normally valid for 3 years.

We are still in the jaws of this process so I will update you on any relevant information as it comes to light.

House v Dream House

It’s funny to think about building a house.

With image-filled house and garden mags ambushing us in every newsagents, hairdressers and doc’s waiting room we are encouraged to fantasize about the house we would like to live in if we won the lottery.

Take New Zealand and the holiday bach. New Zealand has a small population and a big coastline. Up until fairly recently holiday houses and land have been available. Now suddenly they are not. Land has been bought. Prices have skyrocketed. If it hasn’t been handed down through the family then it isn’t going to happen. Not everyone can be a part of the holiday house by the sea fantasy.

More to the point let’s talk Australia. With prices beyond the nightmares of many and interest rates going off, people are lucky if they are able to continue paying off their first homes.

And what has this got to do with the dream house? Well… the dream house backing on to lush hillside overlooking the sea with acres of wilderness and a lake on the edge of the property is one thing.

Building on a narrow surburban block is another.

Both are exciting opportunities and challenges. But whereas Dream House 1 is likely to have few building and design restraints, Reality House 2 is likely to have many. I will discuss this further on a post on some of the more pertinent aspects of the R Codes or Residential Codes that detail issues such as cones of vision, overlooking and height to boundary regulations.

Things start to look different. That great mental picture of your dream house is going through a severe editing function. If you’re lucky it will come out with a few changes - but the dream intact. If you’re not it will more likely go into the shredder. And a fresh piece of paper will subtly be positioned in front of you.

You can now subscribe!

So far this blog has been an intro. Now we come to the good stuff…the here and now world of house building and what that entails. I’ve also added links for you to subscribe via  reader or the e-mail if you want to be kept up to date without having to keep checking the blog.

I must admit that building hasn’t been much on my mind this weekend as we were up at Ouano Surf Camp swimming amongst mud flats and getting bombed by mozzies. It wasn’t all bad actually - check out this sunset. And our baby who looks like she’s fallen out of the sky…

 

Asbestos or Adventure

 Five years went by and we started to look to the future. Hardly even knowing it we had been chewing on the idea of a build for some time. The asbestos content in the shack was partly responsible. We would need to extend and renovate dramatically if the shack were to hold us in the future, and tampering with asbestos didn’t rate highly on our like to do list.

The tax man advised us to sell. Capital gain issues we were advised would cost us a fortune -especially if we sub-divided which we had contemplated doing…We were nervous and deliberated over a cup of strong tea.

It didn’t take long. Why take the sensible financially sound route when there was another option?

We like our slice of land sandwiched on the protected side of the hill between bush and beach. We like our neighbours and the local primary school, the paper we can buy a stones throw away on Flora Terrace and the dog beach at the end of the road. We like the Spring wildflowers at Star Swamp and the Laksa paste we can normally get at the shop a short walk away…

Bugger the money we said. Let’s go the adventure.

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