As I write, we are getting our design ready to email to a shortlist of builders to provide quotes. This is pretty exciting as it signals the start of the next stage, hopefully a shorter one on the road to starting construction.
Michael has written about the concept design stage in detail. To summarise, we were presented with 3 different concepts based upon 3 different positions for the staircase. Stairs (particularly in a small house) really do dictate the layout of the rest of the rooms, and are especially important for the flow of movement throughout a home.
Due to town planning restrictions, we must have a staircase externally at the front of the house (leading up to the top level where our living/dining rooms, kitchen and spare bedroom are situated). So having internal stairs at the front of the house, in almost the same position, seemed redundant. In addition, this would mean that we would be walking past all the downstairs bedrooms to access the backyard (one of my requirements was no stairs off the back deck to improve security). In the end, after many permutations and combinations, we settled on the internal stairs at the back of the house. This allows easy access from the deck to the backyard, and that visitors don't need to go past any bedrooms to access the backyard or driveway either.
Once our concept was chosen, our designers and I then set about deciding where everything else would go. Something we found really useful during this stage was hypothesising about where things would go, and how we would move through the house. For example, we come home, and where do we go? Where does our mop and broom live? Where should the laundry be? Do we even NEED a laundry? (after much much discussion, we are having a laundry, but that's another story...)
Another consideration for our house, being around 100 years old, was which rooms would go above which. We have chosen a low traffic area (guest bedroom/study) to go above our bedroom, to reduce noise (soundproofing between levels is notoriously difficult). The kitchen is above our bathroom instead, which also groups services in that location.
Once layout was decided upon, our town planner lodged our development application with the Brisbane City Council. From the time of lodgement, it took 11 days for them to come back with the approval. Since then (mid-November), our time has been spent finalising kitchen, bathroom and joinery elevations, and deciding on finishes via a finishes schedule (more on this in a future post). We have decided to at least provisionally decide on paints/bathroom fittings/flooring/lighting etc so that our builders quotes are comparing 'like with like'.
In addition, we had geotechnical/soil testing done on our property, which informed the structural engineer's design. Effectively, their job is to engineer the house such that it doesn't fall down, and also resolve issues like how to best support our 6 metre back deck span without any posts randomly sitting in the middle. Engineering alone has probably taken around a month to finalise, involving a few back-and-forths with our designer.
Looking back at our first blog post, we have been in the design phase for nearly 6 months. We have been very careful (? too careful) with the details, but hopefully this is time well spent. We shall see! Would love to hear from others and how long you've taken to design your house, which stages you've been through, and how it all went.
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