If it was easy every one would be doing it !!
After spending years living in rentals the move to the country in order to escape and hopefully enable us to afford to own our home finally arrived, and after seven years we decided to move back to the city, and build our own home.
There is a saying that you may not be sure what you want, but are convinced of what you don't want, led us to search for an older home that we could renovate and do up, a bit like the block! Except we did have a list of what we wanted, it pays to make lists. after spending a lot of time finding somewhere suitable we decided on an old house in a good suberb that ticked all our boxes, faced north, a good size, great location, realistic price, and was bought by us in 2003.
We also had a wish list for the house, lightweight frame, corro iron, rammed earth, heaps of glass, space, a pool, a garden,oh and I didn't mention that we had to build it ourselves. Working FIFO gave me the time to do a lot ourselves, saving money, not that we had a lot.
Gaining finance for an owner built home can be tricky, allow plenty of time for this process.
We did engage an architect, Max Pritchard was our choice, and an excellent choice http://www.maxpritchardarchitect.com.au/
Armed with our plans we started.
Our home is built on a 15 x 55 metre block, and is on four levels, like a long step, its about 31 metres long and 5 metres wide.The north wall is almost all glass, opening out to an inground pool.The centre section is a combined living, dining and kitchen gable roofed ( five metres high) room. A master bedroom with an ensuite at the west end of the big room and off the eastern end a study, bathroom/laundry, and two other bedrooms. For our family an ideal size.
Flooring is polished concrete in the living area, carpeted in the bed rooms. All the rooms have in floor gas heated hydronic heating with seperate thermostats, and we installed a wall split system inverter airconditioner/heater in our big room as a back up.
We have two instant gas water heaters for the hot water, and the house is fed by two steel rainwater tanks fed from a smaller retention tank, downhill of the block. We did install a couple of filters to ensure it's safe.
Wall construction is corrogated iron, 90x45 timber, with batt insulation and foil, a 19 mm ply layer, another 90x45 frame, and gyproc on the inside, its well insulated and with all the windows double glazed quiet, the roof is also corro.
A rammed earth spine goes down the corridor, capturing the winter suns warmth, building rammed earth walls is terriffic preperation for the olympics.
We have 8 solar panels on our north gable roof, should in hindsight have bought more.
The house took us almost two years from go to whoa and cost us approx $225k to build, including the pool, well worth the result.
Our garden has developed from tube stock planted five years ago to bamboo 7-8 metres high. Vegetables and fruit trees are grown in raised beds, we have a couple of compost tumblers, worm farm and recently chooks complete the circle.
Would we do it again?
Sure would!!
(September 2011) (
