Colour Selections

Early on, we decided that we would keep the internal colour scheme of the house quite neutral and relatively light. Our thinking is that it won’t date too much over the years, and we can also then decorate with any colours we wanted. It would also be easy to change a colour scheme of a room, or rooms, simply by changing a few items.

Externally, we spent a fair few hours driving around new estates and seeing what other people had done with the colours, etc. We have gone fairly ‘safe’ with the colour choices however we think that they all complement each other, and that the house will look welcoming. The large picture at the top of this page is basically the look we are going for.

Edit date 16.01.15: I had added photos of our preliminary selections in this post, but they were for the Carlisle home. I have removed them now as a fair amount of our selections will now change as Ashford use different suppliers for some things. I will add a more up to date post with our selections for the Ashford home at a later date.

Our land

Our land – we have a large squarish block to the left and a longer block to the right.  Each of these blocks back onto existing houses.  The large circles on the left represent existing (large) trees.  We have a seventeen metre frontage and it is slightly wider at the back.

Our new house

Welcome! to my blog on our house build. I hope that you enjoy reading this, I thought it would be a great idea so all of our loved ones can follow it as we go. We are really excited to be able to build a new house, with all of our own choices, but it is also a bit daunting as you can’t see how things will look until after it is all done!
I am sure there are going to be ups and downs and a few interesting conversations along the way…. 😉

How it started
Paul and I had spoken many times about how good it would be to be able to build our own place. However, with limited land available in our preferred area, the options were not overwhelming. Whilst we loved our house in Gerard Court we had decided that it was a bit small for us (3 bedroom, but small living areas and kitchen) and we had been keeping an eye out for larger, established houses that were put up for sale. The only issue was whether to sell and then try and buy something, or to try and buy before selling – a bit more stressful as we wouldn’t know the sale price until afterwards. Also, we found that most of the houses we really liked were considerably more than we would want to spend.
In around August 2013, we read an article in the paper that a local golf course had been sold to developers and the land was being sold off. One morning soon after, after going to look at a potential ‘renovators delight’ (read: disaster zone) we decided to go and have a look at the land sales office.
Long story short, we were given a heap of information and the cogs started turning. The question was, then, if we were going to do it, which block would we pick? There were all sorts of shapes and sizes. We also didn’t want to decide on a block until we had an idea of the house we wanted to build.
So, after a lot of research (basically looking at every single different floor plan available by every single builder!) we were actually able to narrow it down to 2-3 floor plans quite quickly – it helped that we knew what we didn’t want, rather than what we did – for example, we didn’t want a ‘theatre room’ or ‘open study’, we wanted a large, open living area, at least 2 bathrooms, and alfresco area, etc….
Two of the floor plans that we chose were with Carlisle Homes and one with Boutique Homes. They were all quite similar, but after walking through each of the display homes we easily agreed on the Carlisle Randwick 26 – it also comes in a 29 square but the difference is minimal in terms of the living space. The Sales Consultant was lovely and was able to check and tell us that the house would fit on all of the blocks that we were considering.
Having decided on the house, we revisited the land sales office and the consultant was able to walk us down through the mud to where the blocks would be (we were considering three). We agreed on block 2081, which faces South but the back of the house faces North with a lovely (if small) view of the Yarra Ranges. It was also a good size, being 695sqm, so we will have a decent backyard as well as a good sized house. So, we decided that it was ‘now or never’ and signed up!!!
At the time we thought that the land would be settling in May 2014 – it now looks more like August/September, due to delays with getting the infrastructure, roads, etc done. Will provide updates about this as we find out more….