Kerb appeal

I've been thinking a lot over the past few days about how I want to present our home and what it is going to look like as you approach our property and drive through the gate. We are staying within the Hamptons style for the facade and to some extent for the garden as well. However, we don't want to go too formal with the landscaping in an effort to maintain a large useful area not cluttered with plants on the flattest part of the block for things like soccer games etc. Towards the back of the block it slopes away quiet quickly and there will be a large cut and retaining wall in the bottom right hand corner where the shed will be so I imagine the front yard will be used frequently as well.

Our house is going to sit quiet wide on the block as we wanted to make the most of the space we are lucky enough to have. We also didn't want to have the house sitting too close to the road for the same reason, why buy an acre and a third if you plan on building right on the nature strip. We made a choice to go for space rather than water views when we were buying the land as that was what was the most important to us. As it turns out I think we have ended up with the best of both worlds, the room we wanted and a great rural view over the creek, dam and adjacent horse paddocks.

Our beautiful view and my husband and I on our first wedding anniversary.
Left hand photo credit: Vanessa Janss Photography

The stunning house built by the writer of Our Forever Home a blog I found while searching google for my own. We appear sometimes to have eerily similar taste so Louise I promise I am not stealing your ideas (however I will defiantly be borrowing some). I can't believe I haven't found your Pinterest boards previously, they are fantastic!  

We are having a similar facade to her house using a combination of render and weatherboard detailing in whites and greys but instead of the light roof we are going for a darker one.

An example of colours but lacking the weatherboard detail.

      

Along the lines of what we are thinking for colours

This is a house built from the original floor plan we started with before we made all our changes. So ours will have a similar foot print and along the same lines for style but again with a whole bunch of changes to make it our own.

We're not exactly sure how deep the cut for the house site is going to be yet until we see it. We had originally planned to batter it back on quiet a large taper to avoid having any retaining walls but in order to have the extra large turning circle/driveway we are planning we may end up having to rethink this a little. So at the moment we are just going with the flow and will see what the excavation brings when it happens (hopefully in the next week or two). If we need to put in retaining walls and steps that will most likely happen down the track at some stage when the budget recovers a bit. But I do know that I want some small box hedges to define the verandah and also large blue Hydrangeas and my favourite David Austin Roses we had on our wedding cake.


 

Our wedding cake was covered in cream David Austin Roses to match my bouquet. Wedding photo credit: Vanessa Janss Photograpghy

Blue Hydrangeas in white planter boxes either side of the front door with hanging lanterns = perfection if you ask me!

The front door colour choice is something I have gone back a forwards with many times. As we are already planning on three different colours for the facade I am cautious about bringing in another element, however I do want it to be a statement. I want a a solid wooden door with nice traditional detailing, chromed knocker and glass either side and possibly above.

At the moment I am leaning towards black but luckily I still have some time before I have to make a final decision.

 

Trying to be useful

Over the weekend we spent some time at the block hunting for the original survey pegs that were put in over a decade ago when the subdivision was first done. After a fair bit of measuring and a little digging we were successful and found all 5 (yes that's right 5, one corner of the block is cut off at an angle) pegs and marked them ready for the fencing crew who I hope are turning up next week.

X marks the spot, or boundary in this case.

I've been looking a gates/fences and dreaming of what could be but as we have a large block we therefore have a lot of fencing to do and at this stage it will all be visible by passes by. Two of our boundaries are road facing, the block next to us is still empty which means the fence on that side will be in full view until the block is bought and built on too and the bottom boundary joins with a reserve so it has already been fenced with a rural style fence of pine rounds and barb-wire. This means that we have close to 300 meters of fence and you can imagine how much that could cost if money was no object. Alas it is and we have to be sensible.

In the end I've decided that having a solid fence around the entire block would look a little funny and somewhat like a prison andway. So for now we are putting in the same rural fencing as the existing bottom fence and one day maybe we will upgrade to a white post and rail fence.

I am also thinking a nice wrought iron gate will fit with the fence we are building and still keep me aesthetically happy. I've found a could of beauties and am waiting for a quotes from Farmweld a South Australian company I found online. Fingers crossed they come in under budget.

 

This turned out to be great timing as I received a phone call from the builder just this morning telling me he will be doing a trip up to visit us, the block and the local tradies next week (insert excited face here). The first step will be to get the surveyor to peg out exactly where the house will sit so the excavation team can come in a do the site cut.

Finally it seems we might actually be ready to start, but I'm still not holding my breath as I've already learnt not to believe it until I see it.  

The beach as promised

So I realized that I've told you we're building our Hamptons style dream home at the beach and you are yet to actually see the beach I speak of. So for your viewing pleasure (and to prove I'm telling you the truth) I went on an excursion on me way to work this morning and snapped a quick couple of pictures.

Bastion Point - where a fair portion of the local population congregate each morning to survey the surf or boating conditions of the day and soak in the breath taking views.  

The sunning inlet photographed from Captain Stevenson's Point

Just on the left of the above picture you can see some of the waterfront campsites at the Foreshore Caravan Park. Tell me you wouldn't love to wake up to that view every morning while on holidays complete with your very own jetty.

As an added bonus on my photo taking excursion this morning I stumbled across a sun bathing Fur Seal that must have come in form the nearby Gabo Island. Not uncommon as fish and therefore dinner are plentiful in the lake, however nevertheless still exciting to see.

Up to date

As it stands now we are currently in limbo waiting for the council to approve our planning permit. This has been the most horrible part yet. Finally being at the stage where we and the builders are both ready to start and now everything has been paused while we wait for the plans. FRUSTRATED TO SAY THE LEAST!
Roughly two weeks ago we were notified that we had approval with a minor change to where our driveway will be. YAY! I can handle that.
So I quickly sat down and whipped out an updated landscaping sketch and sent it through. Just to begin with the waiting thing again. Remember at the beginning when I told you about 'Mallacoota Time' well this seems to be a perfect example of that.
Any way it is what it is and it's out of my control so instead I thought I'd take this opportunity to share with you a few of my design ideas.
Let's start with my favorite part of the house.

THE KITCHEN

  

Love the bench tops, splash back and lighting

I'm loving the white marble bench tops, contrasting island bench, glass fishing float like pendant lights (all though I will have three) and marble herringbone splash back. We are planning on having dark bamboo flooring through out most of the house with carpet in the lounge room and bedrooms. I'm not sold on the pillars on the bench tho or the door and draw pulls.
I've had my eye of these light from Schots with filament globes since we visited their Geelong show room a couple of years ago and think they are the perfect choice for the 'Hamptons with beachy tones' style we are going for.

My husband and I are currently having a slight difference of opinions on the splash back. I love the look a small marble tiles laid in a herringbone pattern with white grout however like these ones from Beaumont Tiles he has other ideas. Actually not ideas as such rather a hate for small tiles. He says "they look old and s#*t", I keep telling him can't ride off all small tiles, there is a difference. But he is yet to be swayed so we'll see who wins this one.

I plan on winning him over with the beauty of these tiles or if that doesn't work pulling the if you have a say in my kitchen then I get a say in you shed card and hoping I get there that way. Wish me luck.

If you have a look back at our floor plan you will see that I have strategically positioned the kitchen so it can open out into the BBQ end of the outdoor area. I don't know about in your house but it is the same old story for me when it comes to having people over for a BBQ. I spend the whole time in the kitchen organizing the meat, cooking instruments, trays, salads, drinks, plates, cutlery, other various sides, desserts etc. while Jason and subsequently our guest stand around outside chatting and casually turning the snags in between beers while I'm missing the party alone in the kitchen. So this is my solution, a servery window that opens directly from the kitchen to the BBQ area complete with bar and stools so I can be part of the fun too.

My dads pretty handy at building stuff and has promised us a set of bar stools for under this window

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I'm just going to leave this here for your viewing pleasure ;)

One step closer

So it's nearly 6 years down the track from when we purchased our block of land and we still haven't actually started building yet but we are defiantly getting closer by the day. We've spent the last few years looking (and going around in circles) at our floor plan trying to get it just right and within budget.
Luckily for us Blay Builders the builders of the display home we fell in love with have agreed to build in Mallacoota, a whopping 233km (2 3/4 hours drive) from where they are based. This was as I've said previously one of the biggest hurdles we've faced but we're over that now and well on our way to actually starting to build our dream home.
Our plans have evolved a long way from where they started all though not unrecognizably. Even though we love, love, LOVE! our block of land that also possessed its own difficulties. The beautiful view over the creek and dam is pretty much due south therefore that is where we want the majority of our windows and living areas, meaning taking advantage of the northern winter sun was slightly harder. We also know that the sou-westerly winds that whistle down the gully will be cold and blow directly onto where we planned to have Jason's prized outdoor area, so some serious tweaking would be needed in that area too, not to mention a massive expansion. As for my kitchen, well the original pantry was never going to cut it a would need a total re-think as would, it turns out, a fair few other parts of the original floor plan. In the end, after many, many hours spent cutting and pasting, re-jigging, adding, removing, flipping, scribbling and erasing we finally achieved what we think will be the perfect family home for us.

The perfect floor plan for our Hamptons style dream home at the beach

North Elvevation - the front side that will be seen from the road

      

South Elevation

From the begining

Ok here goes....
There is this special thing where we live and its called 'Mallacoota Time'. Basically this means things will happen when they are good and ready to happen and in turn this generally means at a very relaxed speed just like everything else in of this gorgeous seaside town in Far East Gippsland. I have to keep reminding myself that this is part of the charm of living by the beach, that life unfolds at it own pace with no need for the hustle and bustle of busy city life.  The problem is when it comes to something as huge (and exciting) as building our dream home the old 'Mallacoota Time' trick wears thin pretty quickly.
My husband and I purchased our block of land, all 1 1/3 acres of it, back in July 2010 before he was even officially my husband. We'd been tossing around the idea of a new house for a while but needed to sell our current home to finance it, so we put it on the market and crossed our fingers. It must, at this point, be said that the real estate market in Mallacoota doesn't seem to follow any of the rules and completely has a mind of it own. With only a small population and despite hoards of people flocking to our quiet seaside village every summer for a holiday not a huge number of new people moving to town and therefore buying houses. So we knew not to hold our breath. As time went by with very little interest in our house, a house that we had our eye on sold before we got a chance to buy it and so it was back to the drawing board for us as we tried to decide what we wanted to do instead. It wasn't long before we reached the decision that what we actually really wanted to do was build our own home from scratch! So it was then that we began the hunt for a block of land to call our own and one day build our dream home on.
We knew that space was important to us and that we didn't want to be too far from the center of town. We also knew that we needed easy access as my husband is a diver and therefore needs to be able to access our block (in forwards and reverse) while towing his 23' boat. So when we came across a corner block in a small 13 lot no-thru-road subdivision we knew that was THE ONE for us.

Just the right one for us - July 2010
Note the millions of yellow cape weed flowers, we are going to have to do some serious work on balancing the ph of the soil down the track, not to mention Jason's arch enemy the Bracken Fern. He has taken a serious disliking to it, even to the point where he has dragged our trusty old push mower across town to battle it. I keep telling him will will deal with it when we move in but he wont listen and is intent and waging war on it now!  

It was so exciting as we started dreaming of what we could build but then there was the hurdle of finding someone to build it. Mallacoota as I mentioned before is small and therefore options are limited. We spent the next couple of years looking at every display house we could whenever we went out of town, until my husband was nearly ready to scratch his own eyes out, as we waited for our current house to sell so we could finance the build. All the time dreaming of the possibilities, and well aren't they just endless when it comes to building from scratch. We had a bit of an idea of what we wanted as far as the floor plan was concerned so we started with a HUGE kitchen and pantry for me (I'm a chef by trade, therefore enjoy spending a lot of time cooking) and an even BIGGER outdoor area for Jason. Our ideas evolved from there, we wanted 4 bedrooms, an office to run our business from and two (not three as so many plans seem to have) living rooms, one for the TV and huge big comfy couch and the other for our pool table. On yet another display home excursion I'd dragged my slightly reluctant husband along on we found the most amazing house! It ticked box after box on our theoretical list of 'must haves' albeit with a million and one things I would also change about it. But nevertheless this seemed to be the starting point we needed.

Sorry about the less than perfect quality. If I remember correctly this was a very quick pic with my phone through the display glass. Even still you can get an idea of what we started with.

The next thing was to find out whether the builders would even consider traveling the almost 3 hours to build in Mallacoota. Up until this point we had had the same negative response from every builder we'd spoken to when we said our block was in Mallacoota. But this time was different, this was the very first time we were told "yeah that's defiantly something we could possibly be interested in". Needless to say we were pretty excited by this. We weren't at this point ready to actually start building but just needed to find someone who would when the time came. We continued saving and as time went by, still without the sale of our current house (please if you or anyone you know is interested in a holiday house at the beach check out ours at http://www.domain.com.au/2-howden-court-mallacoota-vic-3892-2008847947 ), we got closer and closer to being able to build anyway.