Our Rocky Forever Home - couple of pics

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Thanks for the thoughtful reply PAB!

We have considered a custom build, and we will probably get a drafted plan done to see what they could offer us, but the problem is we really don't like split levels, so whatever house we'd be looking at would be flat slab anyway.... also we had a look at @denbrook's split home option and they add 20-40k to do this anyway so I figure why not spend that on retaining walls and get the house we want...

Yes the point about the dark 5th bedroom is very valid and we've thought about that. We're also concerned that it will make the entry quite narrow. We're not actually sure how many kids we're going to have at this point (have 2 currently and will be going for either 1 or 2 more!) so we're not sure whether to do the 5th bedroom conversion or do something else with it. An alternative I've been thinking about is to close it off and open it up the other side (but leave the entryway quite wide, so it would only be a small space). This would make the kid's activity room bigger and use it as a study/homework nook. If a 4th child happened along we could maybe consider closing it off then.... Or if a 4th child happened we could also consider changing the study we're putting between the bathrooms into the 5th bedroom at that point, and use the small front room as our study (sad though to lose our big study!).

Whatever happens we dislike open studies at the doorway (I'm so messy I can't even see my desk right now!) so we'll have to do something different with that space.

Love the plan

We are currently in council stages with plantation homes as well. We are building a q2 retreat at augustine heights

Good luck with everything

It's not 'more important' it's just more costly to get right and worse, to fix if it's not done right the first time.



Go to a couple of firms (independent of Plantation) for advice on the drainage and push for best options - don't skimp!

good luck with your build!

Ah yes, piers. It is a sensible possible solution but I just really want my alfresco leading out to the backyard, and the pool outside the living room window. We'll see just how prohibitive the costs of excavation and retention are and go from there I think.



Great mockup but I think you've got the vogue plans there rather than the nouvea - due to the location of the hallway through the kitchen rather than before. Doesn't matter, it gets your point across!

The issue with the laundry is - because we want to add a powder room and mudroom around there we are probably going to extend the laundry to be in line with the far garage wall and extend the laundry depth by a metre or so (not sure if this is possible yet, need to chat to Plantation). The garage sadly cannot be extended outwards width-wise due the width of our block and setback rules (not allowed to be on boundary). There would be no access to the backyard from the garage but we're planning to have a decent shed so hopefully that won't be a problem.

Kitchen - if you look at the plan I posted you can see the nouvea has a double door entry to the pantry which I think is a total waste of space so I'm going to move the fridge to where one of the doors are, make the pantry single door and a bit smaller, and then add more counter space where the fridge used to be. That's the plan anyway.

I totally agree about storage but when we add the "rumpus" option (the room between the two bathrooms), I am hoping to shave a decent chunk off this rather large room to make the main bathroom substantially bigger (you can't swing a cat in there let alone bath 3 kids!) and also hopefully get a walk-in-linen. We could sacrifice the bath in the ensuite for a WIL also if necessary.

So there's a bit of rejigging to go yet with the plan. At the moment we're just nervous about our meeting tomorrow to see if our land people are happy with the siting/setbacks and the excavation/retaining walls. I would be very happy to hear any thoughts about the above proposed changes.

Where abouts are you buiulding?

So far plantation has been ok, we did have a few issues with the sales rep at brentwood orginally but after that the team at head office in springwood were very helpful.

My advise would be just to visit the colour selections centre early and get a idea on what upgrades are available as it will be tempting to add on.

Also make sure you upderstand everything in the tender.

Hi Tina.We are leaving study nook open for now,huby is a carpenter so we will make changes later if we want to..There will be a window in there for light.We are also making main bathroom into one room,so there will be no sep toilet,just leaving nib wall in..having larger vanity in there instead.We like the idea of having another room in between both lounge and theatre room,kind of seperates rooms,thus is why laundry will be staying where it is.Building at Mount cotton,If we ever get through council !!!We havent built before so all new.

Just a quick update. We had a 3.5 hour appointment with Plantation (normally it's an hour long appointment apparently!) where we went over the most significant changes we want to the plans. They are going to come back to us with the first version of our plans. I'm so excited!!

We are struggling mostly with what to do with the front "study". We originally wanted to close it off and have it as a spare/guest bedroom but there is a real problem with this plan we can't figure out how to get around - it makes the entrance relatively quite narrow, only 1.5m wide. This seems to be unavoidable because as you can see on the plans the "study" only has one very narrow and tall window in it, so if we make the room smaller in order to make the entrance wider, it won't have a window!! Another option we are now considering is actually keeping the entrance quite wide and lovely and having this room as a "storeroom" without a window. It would definitely be very handy but I worry we'll regret losing a whole room.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

You could just use it to make the 'tv area' large enough to incorporate toy storage and a play area and then you have the 5th bedroom and study without having to make the house bigger which is endless $$. Also putting a study between two bathrooms will make the plumbing cost more.
edit: You could then just make the whole house longer and add space to all of the rooms you wanted bigger.