Putting pen to paper

We've read the magazines...we've bought Your Home technical manual...we know what we want...we can sit down and sketch out our own design...


...it turns out there is a reason why architects have gone to university for a sizeable number of years...all those pesky odd corners...It was hard. Especially when all those cleverly designed sustainable homes are gazing smugly up at us from the glossy mags.

Sometimes a blank canvas is just too much to work with.

Where do we start?

Where does one begin when one has a beautifully sloping, northerly aspect one-acre block to build an eco-friendly house, home office, vegetable garden, orchard, chookhouse, football ground/cricket pitch and dog kennel on.....and one is a fairly enthusiastic about collecting, reading and digesting of information on whatever one is currently interested in?

...magazines of course.

We discovered Sanctuary magazine at the now only on-line Neco superstore. An impressive looking glossy on Australian sustainable designs we snapped up the current issue plus back copies and pretty much signed up for a subscription via computer that night. Inspiration and ideas followed...rammed earth wall! straw-bale! polished concrete! cross-breezes! thermal mass! solar panels! Grey-water system! 2-storey! 1-storey! double-glazing! thermal chimney!lap-pool splitting the house in two and running under a glass walkway connecting the two sections!....hmmmm.... It was fun to be in the anything is possible stage.

Where it all begins

Around mid 2009, while visiting good friends, we did a drive by their newly purchased house in a quiet spot out of Geelong. A few doors up the road we spotted an appealing one and a quarter acre block. Well, the price was good and we knew we liked the neighbours so why not? A few sums, phone calls and anxious moments later and this spacious blank canvas was ours - well almost. We did have to wait a few months for the sub-division to make it through council.

A few months in which to dream and plan...