Hamptons inspired architect design with attached granny flat

Yes, the rain needs to go to the farmers and leave us builders be!

amilelka, the attic cost has come in at approx $7.5k for flooring plus $1k for ladder incl installation. This is before builders margin and gst.

It will get us an extra 80m2 storage floor space . That’s bigger than the granny flat! We haven’t decided if we will go ahead with this ballroom yet though. All these little extras are adding up.

That's a great price for 80m2 of space! Is it lined or insulated at all?

No, just 150 LVL and yellow tongue flooring. It’s not habitable, and no windows.

That's a super price. When you come to sell, the "dream quotient" of the space will totally pay you dividends. Are you tiling the roof? If you are, there were transparent roof tiles on the market a while back that could be usefully included in a no-windowed area.

That double glazing cost seemed fairly reasonable to me. At least you have had the chance to get it sorted.

If you are getting a colorbond roof like us...once the gutter and eaves were on in a few hours the roof and sarking got done by about 5 workers in less than a day!

Ah, speaking of windows, we finally approved our schedule today. The IGU (double glazing) issue was settled days ago but then we had to look at the costing of some of the other windows.

We had two large almost floor-to-ceiling banks of louvres in the original house design. Problem was both looked out over the pool, one from the second storey, so had to be made kid safe (louvres openable only to 10cm and blades can’t be removed). Unfortunately only one company makes these and they charge accordingly. So we’ve had to tweak the design slightly. The ground floor one has been left as is but the upstairs one, which used to be 6 panels of louvres, is now a fixed pane with a panel of louvres at each end.

An alternative would have been to fit something like Crimsafe onto the windows but we didn’t want that as that would have reduced the amount of light entering (the pool area is undercover already).

So hopefully that’s the windows done and dusted, and we can move on!

Although we won't see our windows until mid next week, the only issue we did pick up after the windows were ordered was some of our sizes (widths) weren't to standard brick openings. It was annoying because I put a lot of time into getting all our windows & wall lengths set according to the brick coursing chart. But when I sent my final window design into our builder (I just used codes eg 'A1022') and they ended up in some cases being non-standard...but only on the widths for some reason.

So for a 'A1022' window for example I was expecting an awning with height of 1029mm and width of 2170mm. Instead they were like 1029mm & 2200mm wide! No massive deal, but it means the bricks will have to be cut along one side of the windows which is annoying for both the brickies and us.

Anyhow if I ever do a fair amount of the design work again, I will be exactly specifying the window and door dimensions next time. I have found that you can't assume people will do what you think is logical.

Having said this we are excited to see how these windows have turned out when they get installed next week. We have some interesting glazing setups in particular.

darb74, how frustrating, esp when you’ve put so much work into it. I’ll have to go look for your thread!

Touch wood but I think our window sizes should be fine. They aren’t particularly designed to standard sizes I think, so the builder and window supplier were onsite measuring each opening when the framers were done.

Our window sizes downstairs are 50mm out in terms of height. We are working through it at the moment and as it's floor to ceiling it's really hard to fix however we have a solution. It is quite frustrating as you spend a lot of time on-site trying to figure what went wrong and how you fix it.

gablesrocks, have the windows been manufactured already? Were they too big or too small?

Hillsbuilds - already manufactured. When we were onsite after the framing went up we realised the mess and now we are fixing it obviously. They were 50mm bigger - we still don't know where it went wrong...but now it doesn't matter. We found a fix (can't get my head around it as am not technical) but gotta trust the builder

How painful, glad it’s all sorted now! I should have guessed the windows were too big - if they were too small it would have been just a matter of adding to the frames to close the gap (maybe...I’m no expert either ).

Boringly, we have roofing materials but no roofers.

The framers are not done yet on the lower parts of the house, as the scaffolding is in the way. But gutters and fascia have been installed on the highest roof ready for the (missing) roofers.

Driving to our site we saw this from a distance!



The white roof, not the letterbox . It’s like a beacon! We spotted it from a few other vantage points as well - pretty much the only light coloured roof in the area.

Up closer, the top roof has been installed.



Unfortunately the entire roof will be done in instalments as the scaffolding is in the way. Builder wants to leave it up for the cladding, painting, etc and they will work their way downwards. Can cladding go in before windows, does anyone know? I’ll have to ask the builder the next time I see him.

Hillsbuilds Wow! You got that roof up pretty quick - it's looking good

We have taken a setback with the rain.

Looks good, looks huge! Maybe the colour makes it look bigger? Or maybe its just big😂
In regards to your question about cladding before windows, my expert opinion (which is not expert in any way, shape or form), would be windows need to go in first, so that the cladding can seal the windows in.... but who knows!
What sort of cladding are you using? Do you have a picture of your facade? Assume its very contemporary.

Hillsbuilds gogo65 yes I am with gogo65 on this. Windows first I would say

gablesrocks gogo65 I think you’re right too re the cladding. I was just being hopeful, seeing as our windows are 3 weeks away and the framing is pretty much done, and builder won’t bring the scaff down to do the lower roof - I’m wondering what they’ll do until the windows come in!

gogo65, our facade is all weatherboard, likely James Hardie Linea 180.

I posted a drawing of our front elevation at the start of the thread I think.