Deliberating colour schemes, P2

Bricks - check! Now time to choose roof colour and trim.

Trim colours were an easy choice - white. I want to lighten the front of the house and have a clear definition between roof and bricks. In Colorbond this is 'Surfmist', which will be used for the fascia, window frames and garage. The front door will be Corinthian Doors, Madison in white also.

I found some pictures of other houses with similar brick colouring, that use the Colorbond Surfmist window frames and garage and have a white front door. The house design here is actually very similar to our front facade, only we'll hae one big window instead of two vertical windows. The white against the brick makes it so fresh and bright. Just need to choose a roof colour that compliments it now.

I used a Colorbond visualiser to generate different images of a house with the white window/door/garage colour scheme I like, and different coloured roofs. The colours I'm deliberating are Monument (a dark grey/navy), Jasper (a warm chocolate brown), and Dune (a grey/beige colour), with the Surfmist (white) garage and trim. The Surfmist and Dune both look a bit greyer here than it is in real life but it gives a general feel for the colours.

  

 

Alternatively I could mix and match the garages with the roofs or have the same colour garage and roof, as below - Monument and Jasper, Jasper and Jasper, Jasper and Dune or Monument and Dune.

 

 

            

Remembering there will be bricks between our roof and the top of our garage, unlike the images above, I'm leaning toward one of the brown combinations but am open for opinions. This decision is still up in the air thus far!

Deliberating colour schemes, P1

And now we have come to the part I was most looking forward to, choosing colour schemes!

You may note I used the term 'WAS looking forward to'... that wasn't a grammatical mistake. With so many choices and being as indecisive as I am, this process has been driving me up the wall!

It all started about a week ago when I visited the Rawson office to collect my Owner's Manual, a brick of a folder containing thousands of brochures, leaflets and pamphlets of the many, MANY different options at our disposal. Ben wasn't much help at this stage, this was the point where he handed over the reins, told me "I trust your decisions and I know I will like what you choose", and stepped back leaving the entire selection process to me! Now don't get me wrong, I love that I get to choose everything, and it beats having to fight differing opinions on colour schemes, arguing with someone over whether we have round tap heads or rectangular tap heads, and what colour our door stops should be, but with his only preference being: "I want a Colorbond roof", I was at a loss for where to start...

Luckily, who should come along to save the day? My sister-in-law to be, the artistically gifted Hillory.  I had spent the majority of the week pouring over the Owner's Manual, trying to work out which tiny picture of brick (completely different from what it looked like in real life) went with which tiny picture of Colorbond roofing, and imagine it all on a large scale... needless to say, it wasn't working. So when Hill visited from Sydney on the weekend I took advantage of her artistic eye and we set out in search of the perfect external colour scheme.

We drove to some of the new suburbs in northern ACT looking at what colour combinations looked best, probably looking quite suspicious in the process as we crawled around the neighborhoods, scrutinizing each house, snapping a sneaky pic here and there and jumping out every now and then to hold a piece of Colorbond against someone's front wall to see if the combination worked. We didn't decide on a full colour scheme but came to the conclusion that bricks with differing colours through them, giving a mottled effect, less uniform, looked better than a brick with a solid colour, and that unless you have part of the house rendered (stucco type walling over the bricks) the really dark bricks looked too macho and full-on. Picturing these bricks on a cold, grey Canberra winter day was just depressing.

From there we headed out to the brick displays in Fyshwick, Austral, Boral and PGH. The brick displays are pretty cute actually, little courtyards full of half walls, each using a different brick. Its almost like a little maze. This was where the first decision was made, we found a brick that both Hill and I loved: Austral, Urban One - Latte. It's a warm caramelly coloured smooth surface brick that is slightly mottled with a browny grey. Its has a contemporary look, but won't age as styles change, and it still has a warm homey feel.

The first picture, above on the left, is from the Austral brick display, the Latte brick shown with two Colorbond colours, Paperbark and Jasper that are in consideration for the roof (not sure if I'm keen on the Paperbark anymore though, the brick gives it a yellowy tinge). The picture on the right is also of the Latte brick, from the Austral catalogue. This shows it laid with flush off-white mortar, which is how I want it laid for our place.

And so, since external house colours can be split into a 60:30:10 ratio (bricks:roof:trim/detail), at this stage I was officially 60% set on my external colour scheme! Next step, roofing and trim.

Still just a patch of dirt

A shot of the development in early February, not even a hint of  a road yet...

 

Photo taken on top of the hill I have nicknamed 'Moth Hill' - the area protected from further development thanks to the Golden Sun Moth.

The tender

By mid January we were settled on our house plan so it was time to start the tender.

We were pretty happy with the design as is but had a few little things we wanted to change:
- the wall between the kitchen and the rumpus room was modified from full height down to 1.2 metres, opening up the second living area into the first;
- a sliding door was added to the 3rd bedroom - our study/guest room, to rectify the fact that the laundy didn't have external access;
- the ensuite door was modified to a sliding door;
- the wardrobe in the 4th bedroom was extended to use up wasted space;
- the two narrow vertical windows in the front bedroom were swapped for one large window;
- the lounge room window was made a LOT bigger to let in more light; and
- the sliding door and window beside the kitchen (accessing the alfresco area) were swapped for full wall stacker doors to create an awesome indoor/outdoor living area.

At the time, Rawson Homes were running two package deals we were able to take advantage of. The Supplier's Bonus and the Living Sensations packages cost us $8,100- but gave us over $30,000- worth of extra inclusions including:
- Caesar stone bench tops in the kitchen and bathroom;
- soft close drawers;
-Daikin inverter reverse cycle air conditioning (heating and cooling);
- two feature plasterboard niches;
- an overhead rain shower in the bathroom and ensuite (Ben's favourite);
- an alfresco area (external tiling, roofing, columns etc.); not to mention
- upgraded kitchen appliances, paint and doors.

We opted for the Gold Inclusions package as well as paying to have tiles through all the living areas (rather than just wet areas) and to modify the ceiling height to 1.75 metres, to accommodate our extra tall family!

Within a week, Rawson Homes drew up the tender and we signed off on it in early February!

Fairview MKII

Next came the big decision... which house? With the orientation and layout of our block, 15 metre frontage and 42 metres in length, we needed a narrow design and wanted one with a living area at the rear where it would look out on the back yard.

After hearing great things about them, we decided on Rawson Homes as our builders. A perusal of their house designs and I was set on the Linley II with an extension to add a rumpus room/second living area. However this was soon quashed when we were informed of certain regulations in the ACT, because our land was greater than 500 square metres, requiring us to leave three metres on the north facing side of the house, thereby reducing our frontage to 10.5 metres and well and truly ruling out the Linley.

With such a narrow frontage the house design options were greatly reduced. Luckily we came across a second design we both liked that already included two living areas, situated at the rear of the house, and was narrow enough for our block. One of Rawson Homes' brand new designs, the Fairview MKII.

And so it begins...

In late 2012, Ben and I decided that now we were settled in our career jobs, not to mention our wedding just over the horizon, it was time to look at investing in our first home. And so began the adventure!

We knew from the start that we wanted to build, rather than buying an existing house, so we began by scouring the real estate websites for the perfect lot of land.

We deliberated about blocks outside of town, in the surrounding areas of NSW including Bungendore, Googong and Jerrabomberra. But in the end we knew we wanted to be northside, close to our friends, in the area we already called home.

In late December, a lucky fluke in timing brought our attention to a piece of land just recently returned to the market. The last remaining block in the final release of a development in north Canberra. The block had been bought quite some time ago when the development plans were first released but delays in the land availability forced them to sell it on and look elsewhere, thus dropping in our lap the largest block of the development at 625 square metres.

As luck would have it, due to an endangered moth species - the Golden Sun Moth, the land surrounding the development has been earmarked as an open space buffer to protect the moth. With our land situated on the the edge of the development we can never be boxed in, And so we say hello, and thank you, to our first neighbour - the Golden Sun Moth!