A concept plan

Well here she is, the concept plan....

This is version 4 of my dream home, I had to scale down until it would fit our budget & be a practical size, it started out about 9 metres longer than this, with another bedroom & an activity room.It was way to big & I think we would have had a lot of unused space.

I don't have a copy of what downstairs will look like, there will be a double garage that you drive into at the left end of the house & underneath the kitchen & family room area will be a large room,that we will use as a kids activity room  gym & toilet. To start with it will just be a big open space that we will finish at our leisure or when budget permits....

Please excuse the poor quality, it was a plan that was scanned & emailed to me, which I then had to print out & re scan & save it to my photo files.  Finally I was able to access the image to post.The dark grey areas are veranda's with a pergola on the bottom floor of the back left hand corner.

The centre area if the plan has the entry situated between a formal lounge & dining room, hopefully creating a grand entrance. The large room in the middle is a family room & meals area that opens onto the alfresco. The kitchen is off to the left, with an island bench & walk in pantry, the staircase opens into the family room.

I am hoping to create a mixture of these two kitchens. I will be having overhead cupboards & if I can make the budget stretch to it, I would love to take them to the ceiling, I expect that would add a lot to the cost as we have 2.7m ceilings. I will be having pendant lights like the kitchen above, my dream guy is an electrician & will be doing all of the electrical installation himself.

I really love the simplicity of the island below.

Any advice or experiences on this my stylish friends?

Off to the right is 3 bedrooms for the kids & you walk thru a vanity area to go to the bathroom, separate toilet or laundry. I wanted my kids to be able to get ready in the morning without fighting over the bathroom, girls can do their hair, whilst the man child uses the shower & the toilet is still accessible for whom ever may need to use it( these are daily issues that I face, resolved). My laundry has plenty of storage & bench space for folding washing & ironing without having to pack it all away immediately. The bedrooms are large enough to accommodate queen size beds, side tables, dressers, a  built in robe & still leave room to move about.

The left end of the house has another child's bedroom  & the master bedroom. The master bedroom has a walk in robe & ensuite. The toilet in the ensuite has its own separate room.

Both the ensuite & main bathroom will have a bath tub under the window & a separate shower. The main vanity area & ensuite will each have a double vanity.When I read this I realize we don't sound like we are very good at sharing, he he he!!!

I would like something a little like this image below

I think I would like a mirror the same size as the vanity in the kids area, to add extra light & make the space appear larger, but in the ensuite possibly two smaller mirrors, one over each basin.

 What do you think ?

The formal lounge will have french doors to access the front veranda, a gas fireplace with a lovely traditional style mantel & be flanked by open shelving. I love the formal fireplaces with display shelves either side, but I also wanted to create extra light in the family room as it is a long room & allow for air flow from the front to the back of the house, following design principles for passive heating & cooling. We have hot summers & although we will install ducted reverse cycle air conditioning, it is expensive to run, so the more measures we take to create an energy efficient home the better.I hope to have it look a little something like the images below, although I will be painting them white.

My dream guy loves the two way gas fireplaces so it may end up with the fireplace & mantle in the family room as well yet. This would depend on the cost for the actual fire place fitting into our budget.

So this is the plan so far, tiles on the floor, hopefully 60cm x 30 cm porcelain in a sandy sort of colour, laid in a running bond pattern, carpet in the formal lounge, dining & bedrooms in a similar tone. The walls to be painted in a yellow based cream & all trims white. Kitchen to be white with the bench tops to be a square form laminate or ceasar stone either a shade darker or shade lighter than floor tiles.The bathrooms following on in the same colour scheme.

I will pick the flooring first & work my way up from there. A lot of the furnishing I currently own was purchased around a warm white colour scheme so I will need to keep with this look, I do love these colours anyway. The last 2 houses we renovated, we painted in Dulux Chalk USA although I think I am leaning towards Dulux Hogs Bristle in varying strengths this time, depending on the tile colour.

Any ideas or suggestions to save me some costly or disappointing mistakes guys????

CHEERS

Trish xx