house tour part 2

We decided to stick with light timber, lots of stark white and concrete/grey throughout the house. Our house has a lot of North-facing windows and is really bright and fresh, which is only enhanced by the clean, neutral design and colours inside.
 
 So, here is our kitchen. Definitely the hub of the home and where I seem to spend a great deal of my time. It is right in the middle of the lounge room and rumpus room and looks out to our front yard.

 

We spent quite a bit of time deciding what colours and finishes we wanted to use on the kitchen cupboards, benchtop and splashback. In the end we went safe and fresh and choose white high gloss cupboards and drawers. Underneath the benchtops we have lots of drawers, which I love and above the splashback and appliances are soft-close cupboards. I’m happy that we decided to omit the handles on the cupboards as it keeps things looking nice and clean. I’m hopeless at visualising a finished space before it is actually finished and I was a little worried that the kitchen would look too boring, but I really love how it all turned out. It feels sleek and simple and stylish.

The splashback is white glass, this is the only part of the kitchen that we are not 100% happy with. It has a slight green tinge to it in some light, especially when compared to the bright white cupboards and drawers. We did think of putting timber behind glass at one stage but weren’t sure how it would stand up so didn’t go for it but if we could change one thing about the kitchen now we would have a timber splashback. 

To bring a concrete element to the inside of the house, we choose a concrete-look benchtop. It is a new Caesarstone colour called Sleek Concrete. It would have been nice to have a polished concrete slab as the benchtop but also super expensive so this was a nice compromise.

Moving onto the ceiling…we wanted the kitchen nice and light so put two big square recessed skylights in the ceiling. There are a few other skylights in the house and they are one of the best decisions we made when planning the build. They let in so much light and I love the direct sunlight that moves across the kitchen throughout the day. It is awesome standing underneath them and looking up during a heavy rain too!

The timber running up the wall and across the ceiling is the one thing in the house that I can take full credit for…and I’m pretty proud of myself because Jaron usually comes up with all of the cool design stuff before I do! We were trying to look around for pendants to put above the island bench and couldn’t find anything that we were really happy with, then I had a thought that maybe we shouldn’t bother with pendants at all and keep the kitchen clean and streamline without too many distractions. I’m not sure where this inspiration came from but we played around with different ways of including timber in the ceiling of the kitchen and settled on this design and it really helps to increase the interest and ties in well with other timber elements in the house. All of the timber in the house (including the floors) is Tas Oak. I was really set on having a light coloured timber and wanted to stay away from high gloss so we did some research and used a Scandanavian product called Bona Traffic HD as a coating on the timber and it is awesome! It is a satin finish and makes a huge difference in keeping the floor looking clean. When the sunlight hits the floor you don’t notice any of the dust that is really noticeable on a high gloss timber floor. It also has a soft, almost waxy feel under your feet and is lovely and warm to walk on. I especially love the light blonde colour and how it is more of a sandy colour rather than dark brown, yellow or orange. The floor is so easy to clean and hardly ever looks dirty – I’ve managed to go 2-3 weeks in between washing it and you can’t even tell it is overdue for a wash! After the white gloss tiles in our old house that always seemed to look dirty and smeary this floor is a dream!

The pantry is to the right of Harvey in the back of the picture above. It feels a little hidden as it is enclosed by two big, gloss, push-to-open doors with no handles and feels like a blank wall. It has heaps of space, actually the whole kitchen has heaps of storage. Half of the cupboards above the bench don’t even have anything in them yet!

I think we are one of the few, newer houses that doesn’t have a sink on the island bench. It is just something that I have never wanted in my kitchen. I would rather have my bench clutter-free, ready for kids to sit at or people to eat at or a place to serve food and not have to worry about water and taps and dirty dishes getting in the way. 

You can see in the photo above the timber posts screening off our computer nook. This area works really well. It means that the computer is still in the busy part of the home, I can always see what is going on or be close to everyone when I am using it, but also has it’s own space. 

And here it is looking from the rumpus room. That door to the left of the computer desk is for storage. The computer desk is a grey laminate – it looks almost identical to the Caesarstone benchtops in the kitchen but a fraction of the price.
The dining area sits directly in front of the kitchen. I love the pendant light that we choose to put here (there is another identical one in the entrance) the white gloss and timber suits the house perfectly.

Our dining set is a work in progress…the table was the same colour as the chairs a few months ago. Jaron painted the legs white and used left over timber from the floors to make a new tabletop. So much nicer than what we had before and it only cost $60 and a couple of nights work! Now we need to paint the chairs white and cover the seats with something. Not sure what we will use yet…I have been looking for a grey oilcloth but haven’t been able to find anything that I really like yet (any ideas?) but am also wondering if I could cover them with some leather. Not sure how the leather will go with milk spills and wiping up food though so will have to do a bit more research.

And the last area to talk about for today is the loungeroom…

The loungeroom is still a work in progress – we eventually want to get a new couch that suits the space a little better and the display shelves are ever changing and I really need to make some new cushion covers but I’m taking my time with the decorating of this room because we also spend so much time here I want to get a feel for the house first and see where it leads me!

I had some Ikea shelves next to the TV in our old house and I loved how I could display photos/prints/knick knacks and easily change them around without committing to holes in walls. Because we knew it worked well for our style we had the joiner build us in some white gloss shelves either side of the TV for this purpose. It was nice to have somewhere easy to start decorating when we moved into the house too.

The timber paneling in between the shelves is the same Tas Oak as used in the kitchen. We wanted something to give a bit of warmth to the room so that it just didn’t look like a TV on a white wall and it carries on with the light timber theme we have going throughout the house.

Either side of the shelves are two big white gloss cupboards to use for storage – the one on the left is for books and the one on the right has board games, kids drawing stuff and is predominantly used for media – the DVD player, top box, amplifier and receiver are hidden away in this cupboard. Jaron’s big dream was to have surround sound in the loungeroom and he won (I wasn’t keen!) so this is where all of his stuff is kept out of view! The grey bench underneath the TV and shelves is also made up of a heap of cupboards too for extra storage (and at the moment they are all empty except for a few puzzles and kids books in one of them!)
We used the same paint colour throughout the whole house – on all of the walls, trims and ceiling. It is Vivid White half strength Dulux Wash & Wear 101. This was another risk we took that paid off – we really wanted stark white walls to contrast nicely with the timber and grey elements of the house. So many people tried to talk us out of it and said that it would look too cold but we love it and I’ve discovered a great way to wipe dirty finger marks off without leaving any smears – I’ll share it next time because this post is getting too long!

Not sure if you can really tell in these photos but all of the windows in the loungeroom, dining and rumpus room have Tas Oak timber reveals with a shadow line around them. To tell you the truth, I didn’t have a clue what Jaron was talking about when he said he wanted to do it but I love it and once again, it brings in a subtle timber element to all of the rooms.

The carpet we used throughout the house was something that we splurged on. It is Providence Sublime in Fog and is super soft and thick and luxurious. I figure that we sit and lounge and walk barefoot on the floor constantly so it was worth forking out a bit of extra money for. Plus it was one of the only carpet ranges that we could find that made a real stone grey colour, most other greys were too blue or too brown but this one works just right with the rest of our colours.

And this is what you see when you look back at the house from the loungeroom. That big opaque sliding door at the end is the rumpus room and my sewing area but it was a big mess on the day we took photos so I’ll save those for another day!

 And if you’re a bit clueless with visualising things like I am, here is another look at the floor plan so that you can make sense of how these rooms fit together with each other and the rest of the house!

High 5 to you if you stuck with me for this loooong post! I better save the rest of the house for another time!

We have been living in our new house for 3 months now and I’m ready to start sharing some pictures of where we live! You can click on these links to see some “before” and “during” shots if you are interested. And here it is – all finished and lived in! Today I will share some pictures of the finished exterior of the house and will move inside next time. Jaron (Starbox Architecture) designed the house (the designs went on foooorever…and he has already started getting ideas togther for our next one!) and it was built by LAW Constructions.

Our block is just over one acre. Towards the end of the build, we had a digger and bobcat come in to level off the yard and create a circular bank around the perimeter of the land. It looks a bit scrubby at the moment with LOTS of weeds to get rid of and years worth of landscaping to do but has great potential. 

The grass has been a big job for us. Before we moved in we got a heap of topsoil delivered, but unfortunately we lost a lot of it in crazy high winds that we experienced a few months ago. Before sowing the grass, we installed some underground irrigation. The system is automatic so Jaron sets the timer for when we would like the grass watered and the little sprinklers pop out of the ground and turn themselves on. I wasn’t too keen on the system when we were getting started, but can now see that it was well worth the investment with the time and effort we are saving by not having to move portable sprinklers around the yard all day just to keep the grass wet! Our soil is pretty rubbish out here – we are basically living on a big sandpit! It is actually awesome because no matter how much the kids dig and roll around in it they don’t get dirty but not so good for gardens and lawns. Our grass is slowly getting there, but it is going to take a lot of work to get it to where we want it. I’m obsessed with weeding and head out for a little while every day pulling weeds but it’s amazing how much faster and stronger they grow than the grass! Because of the sandy ground, any time we want to plant anything we have to fill the area with potting mix first.

Let me try and list all of the exterior materials here in case any of them interest you. The big feature of the house is the timber wrapping around the front and a little at the back of the house. Originally we wanted to go for a grey colour, but ended up choosing a more natural brown colour, Spotted Gum from Woodform Architectural. The original colour of the timber was exactly what we wanted and then when it was stained it turned darker than we had hoped. We still like it, but are happy that the colour will fade with time and then we will coat it with a clear stain to retain the lighter colour. The ends of the house are clad with South Australian limestone from Limestone Australia. The roof and slanted wall at the back of the house are Colorbond Custom Orb in Shale Grey colour. And the window frames are all Shale Grey colour too. At the entrance of the house, you can see slanted timber posts which are laminated Tas Oak.

I think I’ve covered everything and will try and write a post in the next few days about some of the interior of the house!

Time for another house tour post! If you missed them, the first two posts are here and here.

So, I thought I’d show you around the wet areas today – bathrooms & laundry.

In the first house we built, I found choosing tiles to be such a nightmare. We went tile shopping every Saturday for 6 weeks until we finally settled on something! This time around though, we knew exactly what we wanted and our tile shopping lasted less than 1 hour!
This is our ensuite. For the tiles, we choose a matte-finish grey rectangle tile and used that one tile everywhere – floors and walls right up to the ceiling (that’s why our tile shopping was so fast!)

 The kid’s bathroom is pretty similar to the ensuite. We used the same vanity, basins, taps and shower heads. This bathroom has an enclosed shower with a door though (not as fun to clean! In hindsight, I probably would have done the same shower as in the ensuite) and the addition of a big bath. The kids love it.

In our old house we had a heated towel rail in the bathroom and got them again for this house. It is so nice to have warm, dry towels in the middle of winter. Some days it can be so cold and dull that the towels don’t even dry between showers and there is nothing worse than trying to dry yourself with a cold, damp towel after the shower! It’s a little luxury that we love now!

And lastly, this is the laundry. We kept things all white in the laundry to help give a sense of cleanliness…because the reality is that my laundry NEVER looks like this! There is plenty of colour and texture introduced in baskets and piles of washing waiting to be washed, folded and ironed!

Because the laundry is an internal room with no windows to the outside, we decided to put a big skylight in the roof. It makes such a difference to an internal room to have a shaft of light and sunshine flowing into the room.

The laundry has cupboards galore – the top ones are hardly even filled up yet. But it is such a great feeling knowing that there is plenty of room to store everything in the house. The tall cupboard on the right is great for keeping mops, brooms, etc.

You can see the window to the left of the room which looks into the garage too. We did that to let in a bit more light and open up the room some more. 

The floor in the laundry is polished concrete. Again, a really easy flooring to keep clean.

It’s taken me 3 months to get this far in the house tour so by the time we have been in here for a year maybe I will be finished!!! Stay tuned!

Christmas morning came (and not quickly enough for these excited kiddos!)  We opened presents from Santa before church, then went to church for an hour and listened to some very uplifting and inspiring messages.

We enjoyed a family walk along the beach in the evening, a perfect way to finish a lovely day.

Here’s the thing…running your own business and working from home is awesome.  When I started selling my sewing patterns, I never did intend to make a business of it, but over time things have fallen nicely into place and now I find myself “working” from home and contributing to the family bills.  With any kind of commitment, comes work though.  Unfortunately I don’t sit around and sew all day (ah, wouldn’t that be great?!).  Aside from the usual day to day jobs that come with being a wife and mother, I spend many hours on the computer answering emails, working out finances, writing up patterns, not to mention keeping the blog updated and things running over on Facebook.  There is lots to think about every single day.  I love it though.  If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t be doing it.

But sometimes I miss the old me.  The me with had a baby or two at home, got bored because there was “nothing to do”, managed to take a walk every day without feeling like it was wasting precious time,  the me who would cook for the sake of it, sit on the couch and watch a bit of midday telly and read a magazine in the afternoon.  It was pretty cruisy back then!  

So yesterday I declared it “house-wifey” day.  I didn’t do anything “work” related.  I got the kids up at the bench and we cooked cheese and bacon scrolls followed by caramel popcorn together.  There was delicious chicken noodle soup for dinner and some of Clare’s scrumptious rocky road to finish it off.  Then I went with Mum to visit a sick friend.  Came home and did a bit of housework and sat on the couch and read with the kids for awhile.  I felt like I had accomplished a lot, my mind was refreshed and it didn’t matter that there were still a gazillion emails sitting unanswered and I hadn’t worked out the tricky bit on my new pattern.

Next time I’m feeling over it, I’m scheduling another “house-wifey” day – kinda like taking a sickie from work but I feel good!