Did someone say make an entrance?

Ok not to worry, I don’t really have Lady Gaga in mind when I visualize our entrance. But I do want to give it the WOW factor. The facade, the front landscape, the front door and hallway – they all play a very important role in giving the house street appeal and I want our Hudson to make a stunning first impression. Here’s the vanilla 2d version of the front elevation.

Modified Traditional Facade

I tried to do a 3d render of the front elevation on Google Sketchup but sadly my attempts were abysmal. So, I settled for the next best option that was Metricon’s online design program Envisage.  I found it quite handy to get a visual of our colour scheme but thought the selections of items and colours were limited. Here’s the mockup closest to our facade and exterior colours. So, my ideas for a rocking entrance are…

Modular wall panels with slats along the front boundary painted in Dulux Mount Eden to match the render to the portico. The main thoroughfare from the street to the house will be accessed via a small gate positioned opposite the entrance with a paved pathway leading straight the the portico decking.

Now that’s the easy bit. I have a lot of ideas for the entry / hallway. Thank God I have the luxury of time to mull over the options and I don’t have to commit to a decision anytime soon. Without further ado, here are some of the pics that are inspiring the heck out of me.

A feature stone wall with drop-dead gorgeous pendant lights

via Houzz

An eye-catching wallpaper

via Metricon

Stunning feature wall panels with custom built console

via Stonini

Statement mirror and beautiful pendant

via Houzz

Keep the wall simple and let the art do the talking?

This bold eye catching Lynne Roberts-Goodwin original took centre stage in my husband’s bachelor pad

What a great conundrum to be faced with!

Which one would you choose?

Distractions

While Metricon is slowly getting our development application ready for council submission, I’ve decided to take a different approach to how I handle the inevitable lull periods in the project. Rather than let my irritation and frustrations get the better of me I’ve resolved to take a leaf out of a fellow house builder’s books. Johanne’s blog post on “patience and building” resonated and it’s given me a new perspective on the journey to our dream home. Thank you Johanne for inspiring me to stop whinging about how long it takes to build 😀

So, to keep miss impatient away from rearing her ugly head I need a distraction or two – house related of course.

Well, there’s the obvious distraction aka Pinterest. As I have only recently discovered the joys of this online virtual scrap booking tool, Pinterest has been a favourite time waster of mine. I have built up a good collection of beautiful images I intend to use as inspiration for the interior design of our home. It definitely came in handy during the initial landscape concept planning. I simply showed Emily my garden and outdoor room boards and voila she got my drift instantly. Easy peasy!

Whilst I think Pinterest is an amazing source of inspirations for fine tuning the overall style, look and feel of our home, I’ve been itching to get started on planning the nitty gritty of the individual room designs. A tad premature I know.

So, I’ve been searching cyberspace for an online mood board creator to help me with the fun job of selecting the furniture, colours and finishing touches for each room. Enter Polyvore. It’s a simple, free to use virtual styling tool that let’s users mix and match a wide range of interior design and fashion products to create image collages called ‘sets’. It’s a one-stop shop for everything. You simply browse hundreds of products filtered by categories then just add the item that tickles your fancy until you are happy with the set. The added bonus of Polyvore is it tells you exactly where you can buy the products you selected. What a great idea!

Here’s my first attempt on polyvore.

Mood board for the Family Room sans TV to be wall mounted

Landscape Plans – DA

Most councils across NSW require a landscape plan for new development applications. In general, the plan should include a detailed site analysis of existing and proposed hard and soft landscape features. It should also contain information on:

• existing trees and other vegetation to be retained or removed, including information on species, height, spread of canopy and diameter of trunk
• location of building footprint
• schedule of proposed plantings indicating species, massing and mature height
• existing and proposed fences and retaining walls and their proposed heights and materials
• drainage structures
• location of outdoor clothes drying area

We decided to engage Out There Landscapes and Design to prepare our plan. You can read more about our concept meeting with Emily in this post. After only one round of changes, Emily sent us the final plan incorporating as much of our ideas on paper as possible but keeping the planting schedule to the minimum required by our council. 

We are very happy with our experience with Emily and her team. The process couldn’t have been more simple, straight forward and fun! What a contrast when compared to where we are with Metricon right now. We will use this plan as a starting point when we get around to doing the front and rear yard but given our current dramas with the house plans, it feels very much like such a long road ahead.

Landscape plan for DA

Playing the waiting game

So, after a mini flurry of activity on the admin front it suddenly feels like we are back to idle territory.

The contract variations and amended drawings were sent to us for approval last Thursday – 3 painstakingly long weeks after contract signing.

I had high hopes for a quick and straight forward sign off especially as I had emailed the builder a detailed and itemised summary of every single variation we raised during the contract process.

But I should have known that nothing in this building project is ever that simple and straight forward! There were a few silly oversights like the elevation drawings showing the wrong cladding material and the change to the ground floor powder room window not reflected on the plans. Not significant errors thank God!

By Metricon’s timetable, we should be in a position to lodge our DA application by the 15th August. Holy cow! That’s only 8 working days away!

I should be excited that we are so close to this last hurdle before construction. But to be honest I’m a bit stressed out and worried. It seems that our CSC has gone MIA. I’ve left a couple of voice messages and emails over the last couple of days to get a status check but I’ve not heard a peep out of her 😦

What’s stressing me out is that we may be cutting it fine with the timeline. In our contract, we need to handover the site to Metricon by 17 November. Ryde Council has advised us it could take anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks for approval. So, if council takes its sweet time to give our application the go ahead then we will definitely miss the deadline.

Here’s hoping we luck out and get a fast tracked, objection free approval! For that to happen, Metricon needs to hustle and fix everything the needs fixing and get all the reports and plans for the DA finalised and submitted ASAP!

C’mon Metricon, go go go!

Colour me happy

The interior colour selection is perhaps the most exciting and anticipated stage in pre-construction. Think of it as one massive shopping spree! We have half a day to pick doors, architraves, cornices, staircase, taps, wall and ceiling paint colour, bench tops, vanity cabinets, bathroom accessories, splashbacks…you name it.

Studio M selections

I have a fairly good idea of the style and look I want for our home. I love clean, sleek lines and white, neutral colours with wood accents. In Metricon’s book, my style is closest to Wall Street. I want the interiors to be simple, spacious, stylish yet functional and organised especially with three very active and messy children. I want our home to look beautiful but more importantly to work with our lifestyle.

So, now that I’ve narrowed down the overall style it should be pretty easy to choose the colour and finishes right? Wrong!

The myriad of choices is a wee bit overwhelming! 

I have a bad case of analysis-paralysis. Whilst the internet is a godsend for information at the fingertips, it’s also proving a great source of indecision.

Can’t decide on the flooring colour. I love the contrast of dark timber floors and white walls but I’m also practical and hate cleaning. I’m worried how they will look when not clean. I think lighter coloured floorboards will be more forgiving and won’t show up the dirty footprints and smudges? What do you think?

Dark floor

Not so dark

The colour scheme for the kitchen is also giving me pause partly because my husband has put his two cents in about his dislike for a white kitchen. He thinks white is too clinical and prefers a timber veneer look in oak or chestnut. I personally don’t dislike this look hence the dilemma.

Chestnut timber veneer

I think it may come down to the floor colour we end up with. If we go dark floorboards, a white kitchen will look smashingly beautiful.

White kitchen