New Build - Residential Attitudes -Custom - WA

Hello
I thought while I had a bit of time I'd begin my new build post. We're a family of two adults and one 8 year old girl, building our forever home.

The Journey So Far
We started with living in the existing house on our block - a house built in 1952 by my granddad - who was NOT a builder! Before we knocked it down we commissioned Colin Madgwick to paint a picture of it:


[You can see more of Colin's work here: https://bluethumb.com.au/colin-madgwick]

So, while we were living in it, we built a granny flat out the back. The granny is by Evoke Living Homes [https://www.evokelivinghomes.com.au/]. We built the Salt Box but we extended the floorplan (and thereby removed the verandah). It looks like this:


It is a prefab but it was built on site (had time for them to do so and it saved us on costs to raise the power lines). I recommend Evoke Living - but the trek to Northam, where they are based, to do pre-start was a bit much!

Good ole Dad built us a deck.

So now we are living in the Granny Flat. We love it.

Once we'd moved in, we knocked down the main house. The house went down in about October, and we are still living in a dust bowl.

We are subdividing (into 1/3 and 2/3 - the latter we are keeping) and so we are waiting to sell the subdivided block until we can afford to build!

We have Design Approval - finally - the City of Stirling must hate us because it took forever. I don't think they could get their heads around such a weird build (I didn't think it was weird but apparently it was).

The only bummer is that the granny flat has to be a 'single dwelling' (until we complete our main house, of course) and so we have to install a tandem driveway, which, after the slab goes down, will have to be taken up again.

Good ole Dad will construct the driveway (after the prep is done by someone else).

He's retired, he's got to do something, right?

Where we're up to now
So the Design Approval came through two weeks ago. We are waiting for the sewer to be cut in to the new block, then we are going to build the retaining walls.

We will then also put the block on the market 'properly' - we're self selling at the moment and that doesn't seem to be going too well.

In the meantime we are going through pre-start. Have yet to finalise though. Here are the plans - though these will be changed - mainly the doors - before we sign on the dotted line!










Will keep you updated (probably not for a while...).

Toilet straight off the kitchen?
Do you really also need a shower in the 2nd "ensuite"? Maybe just call it a powder room and put the toilet behind a seperate door inside it.
Only 2 bedrooms, impact on potential later sale?

Well, the toilet is sort of straight off the kitchen, but technically the Home Theatre is a bedroom, so that's the ensuite to the bedroom - I wouldn't want to remove the shower for the very reason that you highlighted - people do seem to mention that two bedrooms will affect resale. We have enquired with our builder whether we can add a door from the Home Theatre to the ensuite, but at this late stage, I'm not sure whether they would be amenable to that.

Not that I am ever thinking of selling. The house is designed to be intergenerational. When I am not able to live alone (or perhaps more in the short term - when one of my parents is not able to live at their home), the idea is that they move into what is now the Master Bedroom. Their 'bedroom' will be the WIR; their living area the main bedroom - and we'll/my daughter will move to the 'bedroom' upstairs.

Unfortunately the budget couldn't extend to a lift to really make the home old people friendly...but maybe when we need it we can just stick one of those through floor numbers in...

I'd definitely look at taking out that door between the kitchen and the "ensuite" then and put in a door from the "Theatre Room" to the "ensuite"
If you don't just picture if the door is left open when you're cooking - a toilet, even though unoccupied, is not a good look from the kitchen.
Move the door to the "Theatre Room", move the toilet so it's up against the outside wall and behind a separate door and put the shower up against the kitchen wall.
This post is instructive viewtopic.php?f=21&t=31880

The Facade
The main colours are monument and grey.
So here's the facade:


The polished plaster will look like this:


Face brick:


Render A will be monument.
There is an additional render on the rest of the house and it'll be:


Roof, gutters, garage, door etc will be monument.

I'm having a bugger of a time deciding on mortar colour for feature brick and lights for the front of the house.

The picture above, apparently has white mortar, which I think looks great - but, of course, that costs extra and I'm not sure it'll kind of be consistent with the rest of the colours - so do you think the bog standard brikkies mortar will be preferable?

In addition, which light do you think:


The top of this one is cement apparently.

Or this one?