A friend of mine is considering moving to a new block of land and building a house. She has similar goals and lifestyle to me, so she asked what we considered when designing our house. I guess she assumed that we had it all figured out. The funny part is, the main reason that it took us over a year to get a house organised, and in the end we just bought a secondhand house and moved it, BECAUSE we couldn't decide what we wanted in a house. (read more about our secondhand house here)
More correctly, we couldn't decide if we should build what we wanted or build it to suit mainstream tastes, for resale value. The main sticking point was the ensuite. We have always lived in a house with one bathroom. We are happy with that and would build a house with one bathroom, but new houses typically come with an ensuite and a walk in wardrobe. Both things that we don't particularly need. Finding the secondhand house, we overcome that problem as it only has one bathroom and no space for an ensuite.
I think we would have got around to building something eventually, after we got through all those design questions! I thought I would note down at least a little advice for my friend, who is currently baffled by standard house designs and not sure where to start.
More correctly, we couldn't decide if we should build what we wanted or build it to suit mainstream tastes, for resale value. The main sticking point was the ensuite. We have always lived in a house with one bathroom. We are happy with that and would build a house with one bathroom, but new houses typically come with an ensuite and a walk in wardrobe. Both things that we don't particularly need. Finding the secondhand house, we overcome that problem as it only has one bathroom and no space for an ensuite.
I think we would have got around to building something eventually, after we got through all those design questions! I thought I would note down at least a little advice for my friend, who is currently baffled by standard house designs and not sure where to start.
- Work out what you actually need in a house based on how you live (or if you are building a standard house for resale and just going to tweak it to work for you). Number of bedrooms and bathrooms is a good start. If you're a keen cook, make sure the kitchen is big enough and if you're into food preservation, go for a large pantry. If you do stuff outside and need a room to take off all your dirty clothes, maybe a laundry, mudroom or utility room is required. We have three bedrooms and a big "sunroom" enclosed veranda, so plenty of room for guests, storage, and study/craft areas. One bathroom and a giant kitchen. A laundry with external access and a second toilet.
- Consider your climate and design for comfort. Look at temperature extremes, are you going to be bothered by hot temperatures or cold temperatures? We are mostly trying to avoid hot temperatures, so we made sure that we had verandas on the North and East of the house (Southern hemisphere), which keeps sun out of the house in the hottest months. We made sure we had plenty of insulation in the roof, ceiling fans and windows positioned for good ventilation. Even though it was a house that we moved, we still got to choose the orientation that worked best for the house on our site. In colder climates, you might actually try to use solar gain to keep your house warm in winter. A great book for the Australian climate is Warm House Cool House: Inspirational Designs for Low-Energy Housing
(affiliate link) - it gave a great explanation of what you can do when designing a new house or retrofitting an existing house.
- Still on climate, how much will you use outdoor areas and should you incorporate these into your plan? We spend a lot of time on our verandas and they are like an extra room (undercover and with plastic blinds to keep rain out) making our little house feel way bigger. If your climate will allow you to spend more than 6 months using an outdoor space, its definitely worth considering how you can use outdoor spaces.
- Try to choose decor that is going to match you lifestyle and level of cleaning care-factor. I love the way the house looked in crisp white primer, but knowing that we are surrounded by red clay soils, I did not want to be keeping that clean. We went for beige walls, with brown trim. I will brighten it up with some colourful furniture. I HATE carpet because I HATE vacuuming, we went for tiles in the bathroom and laundry and wood floors in the rest of the house (as they will move with the house), these should be easy to keep clean.
- Think about what works in your current house, features that you like in houses that you've been into, look through magazines, try to picture how you will use the space and where you would put your essential furniture. Reducing the overall floor area can be a massive cost saving, so don't build it bigger than you need to. Those savings could go into building a decent shed or barn for additional storage and workshop areas away from the house.
- Speaking of storage, we have put in lots and lots of cupboards because I want to be able to store everything away and not have clutter out on any surfaces. We've also decluttered a lot of stuff before moving.
(affiliate link) - it gave a great explanation of what you can do when designing a new house or retrofitting an existing house.
Overall, we used a permaculture approach to our house. Making sure to observe our location first, to set up the house to use wind and solar energy to our advantage. We also get rainwater from the roof (obtain a yield). We will be heating the house with wood from our property (use renewable resources). We have tried as much as possible to reuse materials (produce no waste) and let the spaces be flexible so they way we use the house can evolve as we grow into it (design from patterns to details).
Have you built a new house? Any tips? Anything you would keep or change in your existing house?
All good advice there. I might have this wrong, but shouldn't that be a north/west verandah, to avoid the heat? I find the setting sun (west) is the hottest, and I can't wait for it to go down. I'm wondering what the rationale for the north/east verandah, is. Curious, as I may have it wrong. Maybe it's for sitting in the shade of the afternoon?
ReplyDeleteIn relation to your friend, I would suggest they maximise storage space, bench space, pantry storage and whether they want 3 bedrooms or 4. You can get away with 3 larger sized rooms, if you have clever storage in the rest of the house. I found our 4th bedroom wasn't really large enough for a hobby room. It was really only good for sleeping in and storing clothes.
Also, avoid dead spaces. A lot of modern homes, have a larger than necessary entry, to make it look big. But it's a lot of dead space, just for walking through the door. I've had several friends, and neighbours who went for the grandiose entries. Now it's the least used part of the house. Because everyone uses the side door, where the cars park. So select a house with the entry, where their driveway will be. It won't matter how pretty it is. People will take the closest entry, every time, lol.
Other dead spaces in modern floor plans, is joining living spaces together. You only need a walkway, which is 2 people-spaces wide, between your living areas. I had a friend who spent hours mopping the floors of her house, with enormous dead zones of space. Even when they bought large furniture to put against the walls, it was more space than needed, just to walk between rooms.
It looks impressive to be surrounded by so much space, but in reality, is a mammoth chore to clean. Even with our reduced space, it's a chore to mop the walkways. We have a little foyer between 2 bedrooms, the laundry and bathroom. But without that space, we wouldn't have been able to manoeuvre the beds or other long furniture in the rooms.
So some dead space is absolutely practical. Just keep it practical.
We built our home over a decade ago and I would change a few things but not too many. I love the verandah that runs along the front (shading from the afternoon sun), eastern side (lovely and cool for eating outside) and part of the back (shading kitchen, dining area). It really expands our living space and draws us outside. We also built a ramp, instead of back stairs, for the elderly dog in our life who finds that so much easier:) We do have an ensuite and bathroom and funnily enough it's the ensuite that we all use which suits me fine as it's less to clean!) I think my advice would be to consider the aspect of a new home really carefully so that you can work as much as possible with the sun for heating, cooling and with breezes. Meg:)
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