WA: Building "The Rendezvous" - Main Area Tile Pics

Howdy, I thought it was time to come back and post a thread about our build. I must admit things stagnated for quite a while because we were stuck in council for what felt like eternity. Enthusiasm is back now that things are happening, so I thought I would share the journey:


After enjoying a couple of years of inner city living, we finally decided to buy a modest 560 square metre block of land in a new estate in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. We signed on the dotted line in mid December 2010.

In June 2011, titles were issued and the block settled, albeit with a couple of hiccups caused by a delay in documents arriving from our bank’s main branch on the east coast.

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Our patch of sand and retaining walls

Between December 2010 and June 2011, we were busy wandering around display homes and searching the internet for favourable home designs. After living in an apartment, we had a few design “essentials” which included four bedrooms; one big kitchen suitable for entertaining; a theatre room that was not adjacent to the master bedroom; and, an alfresco at the back of the house.

The alfresco was the driving force for us choosing the Rendezvous, by Ventura Homes. We felt that this design allowed us to make the best use of our backyard.

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Original (builders standard) design

Overall, we were fond of the original design. The rear of the house definitely had ‘wow’ factor. The odd shaped alfresco is cute, but not as functional as it could be. The display home had a gazebo erected out side of the theatre, which gave the outdoors a lot more useable space. Instead of erecting a gazebo or two after handover, we decided to extend the alfresco instead.

The kitchen overall, is not bad except for having the sink in the island bench. That had to move, so we did away with the sliding doors out to the alfresco and put the sink on that wall. I fell in love with the bifold windows and external essa stone ledge in the theatre and wanted to move it to the kitchen, but my other half won that argument and the kitchen receives the runner’s up price of sliding servery windows.

The other big changes were to the wet areas. The original ensute and bathroom felt cramped (to be honest my other half hated the ensuite after impaling himself on the towel rail), and we were not fans of the powder room sink being visible from the hallway. A quick shuffle resulted in what can only be described as an ‘interesting’ approach to bathroom design. I really hope that it works, and after having seen something similar on this year’s series of The Block, I am feeling a little bit more confident.

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Our design

We are currently waiting for the colorbond roof to go on. I will add some historical posts to this thread to bring us up to speed. Week-to-week photos of the build can be found on my blog. I will remember to post all of the ‘big’ stuff and good photos here.