Wow, it's been a while!!

So we are still looking, contemplating and deciding about homes. The SO keeps going back to the Caversham MKII, which is fine, except he still isn't sold on the living area design....

Anyways, we have looked at several other designers. Perhaps the most helpful was Hallbury Homes. The architect who designs the home was on site, so we had a lovely discussion with him about whether the house or the block should come first, and that he would be happy to help if we decided we wanted to Frankenstein homes together. As long as less than 80% of the original design remains, they can use ideas from multiple homes.

We have been in an out of many, many houses now, and are getting really good idea of what we want. We drove up to Mernda, and looked at some of the display homes up there. Melbourne is weird as the companies work in specific areas - north, east, south east, west, etc. so if you travel 50+km you see different designs and get different ideas.

Anyway, we have looked at display homes from:

East West Homes (1)
Hallbury Homes (1)
Simonds Homes  (4)
Eight Homes (5) - The S7 was worth looking at.
Homebuyers Centre (4)
Porter Davis (5) - The ones in Cranbourne are nicer than the ones in Officer - the Livingston is lovely.
Boutique (1)
Botanic (2)
Dennis Family homes (2)
Burbank (2)
Fairhaven Homes (2)
Metricon (8)
Carlisle Homes (10)
Premier Home Builders (3) - The Wentworth, although only 3 bedrooms, was a nice house
Hermitage Homes (3)
Hotondo Homes (1)
Rawdon Hill (4)
Aaron J Homes (2)
Ashford Homes (1)
Silkwood Homes (1)
 Plus another couple that I can't remember the names for.

We have been in and out of over 60 display homes!!!

Okay, so with all the houses we have looked through, what have we decided?
27-32 square single storey is good, up to 36 square double storey

Air conditioning, dish washer, ducted vacuum cleaner

Decent kitchen

2 lounge areas at most

We need a multipurpose room that can be shut off.

Zoned living

Powder room

4 bedroom

We like his and her robes, but that isn't essential as long as the walk in robe is big enough - plus a window in a walk in robe would be nice to be able to air it out regularly

Houses that we have liked since last post

Fairhaven Homes Newport 361

It is five bedroom but we thought we might be able to get rid of bed 2, extrend the master bedroom, walk in robe and bathroom to include a spa bath and maybe add a balcony. The theatre room would become the multi purpose room and the front living area could become the theatre room.

Premier Builders Group
The Wentworth


Carlisle Homes
Westwood 31
Meridian Mk 2 - too many living areas honestly, but the theatre room was amazing - automatic curtains closing and screen dropping down when you went in. The ceiling had tiny LED lights like stars -

More stuff

We have basically decided that if we go for a single story house, 25-30 square is enough.

Anything bigger is hard to fit on a block of land.

Two storey house about 38 square seems to be standard.

Anyway, this is the Vibe 25. 

More homes

We looked at more homes since the last post.

SJD homes are lovely to look at - they are completely finished, and showed off to the best they can be. A lot of display homes have shortcuts- doors missing, things not quite finished properly etc.

We both liked the Caversham Mark II

 

My SO wasn't sold on the living area, but other than that it is similar to what we are looking for.

We also headed down to look at some Henley Homes

Out of the ones at that display village we liked the Monterey best:

Its a wide house though, and once it gets back to fitting a smaller block, it loses a bedroom, and we are really looking for a 4 bedroom house - more as a just in case we have kids thing, than anything else.

Two storey houses

I can understand why two storey houses are popular - they mean that you can have a larger house on a smaller block, without compromising on having a back garden and outdoor area.

We have looked at quite a few houses, and liked them somewhat, but quite a few have some wasted or not user friendly space.

Hermitage Homes 

Mayumi 40

I like having the zoned upstairs living, but the downstairs wastes a lot of room with the study and formal living area, as well as family room.

It looks nice, but we need a multi purpose room more than a formal sitting and study area.
























Unfortunately, this seems to be a recurring theme in the bigger houses. 

The start

I told my significant other (SO) that I would live in the house he bought for 2 years, as it is too far from work, and his family, and I want a family and his house isn't the most family friendly house in the world.

After 9 months living here I have decided that we need to start working out what we want as our dream home together. I don't know where or when we will buy or build, whether it will be established or new, a new property, a knockdown/ rebuild or a subdivision of a big block. Whatever it may be, this is where I will record ideas, what we have seen, and floorplans etc.

 There is no intention of breach of copyright here just ramblings about houses, designs, and companies.

Because of where we live there are some display homes that we have already explored.

The first place we looked at was a Home Solutions place:

The Ivy 27 (meaning approx 27 squares - 1 square = 9.29m2

It was one of the first houses I had been into recently with decent built in storage- linen cupboard, broom cupboard and decent pantry space. It was quite well designed but not exactly whate we were looking for.