Time to unveil the project

I realise I have been a bit of a tease with descriptions of the project and our rationale for upping sticks and going bush. This is the post where I reveal all!

To start with, there are some 3D images that were produced by our designer when she was teaching herself a new program. 

The house will nestle into the hillside, but it does give a general idea. The outer cladding will  be a coated metal called Colourbond in a very dark charcoal colour called Monument. The roof will be of the same material, except it will be a pale silver called Shale Grey. The roof profile will be almost flat; there needs to be a three centimetre drop to allow the rain to run off. There is an external gridwork which will be in Australian White Cypress, a sustainably produced timber. This will be left raw and will soften and silver over time. It is also not a desirable food for cockatoos, so we won't need to worry about them coming to eat the house. In some ways, the gridwork reminds me of Japanese furniture. The designer developed this idea without knowing that our furniture is of this style.

The triangular spine running down the middle of the roof has two main purposes. Firstly, it is slanted to the correct angle for our solar hot water system and also our solar power array. There are also three skylights; two for the bathrooms and one for the laundry. These rooms have south facing windows and the skylights will vent air on hot days when the cool change comes in from the south. The laundry skylight will also have a retractable clothes rack which will allow us to hang our washing up to dry on wet, wintery days. I like freshly line-dried washing, but it is good to know that we have another option if we need it. The one we have chosen is produced locally in Castlemaine by Usethings. At the far end of the laundry, we will have a small larder which will be well insulated. We will store all our preserves and wine, as well as any vegetables that need to be kept in a cool, dark place.

The house is long and skinny; 37 metres long and only five metres wide. We wanted to avoid having hallways, so each room flows into the next. All main rooms will have windows facing to both the north and the south. The northerly aspect allows the sun to penetrate fully to heat the concrete slab in winter and will mean that we need almost no heating. The southerly windows will give the view across the valley.

The house will have two bedrooms and a large study and two bathrooms. We will have an open plan kitchen, dining and living area.  Although the house is narrow, the scale of the rooms is just right. We will have three metre ceilings, so the rooms will not feel pokey. 

The last grid section of the house is a walk in wardrobe. It will be entirely open with a false wall hiding it from the main room. We intend to use this for all storage of clothes, bed linen, towels, and fabric items such as our yoga bolsters and our suitcases. It will have a window at the closed end which will ventilate it fully to the northerly windows. All items will be stored on wire shelving, open racks or Elfa baskets. I have to say that this wardrobe is my dream come true. At the moment I have seventy centimetres of hanging space in my wardrobe.

This is the view from the northeast.
Our bedroom, wardrobe and bathroom will be at this end of the house. 

This is the view up towards the house from the south west.
It shows the carport and shed attached to the building.
We needed the extra roof space to collect the rain water on
which we will be dependent. The location of the shed and
carport will provide protection from the hot westerly afternoon sun.

This view is from the southeast. We will have a
pergola and outdoor area out of the sun. Remember
that we have the sun in the north in the Southern Hemisphere!

Here is a view from the northwest.