Starting out to build a house, I have a list
of priorities that I want addressed by the design and construction of the house
listed roughly in order of importance;
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First and foremost is my budget,
which being so very tiny means that everything else on the priority list might
be somewhat compromised, but hopefully not too much.
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Next comes energy use. The
house cannot be an energy guzzling monster, instead, a small house with a passive
solar design combined with good insulation and double glazing should create a
comfortable house that doesn’t cost the earth and thousands of dollars to run.
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Then there is the livability of
the design. There are some very particular things about me that translate to very particular things about my ideal house. I like a lot of light and a lot of
space, I like to invite lots of people to my house to eat lots of food (which I love to cook), I want
to be able to walk easily between my garden, kitchen and outdoor eating space,
I hate cold floors and I do a lot of sewing which really needs its own
dedicated room.
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And of course, there is
aesthetics. I want a house that I’ll enjoy looking at and existing in.
I found out very early on in the process
that most architects and building designers simply cannot accommodate the kind
of project I’m thinking about. They are used to much bigger budgets and more
conventional ideas (still!). For a while I thought I would just build my own
house from the ground up, but over time this felt less and less realistic. So,
with some family encouragement I reluctantly started to consider kit homes and
volume builders. I really thought they would be fairly ordinary and flimsy, and
many of them were I guess (especially the volume builds). But a lot of them
were actually well built and well designed. Most of these were quite modern
looking, which counted them out for me, I’m more interested in weatherboard,
farmhouse type homes.
Eventually I found a small company building exactly the kind of house I like the look of and at an affordable (for me) price. Not only that, they, are very flexible with their designs and builds as they build the house on site (not prefab). So I was able to redesign one of their houses to meet my priorities, and take over the build once lock-up stage is reached. Hopefully, construction to lock-up will be complete by the middle of 2013 and with some luck, the whole project completed by the end of the year.
Eventually I found a small company building exactly the kind of house I like the look of and at an affordable (for me) price. Not only that, they, are very flexible with their designs and builds as they build the house on site (not prefab). So I was able to redesign one of their houses to meet my priorities, and take over the build once lock-up stage is reached. Hopefully, construction to lock-up will be complete by the middle of 2013 and with some luck, the whole project completed by the end of the year.