Bel's new house - Roof - tick

Hi all,

After much twisting of my (rubber) arm, I thought I would start this to share my journey of a first time builder. I've said a bit about me in the Intro's section.....I'm a family of 5, DH, DS5, DD1, and DS1 (twins).

We are embarking on the building journey with enthusiasm as well as hesitation. Both DH and I haven't built before, and its been nearly 30 years since my folks last built.

The forum has been a great source of inspiration and advice (I was a lurker for quite a while), and I thought I would take the plunge and start to post. (lol to all who offer advice, opinions, and just a fab chat, yes the addiction has begun)

So how did I come to be a first time builder......DH and DS5 were living in a nice (self) renovated bungalow in the St George are of Sydney, and then *kerpow* I was preggers with twins. The 3 bed bungalow with one living area just wasn't going to cut it. We could have got a few more years out of the house, but with house prices, DS starting school, we decide we would have a leap of faith and build.

We bought sold our old place and bought our block July 07, and so started the journey. DH and I were very naive about building on our block, but knew we wanted to live in the suburb...so its a case of great suburb, great street, hard block to build on (battleaxe upsloping).

The block looked flattish but after much shopping around with different project builders and custom builders we realised this wasn't the case. So for the past year we have been looking for the house that suits our needs, fits the block (wide for Sydney standards 20m frontage), and most importantly was within budget (a very difficult task).

We are about a week out of council DA lodgement, just now waiting for the landscape plans to be finalised, builder is ready to go.

Here are the plans....and the brick color






External colors are already selected (we had to for council) and are as follows:

Tiles: Boral Blackheath
Roof: Boral Striata Color through charcoal grey
Gutters: Ironstone
Facias: Surfmist
Windows and Garage: Surfmist
Downpipes: Ironstone
Balcony Rail: Ironstone
Front Door: Ironstone

Enjoy!

HI Bel. I really like your plans. Do you have steps coming in from the internal door in the garage? I think that's what I see. I love the parent retreat and the matching kids retreat type area that is opposite it. Because it narrows between each side it should cut down on some of the sound flow from one side to the other.
You mentioned that it is a sloping block. Will you have a nice outlook?

Who are you building with?

Just looove your bricks. OH ! they're the same as ours - great taste Bel !!!

We're waiting to hear from our council any day now. Enjoy the ride !

Hi Kexkez, lol about the plans...if I had millions of $ would prob do it differently but this will work for us. Wanted to use the width of the block so that we had a big backyard, so played with the floorplan a bit. You are right, our garage is natural ground level, and the first floor is cut and filled to a higher level (It's 7 steps from garage into house, and we have some serious drop edge beams).

Not 100% sure, but may get water views from front top. The street slopes down to water, we are about 3/4 down the street. Didn't design the house around the views as slim possibility and $$$ was major factor.

Decided to go with Westminster homes....so far so good (fingers and toes crossed), had a low base price, huge site costs but we still are in budget, compared to other major project builders in Syd.

Hey Southies, we are practically neighbours, and with such great taste in bricks!

It's great you are in a similar area, sooooo many on here are other states (Melb!)

What Roof, CB did/are you using???

Great plan Bel - lots of the space for the family to enjoy!!

Yeah, it gets a bit lonely hearing our Melb cousins referring to all their fantastic Melbourne outlets/suppliers

Great to have you on board. Our roof, gutters, etc will be in Colourbond Jasper.

Hi bel, wow you wont know yourself with all that space!!!

Could I make a suggestion? Pretty please?? Because I cant help myself??


Your broom and linen cupboard open up into wasted space - make that whole area your laundry, you will gain more from it. Put the door at the entrance where the broom cupboard is.

Hi Paula, great idea with 3 kids I need room to wash!

...let me pick your brain a bit more...would you still keep the broom and linen cupboard there, just move the door and use the laundry tiles to the edge???

I like the idea of the 'built in' cupboards to put the cr@p we have away...and I also wanted all shoes to be left in this space so as we walk in and out of the garage the shoes are on/off straight away. I think you guys call this a mud room...obviously I don't have the room for one but like the principle of it, so tried to adapt to my plan.

The other thing I wanted to do is build in a bench space in the laundry but the builder told me I do that at colors...
Help!!!

Did we warn you that we will make umpteen comments/suggestions once your floor plan is up here??

oops, forgot to mention that

Anyway my comment is also about your laundry; I notice it does not have an external wall, therefore no window giveing natural light or ventilation.
Is this unusual?
Do you just have to have exhaust fan going when you have the washing machine on or some form of external venting?
This may be more common in designs than I think and not a problem but I haven't seen it before.
Also where is your clothesline and how will you get your washing outside to hang up on clothesline? Will you take it thru the garage to the side wall or thru the family room to the back?
Or do you use a dryer all the time, so not an issue? (you'll really need good ventilation if so, or condensation will build up in laundry ++.)

Hope you don't mind all these questions

You do have a very spacious design and I love the way all the bedrooms are together but no adjoining walls,each one separated by bathrooms and/or retreats, that is unusual and very cleverly done.

Hi, welcome to the forum, I was building with Westminster but have had some problems so am in the process of pulling out.

Before this disagreement I did find them really helpful though, and our coordinator is great. You're right about the site costs! Our house was also very cheap base, stacks of site costs etc, but if you don't add too many extras then you can get a well priced home with them.

If I was you I think I would put the laundry at the back of the garage, so that it has a window, external door etc. So somewhere near the bottom of the stairs. Then you could use the space where the laundry currently is as a real mud room.

Paula if she turns that whole area into laundry then guests will have to go through the laundry to get to the powder (or through the study).

That shower looks a bit tough to get in to, I wouldn't have thought that it would work, but if it does then fair enough.

Hi Helyn, yeh the laundry was the sticking point all along, but I did get over the fact I don't have external access. The block we have is wide and upsloping, so to cut down on site costs I wanted a design to go across the width of the block and not too deep. These plans don't really exist in Sydney, so with this plan I moved the garage from the front to the side, then moved the rumpus from the back, behind the garage.

Back to the laundry...
Anyway my comment is also about your laundry; I notice it does not have an external wall, therefore no window giveing natural light or ventilation.
Is this unusual? Yeh, it is probably unusual, but short of reconfiguring the whole plan (think limited funds)...didn't know what else to do.

Do you just have to have exhaust fan going when you have the washing machine on or some form of external venting?
This may be more common in designs than I think and not a problem but I haven't seen it before. Yep have an external ducted exhaust fan in the laundry

Also where is your clothesline and how will you get your washing outside to hang up on clothesline? Will you take it thru the garage to the side wall or thru the family room to the back?
Or do you use a dryer all the time, so not an issue? (you'll really need good ventilation if so, or condensation will build up in laundry ++.) To get our Basix certificate we need an indoor and external clothesline. Will prob take through the house, but do have the option thur garage as have a door to external. Clothesline will be...ummmm still don't know! (asked the landscape lady as she didn't put on plan....)

Helyn, any thoughts on Paula's suggestion???

V excited about having space and not having to look at kids toys!!!

welcome!

which council do you have do deal with? I've heard Kogarah can be terrible (which covers Oatley) - St George isn't too bad. I grew up in Lugarno - but we've moved west for more land

Rachelle, do you mean the shower in the ensuite?
That problem (if it is one ) could be solved by haveing the screen open diagonally across the corner so it opens into the centre space of the room rather than at the toilet or door side.
Do you know what I mean?

Hi Rachelle, Thanks for the welcome and your thoughts. Sorry to hear about your probs with Westminster. Do you have a thread where I can read about your probs with them (I am gettng a little nervous now...)???

Great thought about getting into powder room, didn't see that Thanks... yeh the shower is tight, but we added it in to make the downstairs study a guest room if needed, and thought for resale down the track (long long long down the track), it could be a good point for families with MIL etc.

I am thinking the floorplan post was a bad idea but do welcome comments as I have looked at it for sooo long I do like fresh eyes to cast their thoughts over it.

Bel

P.S. If I'm now indecisive about the floorplan wait til I get to internal colors, lets not go there yet

A solution could be to duct the dryer exhaust through the garage roof to the outside as there is no "upstairs" about the garage. So you could run a duct through the wall to the right, up and then through the garage roof.

Similarly you could get some "natural" light in with a SolaTube in the same way.

Rachelle - to my eye the downstairs shower, toilet seems to be part of the study as that's the only access into although there may be something on the wall at the "top" of that room (bit hard to read drawing). Looks like a home office, in which case I think Paula's onto something in redefining the boundaries of the laundry.

If the study is not a standalone home office I'd skip the direct access to the toilet, wall space is paramount in a study.....the less doors the better.

Southies - love Jasper, had it in the old place!

Hey stonecutter thanks for the welcome- yep its Oatley and Kogarah council side- how did you know??

The site we have is a pretty good size for Syd, 680m2 without handle...

oops, didn't even realise there was a shower in downstairs powder room.

No wonder I couldn't really see the problem.

Please ignore my last post.

Hey TDL,

The downstairs bathroom has a cavity slider from the laundry/broom/linen side as well as access from study. I do work from home but don't see clients. The thought was to be able to set the study up as a guest room if needed and they have access direct to bathroom without going around the world. I have added/deleted this door about a thousand times.....

Keep the comments coming.....

Bel

Hey there Bel,

we'll be able to cooee to each other across the river, seeing that we're right opposite Oatley.