House Design Considerations

So you have your land and your preferred house design! What considerations should you take into account with any changes you may want to make to the floorplan? A word of warning though - structural changes to a set floor plan with a project builder is not cheap. When we had to change our house design to fit our land we lost a study. I really wanted the study as my husband sometimes works from home and as our kids get older they may want a quiet space to complete homework etc. Our solution was to add a study to one side of our floorplan, but whatever you add to one side has to be added to the other. Essentially we extended the whole back of our house by 2m at a cost of almost $19000. This then had a flow on effect in that we needed to extend our kitchen to suit the new length of the house at a further cost of $2300. We also extended our garage as new house builds only have a small garage that most people would struggle to comfortably fit two cars into - cost $4300.

Other considerations to factor in - the base price of the house does not include:

- site costs

- the alfresco!

- all the various facades available (although there will be one standard one included)

- BAL certificates (though your estate developer may provide this on their website)

- additional costs for BASIX requirements

- additional costs for BAL requirements

- additional site costs such as rock excavation

- flooring!

- front patio and alfresco covering - it will be bare concrete

- air conditioning

- flyscreens (unless they are part of your BAL requirements)

- fences, landscaping and window coverings

- all the bells and whistles that you see in the display homes (most have very expensive 'upgrades' - I will dedicate a whole post to 'that's an upgrade' later).

This is where the nice rule of thumb comes into play - take the base price of the house and add approximately $100000 - $200000 to get an idea of the final cost. Our chosen design façade below (note the render to the walls and columns is not included and neither is the upgraded garage door pictured or the decking to the front patio):

What did we consider when choosing this design? The obvious things first:

- Number of bedrooms

- Number of bathrooms

- 2 car garage

- A layout that we liked

But what else?

- I thought long and hard about the layout as we have two small children at the moment. I wanted them to be able to be close to us initially but then be able to move their bedrooms further away as they got older

- I wanted more than one living space as often the kids will want cartoons and when they are teenagers they will want their own space, so I tried to think of the function of the house in the long term rather than what just suited us right now

- For right now I wanted a toy room off the main living spaces as my eldest has a bit of anxiety and needs to be able to see me at all times, but I wanted that space to have a function when they were older as well so it can be a lovely yoga space for me, a games room or a teenagers retreat. It was also a must for it to have doors to hide the mess!

- A study was a must as my husband sometimes works from home and I wanted the kids to have a quiet space to study when they get older

- We needed yard space for the kids and our two dogs so the design needed to allow us to have a backyard

- Usable outdoor space as we missed this in our previous house, somewhere to eat outdoors, sit and supervise the kids or have a quiet cuppa

- Storage and lots of it! We had outgrown our old house mostly in terms of storage so storage in the garage, space for a garden shed and plenty of cupboards, draws, wardrobes and linen presses so we never ran out of space again

- A large kitchen and a bath (as we still have young children)

There were many other factors, but you get the drift. It really depends on your requirements, what works best for you and how long you plan to be in the house for. If it's short term then the layout needs to be functional but probably not perfect. If it's your forever home then think long term. Will all of the spaces have a function when you are older, your kids are older, your kids move out? Make a list of 'must haves' and a list of 'wants' (but not entirely necessary) and then study floor plans accordingly, remembering that any structural changes are costly, so the closer you can get to what you want without too many changes, the better! Then have a read of my upcoming post 'that's an upgrade' to have a better understanding of what is included in your new home and what might not be!