How do you design a simple, functional family home on a budget?

HOME Method member, Tatiana, is working collaboratively with her building designer and builder to create a functional family home on a budget, navigating layout choices and site constraints.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 369, and in it, I’m talking with HOME Method member, Tatiana. She lives with her partner and three boys in regional Queensland, and is in the exciting stage of finalising their concept design and moving into preliminary drawings for their new family home. She’s back with her latest project update!

In our last conversation, we met Tatiana at the very start of her journey. If you haven’t heard the first part of Tatiana’s project story, you can find it at Episode 350 and Episode 351. 

Since then, she’s been working closely with her building designer, and collaborating with her builder for input along the way, all while keeping a close eye on their square metre target / floor area size to suit a tight budget.

In this episode, Tatiana shares how those budget constraints have actually been helpful in keeping the design disciplined and simple, and how they’re navigating decisions about size, layout, and even whether to keep what Tatiana refers to as a “luxury item” – a third toilet that would be a powder room.

We also talk about her home design’s L-shaped layout, the changes they made to create a main entrance that works for their site, and how she’s balancing her own ideas with trusting her designer’s expertise. 

Plus, we explore upcoming decisions on roof design, ceiling heights, and how to create an alfresco area that works for their climate while staying cost-effective.

If you’re in the early stages of planning and want to hear how another homeowner is collaborating with their team, managing a budget, and making key design choices before construction, I think you’ll find this episode full of ideas and insights.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

Before we dive into the conversation, let me give you some context on timing. 

Tatiana joined HOME Method in May, 2024. We had our first conversation in Episodes 350 and 351 back in October 2024. And the conversation in this and the next episode occurred in July 2025. 

Tatiana is hoping they can be in their finished home towards the end of 2026.

As a side note: you’ll hear us have quite a chunky and detailed conversation about Tatiana’s roof design in this episode. 

Sometimes a conversation like this can be tricky in an audio format. However, it’s packed full of helpful information about different roof forms though, so it’s definitely worth listening out for.

And if you check out this podcast episode I’ve done about Roof Design and the key things to be aware of, it will also be helpful.

I’ve also done a podcast on roofing your outdoor or alfresco area, and if you grab the free download of that episode, you’ll see photos of the battened outdoor roof Tatiana refers to in our conversation. 

Those links are also included in the resources at the end of this post! They’ll both be super helpful to support the conversation I’m having here with Tatiana.

I also hope that your takeaway from hearing my conversation with Tatiana about her roof design, is to not leave your roof design till last, and ensure it’s being thought about during the design of the floor plan. 

And if you want a simple-to-construct and well-designed hip and gable roof without valleys and stepping ridges all over the place, you’ll need to ensure the floor plan design is created with that in mind.

Let’s hear from Tatiana now.

This is the transcript of my conversation with Tatiana as she shares her update on designing a functional family home on a budget, navigating layout choices, site constraints and builder collaboration.

Amelia Lee
Well, Tatiana, it is so awesome to have you back. I’m so looking forward to catching up with you, seeing where you’re at in your project, and sharing more of your incredible new build journey with the Undercover Architect audience. I’m wondering, to begin, I remember when we last spoke, you were in conversation with your builder. You were kicking off the PAC Process, and you were starting to think about how the design could work for your site. How have things been progressing since then? Where are you actually up to now in your project overall?

Tatiana
So, we continued with the builder and the building designer that we had engaged back then, and it’s working really well. So, we are probably in a transition stage between the end of concept design and the beginning of preliminary plans, and so most of that conversation has been happening with the building designer, and there’s been input from the builder, but it really has been more along the lines of, “All right, stick to simple shapes, straight walls.” Like, just just very broad constraints to try and manage the budget, and that’s where we’re at at the moment.

Tatiana
So we’re feeling fairly comfortable with the plans where they are at the moment. It’s only probably one section where we have all the wet areas, all the bathrooms, toilets, laundry in one strip on one end of the house, there’s something that’s often we haven’t been able to put the finger on it, and so we’re just pushing through in that space to get to a point where we feel like, “Ah, that’s what it is.” But yeah, we’re feeling really close to getting to preliminary plans. And just had a chat with the builder earlier this week, and he came and we had a two hour chat about what preliminary plans look like.

Tatiana
What does that process include, and what it all means? Because obviously, we’re new to that, and so he was very helpful. And I’m actually pumped. I’m pretty excited about all that.

Amelia Lee
That’s so awesome. That’s so exciting to hear. So I want you to be excited, because it’s important that you enjoy this. It doesn’t mean it won’t be without its challenges, and its hiccups and hurdles along the way, but it’s a beautiful and big opportunity to create a fantastic home for you and your family. And when you’re investing so much effort and energy in doing a really good job of it and being really intentional about it, it’s lovely to feel excited and enjoy the process along the way. So can you talk through a little bit about the design? I know we’ve spoken and we spoke about it last time on the podcast. You have a tight budget, you’ve got a site that does have room to play with in terms of the shape and the size of the design. However, you’ve got a really good understanding that the simpler that you keep it, the more pavilion form and keeping that design very, I suppose, not articulating the form and going over the top with it, but just keeping it very simple, very simple to construct, very simple in its layout, will help you manage your budget.

Amelia Lee
And then you can still get it to work functionally and orientation-wise, and all those kinds of things for the site. So I know from experience, myself on my own projects and also working with clients, when you do have room to move, you’ve really got to be super disciplined with yourself that the design just doesn’t keep ballooning. Because next thing you know, you’ve all of sudden added another 50 square metres to the building, and you’re then just really struggling with your budget. So, how has the design been progressing? And where are you at with the size and the layout and what you’re managing to get into the overall home?

Tatiana
Something that’s been super helpful from the beginning is actually having a tight budget on its own has been great in the context of the builder was able to tell me from the get-go, “Don’t go over. We’re looking at 200 square metres and if we’re very generous, we might get to 210.” So that from the get-go just constrained all of our thinking in that space, and we haven’t had room to go, “Oh, but maybe we can add here and there and there, can we?” And there is a bit of potential when we get looking into finances properly, which is a bit of an overwhelming space for me. But when we dive into that space, there might be room, just looking at how the housing market is doing here in town, that we might be able to stretch, go bigger, budget-wise. We might be able to source a bit more finances. And so in that space, the conversation with the builder and the building designer has been, because the shape of the build is relatively simple, if we do want to add space, it would be almost a matter of moving one wall and that would add space to so many other areas in the house. And so it’s not complicated, even that’s not complicated if we get to the point where we find out that we can expand a little bit.

Tatiana
But the build at the moment is sitting at 205 square metres. There is probably an item that is still contentious with the building designer, and there is argument to not have it there, which is a third toilet. I grew up with that. I’m from Latin America, and we live densely, and so every house has so many toilets. But particularly, there is usually a social toilet, where when you’re having people, that’s the toilet that’s used for social gatherings, and no one has to go into the private spaces of the house. Which we love the idea of, but we do know that it is a bit like a luxury item, and it is right beside what would be the toilet for the bathroom of the boys rooms, and so it does feel a bit over the top. But if we can make it happen, we would love to make it happen, because we do know the difference that it makes. We do have a lot of people staying weekends with us, families with kids, and so just having being able to offer one bathroom for the family and that they don’t have to be worried about all the people coming into that space when we have visitors while hosting, that’s probably the one luxury item that we’re hoping we can keep in the building.

Tatiana
But yes, I think, so far, I’m feeling really comfortable with how the building is sitting, the distances between private areas and social areas. And I was just even last night, just thinking about how the current house, the noises, my boys wake up, and we can all hear it from our room, my husband and I. Whereas in this other layout, I’m already getting excited about the kitchen. It’s on the other end of all the bedrooms. And so whoever wakes up and goes and does something in the kitchen, people will hear about it, but in the distance. It’s not going to be clamps and pots and things right in your ear. Just little things like that. It’s not a big house, and this is not a big house either, but it’s just the fact that the spaces are laid out in a way that they do look like they would work so much better.

Amelia Lee
Fantastic.

Tatiana
That’s probably where we’re at.

Amelia Lee
And so, can you just run through the rooms that you’re including in the future home?

Tatiana
Yes. So we’ve got four bedrooms, three bathrooms, so an en suite with a walk-in robe, a second bathroom and the one powder room, which is toilet and potentially a basin in the toilet. A laundry that’s right beside almost like a mud room area, where it’s the main entry for the family from the garage, and then a media room. We call it media but it’s a bit of a multitasking room that’s office and playroom for kids, and it’s got something that we wanted to move from this current house.

Tatiana
It was one of the renovations we did was to create that room with some noise isolation by using glass doors, sliding doors, and it was great. So we thought, we don’t want to lose that, because our boys all play instruments, and they play loud instruments. They’re all brass and wood. So that works really well. And, yep, living room, dining room, kitchen, al fresco. And that’s really it. I think I described it almost in the way that it flows itself. So private areas, and then you’ve got the laundry. That’s probably the one area that’s if I had more space to move with the budget, I probably would have tried something different. But in saying that, it’s not that it doesn’t work, it’s just because usually laundries are either close to kitchens or close to bathrooms, and ours is neither, like in between the two of those things. But that’s okay. It’ll be fine. Yeah, it doesn’t necessarily bother me too much.

Tatiana
Yes, so that was an interesting conversation, because I was almost deadset against having two entry doors in that I have seen so many places where there is a main entry that’s placed almost for the sake of the view, how the house presents, but it tends to be dead space, because the cars tend to be parking elsewhere. And so people walk into the house from wherever they park, and I just said to them, “We have a tight budget. We don’t want to be spending the money on an area that’s going to be barely ever used. I’d rather use it somewhere else.” So initially, there was going to be just the one door from the garage, and everybody was going to just drive almost to the back of the house and walk in the house through that back corner. And I really appreciated the building designer, because he just went with it for a while. He went with it, he tried it, he placed it there. And we were talking about the kitchen layout, and there was a space that I need, and we were just trying to make it work. And every time we move walls, something was a bit off.

Tatiana
Until he just said to me, “You know what? It just pains me, that door there just pains me. And I understand where you’re going to with that, but it just pains me that it is there, and just the fact that people are having to walk through cars and stuff to get in the house, and it’s right at the back.” He didn’t ask it quite like this, but it was almost like, “Can you give me a bit of room to throw you a bit of a curveball?” Like, “Alright, yep, go, your hardest, go and see what happens.” And he did come back with, essentially, an L-shape, and essentially, he switched how the things were sitting on that L-shape, which gave us then a main entrance. But it’s a main entrance that doesn’t occupy valuable space. Essentially, it’s just a door where visitors walk in from a visitors parking spot at the front of the house on the north side. And I loved it because I thought, “Oh yeah, I don’t appreciate walking into places and looking straight into kitchens,” which that’s going to happen in our house. But at the same time, I am also very conscious of it’s not going to be perfect. It’s not going to be a perfect house, and as long as it’s ticking most of all the boxes that are priority for us, then, well, there are some boxes that won’t be ticked, and we will have to be okay with that.

Tatiana
And then living, dining, kitchen, and it flows on out to the alfresco, which is something that I love as well. The kitchen almost got a continuation from the main working bench, then sliding door, and then out to the barbecue, straight off on that same wall, which really, I love that thought. I love the thought of that just all connected space there.

Amelia Lee
Yep. And you’ve got a carport, a free standing carport. So the the way that the plan’s working, and I can see that concept of the laundry/mudroom, it’s probably performing like an internal entry from a garage would, it’s just that the garage is a freestanding building that’s separate to the house, so it’ll give you that secondary entry into the home.

Amelia Lee
And the home doesn’t really have a traditional front door, does it? You’re going to think then about your landscaping and how you arrive at the house as a visitor, to then walk into those primary living spaces. So have you had conversations about that from a design point of view, about what that’s going to involve?

Tatiana
And that’s a box that’s not ticked and it’s fine. Yeah, no one’s going to die.

Amelia Lee
It’s an interesting one. I think that when you have sites like yours, which is a larger site, your house is going to be set further back from the street. You don’t have a lot of street frontage because of the shape of the block. So the arrival process is quite different to a suburban street where you walk up and you need to see the front door so that you’re not meandering aimlessly around somebody’s front yard. You’ve got that ability to surveil who’s coming. I think that there’s always an opportunity when you’ve got an unusual block like yours, right through to having a very large acreage block, I think what’s good is you’ve got the floor plan set up so that you’ve still got good supervision. If you’re hanging out in that kitchen, living, dining area, you’re going to see exactly who’s arriving at the home. And so what I found is the way that life then works for people who live in homes like this is that when they don’t recognise the car or they see the stranger walking up the driveway, they actually walk out and meet them outside, rather than waiting for them to get to the house.

Amelia Lee
And if it’s a friend or somebody that you’re expecting to come over, then the arrival process is that they actually come to the threshold that you’ve created. And so it’s a different experience. Whereas, when you live on a suburban street where the front of your house is essentially much more about security and a wall to the street, because you’re closer to the street, or you know that the person who parks is literally only going to have a few metres to walk before they’re at the front door. The front door is the threshold of where somebody gets greeted. And so there needs to be that space of this is how I shelter this stranger from viewing right into my home. It’s a different kind of experience of how people arrive at the building.

Amelia Lee
And I love that the designer, I mean that, to me, shows a really interesting collaboration between you, where you’ve had a really clear brief about what you were seeking to achieve, and you’ve also recognised, and the designers’ felt that they’ve had permission to push back on a couple of things, and there’s been a trust where you’ve been willing to entertain, “Okay, yeah, let’s have a look and see what else.” So to me, that speaks to a really great collaboration where they understand what your main goals are. They can see that there might be another alternative. And when you work with designers in that way, oftentimes, as a client, you can’t necessarily visualise what they might come up with. But if you can give them that opportunity to show you, then oftentimes it can deliver quite an exciting outcome. So I love that that’s been your experience of navigating that overall.

Tatiana
Yeah, and it’s been very much a learning for me to actually let him do his job. Like, that’s what he does, and I’m not the building designer. So very early in the process, I was doing a lot of drawings myself, which is fine, because it was helping me to process the ideas as well. But it was just taking too much bandwidth, I guess. It’s like, well, I can draw, but I don’t have to come up with the right drawing myself. That’s what he’s there for. And so, yeah, just a process of actually just relaxing, and letting him come up with different things and bounce off each other a bit that way. And I’m very conscious of that, plenty of times I’ve said to him, “You are the one that knows about this stuff. So, I have my ideas, and I think I am set on many of them, but at the same time, don’t let me drown on my ideas if you don’t think that they’re okay. I do want to be stretched, and I do want to be hearing all the things, because I know that I haven’t considered everything. This is not what I do for a living. So I know that you would have more things to bring forth and help me to consider that I probably wouldn’t have come up with myself.”

Tatiana
So, yeah, it’s been awesome.

Amelia Lee
I love it. I love it. So with that budget conversation, so you mentioned that that it’s actually been helpful having that constraint very early on of the builder saying, “Look, this is the kind of square metreage amount that you can look at building, that’s what we know we could potentially deliver for the budget that you have.” You’ve also got some potential flex there when you do go to finance, and we can have a bit more of a chat about what your next steps with that might be, so that you can start making some decisions about that. I think it’s really interesting that observation that having the tight budget has actually been helpful. I know that lots of people find constraints frustrating, but constraints can actually be incredible sources of creativity, and they can also be really great eliminators of options. So that can really help you then make decisions much faster and clearer, and so that can be super helpful.

Amelia Lee
So the builders given you that early process, you’ve met with them to chat about preliminary drawings, how are they going with looking at the design and also with the building form overall? I know you had some questions about the roof form and pricing up different options with the roof form. Do you want to chat about that and how you’re navigating some of those budget decisions now that you feel like the concept plan is starting to be where it needs to be?

Tatiana
Yeah, it is very early on still. So, in our conversation with the builder, which was still very general, we haven’t really, I guess, delved into the nitty gritty of it. But we did, I guess, agree that next step is, once we get some preliminary plans, he can go on and quote. And so then, I asked the question, “Is it possible that you give me like, this is your kitchen budget, this is your bathrooms budget, this is your laundry budget, so that I know I cannot spend any more than this or that on these things? And probably we won’t be looking at spending more than X amount of money on your roofs.” So the conversation with the roofs were mostly about, do we build the roof up until a certain point where the wall meets the alfresco area, and we change the roof in that spot? My concerns, or the trigger for that consideration, was being able to control light coming into the house because that’s the eastern side of the house. So being able to shut light coming in in summer and allow it in in winter.

Tatiana
But the problem with that is that some of the solutions we’re looking at, one of them, the one that I was probably more keen on, probably won’t allow for fans to be installed, which we cannot go without fans where we live, for an alfresco area. And then the other one, which is actually an option you have mentioned, I don’t know somewhere in the thousands of resources that you share, there’s the polycarbonate roof with…

Amelia Lee
With battens underneath, yeah?

Tatiana
Yes. But we just both thought, “It looks awesome, but it’s just going to be so hot for us.”

Amelia Lee
For your climate, yeah, for sure.

Tatiana
So we’re not going with that. So, if we manage to find – it’s like a pergola-type roofing that I was looking at – and if we manage to find something that allows for fan installation, we might consider it. But other than that, I think we’re just looking at just extending the whole roof all the way out. And he said, to be honest, he wasn’t worried about light coming in. He thinks that the space is well-lit. And maybe if we reduce some on the northeast side of the house and maybe to the western side or something, but he wasn’t worried about light coming in, which was reassuring. But yeah, it is still very early on in that conversation.

Amelia Lee
Yeah. If we just have a bit of a talk about some of the decision-making about that. Is the building designer documenting, like, are they doing this concept design in a 3D tool like SketchUp or Revit or ArchiCAD or anything like that? Or has everything been two-dimensional for you?

Tatiana
Most of it has been two-dimensional. Whenever I have specifically asked for a 3D or for a specific area, I have got that. But it hasn’t been many times. I think I’ve only asked for that like twice or three times, for just specific areas that I was not really seeing the flow of things, for the kitchen and the laundry, I think it was. But in a general sense, we’re working on 2D.

Amelia Lee
Okay. So, I mean, a lot of building designers and architects, even though they’re drawing and presenting 2D information, if they’re using a 3D tool, they’ll be thinking about the three dimensionality of the space and the form whilst they’re designing it. Because it’s very difficult just to slap a roof on a 2D floor plan, if you haven’t thought about it, particularly if it’s a hip and gable roof. So hip and gable roofs are really driven by the geometry of the floor plan. So, my hope is that the building designer has been doing that already. And so, there’s a couple of things that you could do to experiment and understand this. So one is, like you’re saying, making the decision about whether you roof the outdoor area as part of the main roof of the house, or whether you handle it with a roofed pergola of some sort, and it be a separate structure. So I think that would be a valuable conversation to get the builder and the building designer and yourself around a table to nut out, and the builder to really be chatting with the building designer about, “Okay, if we went with it, just being roofed as part of the house, and we used one roof to cover the alfresco area as well, what’s that going to mean for our structure? What’s that going to mean for cost? Is that going to work overall?”

Amelia Lee
Do you know what ceiling heights you’re going to be doing internally? Have you had that discussion?

Tatiana
I think we were looking at 2400.

Amelia Lee
Okay. So yeah, at 2400, it is tricky to include fans. It’s doable, but they do get quite low. If the budget can afford it, going to 2550 can be just a little bit more height. You can still do all of your glazing at 2100 high, but that 2550 is the next standard plaster board height. And your internal linings will come in 1200 and 1350 wide. So you can get two sheets of plaster board on a 2550 high ceiling. And it just gives you a little bit more space and volume to be able to get ceiling fans in a little bit more easily, so that you don’t have to watch yourself when you take a jumper off and those kinds of things inside the house. Or worry about boys jumping on beds and clocking themselves in the ceiling fan. So that might be worth having the conversation about, “Okay, let’s have a chat about what’s that going to do to the budget.” You will find at 2550 too, it will do a lot to assist with the sense of spaciousness through what’s going to be quite long pavilion-style forms. So just getting that little bit of extra height will help it feel not quite so horizontal. So, I think that would definitely be worth having a chat about.

Amelia Lee
The most economical way to build a roof, in terms of the roof on the house itself, is going to be a truss roof. So, if it’s a hip and gable roof, then it’s a straight, triangular roof with a flat bottom cord on the truss that then the ceiling gets fixed to. Same thing if it’s a skillion roof, then the truss will be more of a triangle, but it’ll still have a flat bottom with a flat ceiling. Every time I’ve done the exercise on a project, and I’ve seen others do the exercise on a project, and we’ve chatted about this inside HOME Method, is a hip and gable roof tends to be more economical than a skillion roof because you have similar materials in the roof itself, the structure of the roof itself, but a skillion roof will, of course, mean that one wall finishes to the underside of the low part of the roof, and one wall finishes to the high side of the roof. And you also then have a high side of the roof that you have to reach and finish, which can sometimes then bring in extra requirements for scaffolding and those kinds of things to work off.

Amelia Lee
Whereas a hip and gable roof, or just a hip roof, will be the same height walls on both sides. If it’s a gable roof, it’ll have the triangular, A-shape on the end walls, where you’ll get that extra bit of cladding above. But if you do a gable, then you’ll just have the same wall height the whole way around. So, it’s definitely seen as more economical. One of the things that you could consider for the pergola itself is you can build very simple pergola structures, just with posts and beams. And then you could look at a self-supporting roofing structure, like a Bondor SolarSpan, which is that it’s an insulated panel where it’s got Colorbond flat white, powdercoated metal on the underside of it, and then it’s got a roofing profile on the top of it. So you can do it at a low pitch, and you could have a trim deck-type profile on the top so it can still sit at two degrees, or something like that, in terms of its pitch.

Amelia Lee
And because it’s insulated, it can do a really good job of then providing you with some insulation and shade to those outdoor areas. They come in panels. And so where the panels join, there’s a tongue and groove section with a plastic strip on them where they join. You can run cabling through there. So the layout can work, that you can then run any power for a ceiling fan at the joins, and be able to fix the ceiling fan in those locations. And then you can look at, rather than putting lighting on the soffit or the ceiling of the pergola itself, you can look at attaching wall lights to the house and just uplighting the underside of the roof. And one of the things that I find is super effective with those kinds of pergola structures is, A) they’re very easy and quick to put up. You’ll find, whenever a builder does an exercise on it, I find they say, “Well, the Bondor is more expensive than us just doing roofing material. But once you add insulation and ceiling lining, then the Bondor generally comes out on par price-wise, and it goes up very, very quickly.”

Amelia Lee
So, it comes in varying thicknesses. It only needs to be supported at either end. So, it can generally run from the house out to a beam that runs along the outside edge of your deck or your alfresco area. And it can span that quite easily with the different thicknesses that it has. And so something like that, you could then do a very low pitch, and then you could get the building designer, just to confirm, if they’re doing it in 3D, they can model it up for you, and then geolocate it so that they can then show you what’s the sun doing on the summer solstice, on the winter solstice, and particularly seeing on that eastern side. The main thing you’ll find on the eastern side is the sun’s going to be more horizontal. So you might find that you just need to add a vertical blind of some sort. And that might not be something that you necessarily do straight off the bat, but you just know that down the track you want to add that, and you make sure that you’ve got a piece of structure you’re going to be able to fix that vertical blind to, to be able to drop that down and provide some extra shade. Or it could be that you can add some landscaping beyond the house, to be able to provide you with some of that shade as well.

Amelia Lee
But I think that trying to get the builder and the building designer around the table to explore those different options would be helpful for you to understand. Particularly with the geometry of the L, if you do a gable roof, the simplest geometry with an L is that the two sides of the L are the same width, because then the ridge line of the gable can run continuously. If one of the sides of the L is fatter than the other, then that ridge line of the gable’s not going to meet. So you just have to look at what happens in the corner, the junction of the L, as to how one gable roof is going to meet the other.

Amelia Lee
And so the building designer can look through with the builder. “Okay, we’ll have one main gable roof over, say, the kitchen, living and dining,” and then the builder might go, “Okay, well, we’ll make the kitchen, living, dining pavilion a 2550 ceiling, and we can mount the trusses on 2550 high walls. And we’re going to have to run that gable roof the whole way through, so if the bedrooms and bathroom pavilion is narrower than the living, then that means that that hip and gable roof will have a different ridge line. You could actually drop those ceilings in the bedrooms and the bathrooms down to 2400, and so the roof structure of it is at a slightly different position than the roof structure of the kitchen, living, dining pavilion. And that’s how you could potentially get them joining at the junction. And bedrooms and bathrooms can very happily accommodate 2400 high ceilings, but then you could be spending the money on getting the 2550 high ceilings in the kitchen, living, dining area. So, I think, getting the building designer and the builder and yourself around the table to start massaging your concept design.

Amelia Lee
If it’s almost there, and you’re not going to be making any holistic changes, you’re just massaging wall positions potentially, looking at room sizes, whether you can get a little bit of space here or adjust there. If you’re happy with the L-form, and you’re roughly happy with the width and the shape and the size of things, then you’re at the point where discussing the roof would be a really valuable conversation, because it’s going to impact the aesthetic appearance of the home for you. It’s going to have a big impact on the cost and understanding how to do that super simply, whilst also there might be some opportunity for you to, if you are doing a hip and gable roof, you might find that it still then feeds back into you, “Look, if we massage the floor plan a little bit here, that could make the roof simpler to construct.” So, you’re not so wedded to the floor plan at the moment that there’s not a bit of scope for you to do that as well. Does that all make sense?

Tatiana
Yes, it does. It’s a lot.

Amelia Lee
Luckily, we’re recording this.

Amelia Lee
But yeah, it’s the funniest thing. Hip and gable roofs, we see them everywhere. And you and I have had a conversation about, if you look at how volume builders or project home builders build their homes, if you want to do things on a budget, look at the forms of those homes. Because that’s what most of our industry is geared up to do. But what is, unfortunately, the case is that not a lot of building designers, or architects even, necessarily understand how much the plan drives the geometry of the hip and gable roof form. And computer modelling tools allow you basically just to draw an outline and then go space bar, click, and dump the geometry on the roof without thinking about it.

Amelia Lee
And I remember being mentored by a particular senior designer who literally showed me, “Look, no, you have to do it like this. And if you want this to be clean, then you’re going to have to massage that width.” And it’s amazing, when you think about it, from the floor plan form, how much simpler and cleaner the roof structure can be, and therefore then, how much more economical it can be to build. And it’s one of these things, like, you guys get torrential rains. You want to make sure that that roof is going to shed water easily. You don’t want to have lots of junctions and fiddly flashing and valleys and those kinds of things. You want that roof form to be able to be super protective, super simple, so that it can manage those downpours and get water away from the roof as quickly as possible and into your rainwater collection and those kinds of things.

Amelia Lee
So yeah, I think it’s at a good point to have those conversations.

Tatiana
Excellent. Thank you.

RESOURCES

Tatiana’s previous episodes on the podcast:

• Episode 350 ‘New Home Build with Affordability and Family in Mind, with Tatiana’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-new-home-build-affordability/ 
• Episode 351 ‘Trusting a First Time Builder with your New Home Build, with Tatiana’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-trusting-first-time-builder-new-home-build/ 

Episode 270 ‘Your Roof Design: 5 Key Points to Know’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-your-roof-design-5-points/ 

Episode 211 ‘Roof Design for your Outdoor Room or Alfresco’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-roof-design-outdoor-room/ 

Access the support and guidance you need (like Tatiana did) to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my flagship online program, HOME METHOD >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/

Learn more about how to interview and select the right builder with the Choose Your Builder mini-course >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/choose-your-builder
 
My free ’44 Ways’ E-Book will simplify sustainability for you, and help you create a healthy, low tox and sustainable home – whatever your dreams, your location or your budget. Access your copy here >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/ways