Positioning the House continued

We met with the builder on our block on Saturday and paced around, up and down the slope working out the best spot for the house. Stakes were placed at each corner of where the house would sit so that we could clearly see its position. We imagined looking out of each of the windows to make sure that it was in just the right place.

As I thought we wanted it higher up the slope and the back of the house facing closer to due north. This will mean cutting into the hill a little more, and looks like the study corner will need to be on piers. I just hope that this won't be too costly.

We also placed the house closer to the western boundary. This will give us more space between us and the neighbours to the east, which will allow for the expansion of the patio or even a pool in the future. The western side of a house gets very hot in Australia in the afternoon and you are advised to limit the number and size of windows. We only have one placed high up in the wall of the Home Theatre. The garden on this side of the house won't be used, and faces the end of a neighbours back garden.

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Now that we have positioned the house in a different location to where we thought it would originally go, the design of the lounge and alfresco has also been changed.

Additionally the storage in the Home Theatre had to be removed because of the way the house levels change in that location. A new cupboard has been added to the Hall and bulkheads have been created in the Home Theatre and Entrance Hall.

I have been very nervous about getting the location and design of the house just right, but it does seem to be coming together now. There's just a small tweak of the plan here and there now.

The next step is to have the preliminary engineering report done, which will take at least 2 weeks.