Undercover Architect

Helping homeowners get it right when designing, building or renovating their family home.

Building a new home on a challenging site, with Janet

What options do you have when building a new home on a challenging site?

Janet and her partner share their experience and the steps they took.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 320, and in it, I continue my conversation with Janet, a HOME Method member who is sharing with us the journey that she and her partner have been on to build a new home for themselves and their three children.

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 of my conversation with Janet, I’d encourage you to check that out first by heading back to Episode 319. You can find the episode and a full downloadable transcript at www.undercoverarchitect.com/319.

In this episode, you’ll hear how Janet, her partner Paul, their building designer, Aaron from Greencoast Design and their builder, Dwain from Hezzelic Homes, dived into their journey together, and how their design came to fruition through this process. 

It’s a really different design for a new home, so it’ll be great for you to hear how that came about, and then developed over the project’s progress. As a clue, Janet calls it ‘the home with a hole’!

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

As a reminder from the last episode, Janet and Paul purchased their block in August of 2021, and after struggling to squeeze a fairly conventional house design onto the block, they decided they needed a custom design process.

In the last episode, we finished up with Janet sharing that they’d selected a building designer to work with, who is Aaron from Greencoast Designs that I’ve interviewed a couple of times on the podcast. Aaron told them he could get started around Easter 2022. So Janet and Paul worked to get their brief super clear, mapping out what their ideal home really needed in order to support them and their family now and into the future.

Here’s Part 2 of our conversation …

This is the transcript of my conversation with Janet about designing a new home with a difference.

Amelia Lee
Well, let’s jump into the design because non conventionally sized and arranged sight that you tried to massage a floor plan on and it hadn’t worked, starting with a building designer who starts from first principles of, “Okay, let’s figure out what your goals are, how you want to live, how you want this home to actually support your lifestyle, what are we going to do?” and also is somebody who’s focused on passive solar design and making sure that the home is energy efficient as well.  

So you’ve put together this incredible brief, you filled out Green Coast Design’s form as well, what was the most important thing for you to get right in the design? And did this change at all, as you’re navigating the process? And did you feel, like you said that you knew how you wanted rooms to be formed but you couldn’t picture a house, and you’ve ended up with a design form that is very different…  

How did that process work in, I suppose, those early design concepts and you entertaining what Aaron potentially was presenting back to you, and working through those initial weeks and months of your design process?

Janet
Yeah, so I think the most important thing for us was, if we’re going down this road of custom build, I don’t want a boring box. I want a house that works for us, it has a fabulous feel. It had to be welcoming, it had to make everybody who walked into it feel so good and so welcomed. Because that’s our life, we have people coming in and out of our life all the time. So yeah, I guess I really wanted it to be interesting, because if we’re going to the effort of doing it, we might as well do it well. I wanted it to be welcoming, I wanted it to have a really bright, airy feel.  

Lots of light was really important to Paul. And a sense of togetherness, as a family, without being in each other’s pockets was also really important. With the initial designs we were looking at and a lot of the display homes that you’ll walk through, most of them are two storey because the blocks are teeny. And upstairs, there’s often another living area and all the bedrooms, or just the kids’ bedrooms and another living area, and parents will be somewhere else. We thought we don’t really want that, we don’t want another living area way, way away from us. We want to be able to be connected even when we are in our own spaces. We want a good visual connection with each other, good audio auditory. I want to be able to yell at the kids.

Amelia Lee
Not sound like a screaming banshee to the neighbours, yeah.

Janet
Exactly. I mean, we’re loud so, yeah, I wanted them to actually be able to hear me and I didn’t want to have to have an intercom for my own house. They were the important things, and a real good connection to the outside as well. Because after living back in under bush land for almost 19 years, I need green, I need trees. We moved away from that, and I’d start to get a little bit antsy and a bit anxious or a bit on edge and bold and a bit snappy with everybody, like, “Do you need some trees, honey?” “Yes, I need trees. Let’s go, I need trees now.” And it’s just so calming, resets me, I’m all good to go, “Sorry, everybody. Mom wasn’t doing so well. Mom’s better now. We can move on.” So we definitely need a good outdoor connection, lots of trees, lots of gardens. I love my plants, love my indoor, love growing things so we’ve had to have that too. 

In the initial design, talking to volume builders, do we just incorporate the angle of the block here and they went, “Anything other than 90 degrees is going to be expensive. So you’re better off just not.” Well, I guess you got to just embrace what you’ve got. If you’ve got a weird shaped block with weird angles, and that’s what you got to use, that’s what you got to use. So we put it in the brief, we like weird angles. We like surprising views of outside, we like a courtyard or mixed materials. We want something that’s really welcoming, that opens up and that doesn’t have a long, long stupid hallway that is dark and narrow, and then all of a sudden Tada now you’re in the home. Something you don’t have to walk through the entire home to finally get to the home. 

Yeah, so first design reading, he’d had the brief and then he said, “Normally, I’ve got a couple of different designs.” He’s so fun to watch, design professionals are so fun to watch. Out comes the yellow tracing. So I was initially thinking, we could have a C-shape right at the back. And that would lead in the light here, access here, have all your outdoor connections at the front, and be flooded with northern light. But you’re in Logan City Council, and I’m not so sure about building over sewer in Logan City Council. Brisbane, not a problem. And then he proceeds to draw how he would do the slab, “This is how I’d make the slab for you and it’d look like this. And it’s a bridge-y thing, and it’s no big deal. And they’re all happy with that. But Logan, not so sure, we’d have to test that. So let’s put that onto the side.”  

“That’s what I was thinking. And then I thought maybe we could go a H-shaped house and have two wings and connecting here, and then you could have light coming in here. And you could have outdoor living at the back. But again, we run into the problem of that sewer line going through the back.” So he puts that to the side.  

“So this is what I came up with”. He took this fully formed concept, completely fully formed – It’s an O shape, but with really funky weird angles. I had no words. I was like, “Oh!” Paul just went, “Janet’s going to love that. That’s amazing.” So it’s got a central courtyard, it’s wider on one end than the other. It splays out with these angles of 77 degrees, and 103. And he repeats the 77 and 103 throughout the house, but not in weird places, in really, really clever places that it doesn’t matter, like the garage and in the bathroom, and in the laundry, and the service areas, and in the powder room area. That’s where those funky angles are. But the living areas and the bedrooms, they’re all normal.

IMAGE: 3D view of home design from GreenCoast Building Design documentation

Amelia Lee
Well, I mean, just rectangles and squares, yeah.

Janet
Pretty much. I mean, there is a weird funky angle on the other side of the garage where the multipurpose room is, but the rest of it has 90 degree angles. So it’s just one of the four corners is weird, but you wouldn’t use it anyway.

Amelia Lee
And it must have been such a departure from what you had previously experienced. Again, just to take you back to the way that you were describing what you wanted, had you gone and looked at those floor plans and those displays with that level of understanding about your life. Like, what had been the process of you eliciting that from yourself to then think about how you’re going to communicate that with Aaron, but then Aaron to come up with, “Okay, I can see that this is what they need as a family. And then I’m going to look at how we apply that to the site to streamline approvals, to get the outcome for orientation, and for this to work for their budget.”  

So, obviously, lots of jigsaw pieces all coming together, but it’s initiated by you figuring out what you want. So what, in terms of you thinking about your life in that way, was it just largely the HOME Method questionnaire tools and the brief builder? How did you actually draw that out of yourself to really be intentional and think about that? And I love it when you said, “Mom’s getting cranky because she needs a tree.” It’s that thing, knowing that you want the kids to be able to hear you when you’re needing them, wanting those diagonal surprising views through. Most people don’t get that level of thinking about their home. So how did you go about making sure that you thought about it at that level?

Janet
I think the thing was that we knew what we wanted even as we were walking through the display homes, and I could look at a plan and go, “Yeah, that could work or no.” Because remember, we’re not just looking at display homes, prior to that we were looking at buying a house. So I had already spent a lot of time on, “Will this sort of thing work for us, will this not?” Paul and I talked about this the other night, we decided that we had a feeling about what would work and what wouldn’t, but we couldn’t necessarily verbalise it and why. 

Doing the HOME Method course, listening to all the podcasts sharpened that so well so that I could tell you in an instant what works and what doesn’t for our family, for the site, for all of that kind of thing. Just knowing, “Oh this works because actually wow, we’ve got all this northern light coming into the back of the house but it’s coming through a courtyard. And then the bedrooms all get northern light as well.” And that’s why I could pull up any other design and go, “It doesn’t work because of this, this, this. The orientation’s wrong, this room is buried, there’s too much space in the bedrooms, this is oversized, this is undersized. 

IMAGE: Empty site ready for its home [SOURCE]

I don’t know, I guess I spent a lot of time on these things. So I’m just pulling out my brief, because I think the best part is, there was one page that says, “Number one, can’t be a boring box.” Design notes? Yeah, yeah, this one. Because I looked through this last night and Paul and I were so blown away because the whole everything, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Yeah, we like interesting design, design that surprises are delights… maybe has different angles, or a courtyard or glimpses of garden through large windows in unexpected places. It must be at the same time extremely practical, not ostentatious and not expensive. Actually, that was a really important thing for me. I don’t like walking into a house and going, “Oooh, these people have got lots of money.” I did not want people to do that for us. I want them to walk into it and go, “Wow, what a lovely home.” 

It’s not about show, it’s not about splashing cash, it’s just about building something worthwhile that will suit our family. And so that was really important, that it’s not ostentatious, that it’s not showy, that it’s not using the best of the bling that yeah, that was super duper important to us. And I never wanted to be prescriptive.  

Having tried on the designer hat and going no, I’ll just stick to being an English teacher, thanks. I never wanted to be prescriptive and tell the designer what to do. So that was one of the more exciting things about the process, because we had these design notes of it has to have good flow from space to another, it has to be sensitive to the climate, I have written notes in here about upstairs, downstairs, but I’m not sold on double storey, single storey, we’re open, we’re able to be guided. So give us some ideas, show us what you can do. And that, I think, is that really sweet spot of taking the best of the designer, and then taking the best of the family, and where that meets, oh man, it’s super exciting. You know, you do it all the time.

Amelia Lee
Well, that’s the thing, the whole point of having a professional designer or architect involved is so that they actually exceed your expectations on what you thought was even possible. And they think about the things that you just can’t even possibly think about because you haven’t had lived experience of it, or you didn’t even know it was possible for the site, or that buildings could be built in that way.  

So I think we have an expectation that every four bedroom house is going to look the same. And yet, your house is a very strong demonstration of actually no, this is so driven by the site, and what the site needed, and at the same time, is going to pragmatically work. And we’ll put a floor plan in the show notes so that people can see. 

But this is the thing that’s always tricky, once you do start getting angled blocks, and when it doesn’t go well is when those angles drive poor performance in the functionality of the spaces because somebody’s been too much of a slave to what the site shape needed, or they’ve been trying to follow the site’s boundaries too closely. Whereas I think the designer does a really good job of locating the spaces that can accommodate those quirks in them and not diminish the functionality, because storage can be built into those spaces, or it works in terms of things that it can be used for. And then the spaces that you’re using on a daily basis, or you’re having to fit out joinery into and trying to keep the cost down of that, and all those kinds of things, you’re doing that in a rational way. So I think it’s really, really exciting. 

And I put all credit to you, because what I see time and time again, for HOME Method members is when you’ve done this work on figuring out what you want, getting really clear on that, and then you also educate yourself so you know how to ask the right questions and have those conversations even though sometimes they feel awkward because there’s a lot more questions than people traditionally ask, you build a sense of trust in your ability to make good decisions. And then that gets validated when somebody’s feeding back to you, “Yeah, okay, this is how we can work.” And you’re hearing, yeah, they’re saying to me the things that I know about how this process is supposed to go.  

So that then supports you going, “Okay, I’m right to keep trusting in my decisions. I’ve made a good choice here.” So that then helps enhance the trust that you have between you and the professionals that you’re working with, which then means you can lean in to relinquishing a bit of the control or a lot of the control in what you’re then going to get on the page in terms of what they produce. 

And it becomes this beautiful collegiate collaboration, where you’re bringing what you need to because it’s your project and you’re driving the vision and you’ve got this fantastic future home that you’re dreaming of. They can bring their expertise and realise it in what it looks like in built form. It’s this lovely magic that can happen, when you were talking to me about those original words in your brief two years ago, I was getting goosebumps about how that’s played out in this home. And it’s because you did the work upfront, and then you stayed the course. You stayed the course, you built that trust in your ability to make decisions, you educated yourself, and that then enabled you to build trust in the process so that you could have this really collaborative relationship. 

So I think it’s totally exciting to see how it’s all playing out for you. So can we talk a bit about the budget, because you had that data spreadsheet that you kind of figured out, okay, we can afford more… How has the budget checks played through? Because I know Aaron, of course, is a designer, he’s somebody that does collect a lot of data about finished projects.  

So he is one of those designers who can demonstrate, “Okay, we’ve finished a project like this just recently. We’ve adjusted this for CPI or construction cost increases, we know that the square metre rate of a project like yours is going to be roughly this. We can work with a level of competence on the design to this point.” I would hazard a guess to say he was having conversations about your project with builders, even though they weren’t on your project, just to sanity check the decisions he was making, because he’s got that network that he’s working with.  

So did get the builder to look at it after that initial O-Shaped concept? How did then that start rolling out in terms of that budget check along the way, and through the design and making some of those decisions that were potentially going to impact how much this whole thing cost?

Janet
I quite like the way that Aaron works in this space. Let’s see, how would you describe it… Kind of like a kindly father. Someone who knows slightly better, but doesn’t want to crush you. 

Let me educate you in such a way that this is not going to crush you. So in our brief, we’ve put some pictures. He said, “Give me some inspo pictures of things that just really float your boat, things that just make you go Wow.” Pretty much all of them had clerestory windows or skylights, and a high soaring cathedral ceiling, and he went, “This is beautiful, I see where you’re going with that. It’s not in your projects. So let’s just take that back a bit.” That was Paul, he was really keen to have those clerestory windows and look out to the sky, or look out to the sky in the kitchen and in the shower and in the living areas. But we got none of those.  

But what I loved is that he went, “I know where you’re going with this. So let’s push into that, let’s get that feeling, even if we can’t have that reality.” So I loved that he was very upfront all the way. And also having been educated by you, we knew that a design professional is not a costing professional, and they come in later down the track, or as you go. But yeah, we did really appreciate that he said, “I’m going to keep checking with this. But from what I know, this is what we’re aiming for. Costs are moving, but they’re slowing down, so let’s just keep on keeping on. Let’s see how we go.” So yeah, as we went, we ended up getting a reasonable concept that we’re all happy with shifting things in. I wanted an extra bathroom for the fifth bedroom for future-proofing adult children, ageing parents, homestay students or whatever… I was talked out of it, “You can’t afford that. It’s too small.” But what if we do it this way?  

And this is the thing that Paul appreciated a lot about Aaron and the way he designed… He’d go, “I see what you mean. Yeah, I know, I tried that too. But it didn’t matter which way I massaged it and tried it, and sketched and sketched and sketched, I could never quite get it to fit or work.” And Paul’s like, “Good enough for me.” I was always, “Are you sure?”

Amelia Lee
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? The designer’s making so many decisions when they’re drawing those lines on a page, so you want to work with a designer who’s letting you in on their process and who’s explaining to you. They’re not just handing this design over and going, “Okay, this is it, and you like it or you lump it. What do you want to squash, change, amend or mash together from another option?”  

It is that collaborative thing of the design professional demonstrating to you that they’re thinking ahead of you or that they’re anticipating what you might be asking for and they’ve given it a shot, and even can potentially sketch in front of you, “Look, this is the compromise.” Because I think too, it’s really hard as a homeowner, you can’t know until you see it drawn. You’ll be asking for all these things, and you’ll think one thing is a priority. But then until you see what you’re having to compromise to get that thing, all of a sudden you realise, actually, no, it’s not that important to us, we’d rather that this works like this. And unfortunately, as a homeowner, you can’t necessarily see that until it’s drawn in front of you, or explained to you in a way that has meaning and makes sense to you.  

So it is really important that you have that open level of communication with the designer, that you can really drive that kind of relationship together. I mean, you and Paul, also working differently in the way that you approach things for your designer to be able to juggle that as well, in the process of creating an outcome for you is super important too.

Janet
Yeah, Paul was a very easy client.

Amelia Lee
He probably wanted it built 12 months ago.

Janet
He’s learned patience, my poor husband. But then we’ve been married 23 years so he learned a while ago.

Amelia Lee
Meanwhile, you’re going, “No, I need to make sure that this is right. I’m not going through what I went through last time. It’s going to take a little bit longer as a result, I’m going to make sure that we do this and know what we need right from the outset. And that it’s going to suit us not just in the next three years, but it’s going to suit us in 10, 15 years on.”

Janet
Yeah, and I don’t think Aaron minded, because he’s a bit of a different thinker too. He knows that there’s more than one way to solve a problem, and he knew that I knew that. But some of the most exciting times were we’d go, “Well, what about…” and then out comes the ruler, he goes, “Okay, well, what if I shift that wall maybe even 20 mil, and then we do this and try that? Or otherwise, we could flip that but this is your compromise. This is exactly what you’re saying, this is your trade off.  

I can push this one out, but we can’t go any further than that because of your easement. Or we can ask for relaxation, and how about we shift the whole house forward, as close to that front boundary as we can and as close to that side boundary as we can, do you want to go further?” I’m like, “No, I actually want to have somewhere to hang my clothes, move it back over.” Just lines on a page, man, they’re so good.

Amelia Lee
Change is cheap.

Janet
Absolutely. So yeah, we ended up with the concept we liked, he was working on another job with Dwain from Hezzelic Homes, and looked at it, went, “Mate, I want to build that.” Went through the plan, because we had a fairly detailed concept by this stage, because we had to get a certification early so that we could avoid the NCC potential changes.

Amelia Lee
So that was October, when were you trying to get that deadline then?

Janet
Yeah, so that was September 22. Yeah, and not only just pushing out, originally, he said April, and then April turned into May, which turned into June. So we didn’t actually have our first design meeting with him until June 22. Friends and family, “So how’s the house?” “We’re just waiting on the designer.”

Amelia Lee
“Still waiting on this designer.”

Janet
Then finally, “We’ve got a design. Look at our concept, it’s amazing. It’s got a big hall in the middle.”

Amelia Lee
That’s actually pretty quick, and I think that’s also a demonstration of what happens when you get really clear before you start design, and you brief your designer really well so then you’re not faffing about testing what you actually want in a design concept. The design concept is actually then just coming back to you with is it satisfying these things that you’ve explicitly asked for? And how do we align the things you’ve explicitly asked for with what you want to spend on it?  

So that you can then bring those two together. So September 2022, you started with Aaron in June 2022. September 2022, he’s going to Dwain, and he’s having a chat to him with this concept saying, “Okay, that’s great.” In terms of a timeframe, I imagine loads of people who’ve been sitting in the design concept phase for 14 months would think, “Oh, my gosh, that’s incredible.”

Janet
I guess so. It was, the design phase was actually quite quick. We had a resolved concept, and we had construction drawings, certification drawings like November. September, we went to early certification, because we wanted to get things in. And I just liked the way he drove the project.  

He said, “Right, we need to get this absolutely set in stone. Sent to Council, certified, so that when time comes to actually get the final write off on this design, that they go, ‘Oh, this has already gone through. We’ve just got to give the final ticks, plumbing approvals and this and that because we’ve already said that you can build this house.'” Because we didn’t want to be subject to the potential NCC going through.

Amelia Lee
What do you think played into your ability to make decisions so quickly about stuff? Because I imagine he’s showing you things and you’re having to give your opinion… You said before that you now know what works and what doesn’t work, is that what helped you make decisions so quickly? How do you think you were able to be that kind of client that was just able to keep maintaining momentum and make decisions about very big, impactful things as you’re moving through?

Janet
I guess, Aaron sort of put the expectation that, “Look, I’m giving this to you. Off you go, you go work on this. This is your job, you’ve got things to do.” Again, benevolent dad, “Hey, I’ve given you a job to do, off you go.” It was helpful that I only worked part time so I did have some time to work on it. But yeah, there was definitely weekends in there where it was me and the plan and a ruler and a notebook and lots and lots of measuring up, and learning to read plans, and learning to spend a lot of time in the plan, learning to get a feel for what does that space look like in person, measuring it out, measuring it out on the site. Paul’s like, “I’ve picked it out roughly of where it is, so stand here, what do you reckon, that’s where your windows gonna be.”

Amelia Lee
I love this, because these are all things that I teach you to do.

Janet
Yeah, we are very good students, Amelia. 

I’m an obedient person, you tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Yeah, so all of that, lots of time was spent in this. And it was usually about, I think between design meetings was about a month, usually something like that. So that month was, yeah, hard at it. And Paul was really good, because he’d go, “Come on, we’re going to sit down tonight, we’re going to do this, we’re going to work on this.”  

So I think just having spent so much time knowing what we wanted, spending a lot of time in the plan, it wasn’t hard to spend time in because it was a really cool project. And we knew the more time we put into it, the sooner we live or get into this house. We’ve been out of our house 12 months by this stage, and we’re looking at that point, we’re like, “Yeah, we probably have to move again.”

Amelia Lee
It sounds to me though, when you’re talking about the things that you were doing, you were bringing forward a lot of your decision making, and knowing what to do next in terms of things. Which of course is part of the process of learning the step by step inside HOME Method. How did you, from a mindset point of view, really, I suppose, keep at it, keep maintaining that? There’s one thing to say, “Oh no, we’ve got a deadline and we want to be out of this house as soon as possible.” But it’s also very easy and very understandable to let life get in the way.  

How did you keep your mindset in the place where it was like, “Okay, we’re going to dive back in, this is what we know we need to do next, we’ve seen this, we’ve watched this video, we’ve got this checklist. This is what we’re going to do. How did you, from a mindset point of view, keep that up? And also balance that with the stress and just making big decisions?

Janet
Yeah, I guess, he was always on us to just keep it moving. Again, friends and family very helpful. “How’s the house going?” “Good, so this is where we’re at now.” And my husband’s family, bless his parents, they had never seen anything like this. I don’t think they actually thought this thing would get built. I think they thought we were quite mad. This was completely outside their scope. So I guess it was always on us to keep it moving. But there were a lot of times where we’re just waiting for somebody. There were times where we didn’t have to do anything. 

Paul consumed a lot of Local Project, a lot of Grand Designs. I think Aaron told him to stop watching Local Project, because that was something Paul did for fun in the process. It helps if you enjoy the process, definitely. And we have really enjoyed it, we enjoy creating this. But yeah, there were times where we were waiting for the engineer, poor guy fell down some stairs, broke his leg, was out of action for a long time. Times when we’re waiting for Dwain to come back with the costing. And then when it did come back, there was a lot of time then. And then there’s the January shutdown, when no one does anything for pretty much all of January, which actually we’ve got the costing back by that stage and went, “Right, time to take some money out of this. How are we going to eke out 50 to 100 grand?” 

But that was good that we had that time, it was almost like a pause in the project where we could really look at what do we value, where do we want to spend the money? Okay, there’s louvres, there’s 1, 2, 3, 4 banks of louvres, let’s get rid of them. Actually, let’s go and visit Bradnams. We rang out Bradnams and walked through their showroom, and man, it was helpful. It was so helpful to go in and see the different kinds of windows. Hardest thing in that point, we were trying to get price points down, no one, not a single person talks dollars. They will talk percentage and they’ll talk, “Oh, this one’s more expensive than this one.” We were feeling our way in the dark so much.

Amelia Lee
So how did you do it? How did you do it in terms of being during that quiet period and figuring out how you’re going to get 50 to 100k out of the design? What did you do? Because we talk about, as a homeowner, you can call these manufacturers and you can go and see these things. And it’s great to be able to see them in person before you’ve spent 10s of 1000s of dollars putting them in your house. And most of these manufacturers will have showrooms and things like that that you can look through, but a lot of homeowners it doesn’t even occur to them to go and suss these things out. So what did you do to target what you’re going to save cash on?

Janet
We basically went to all the suppliers. I don’t know how the builders work, I don’t know if other builders give a checklist and go, “Right, go and choose. This is your rough budget.” For us, that would have been helpful. But the downfall of that is it wasn’t specced (specified). So then we had to spend time going, “No, delete that. No, delete that. No, delete that.” And then, “okay, louvre windows, what can we swap them out for? Yeah, so swap them out for double hung. And actually, do we really need extra windows in this space at the back of the house? I’ve really got very little wall space and I like art. So yeah, let’s maybe get rid of those ones altogether.”  

So there was visiting all the suppliers, choosing all of our fixtures and fittings as we visited. I think the only thing that I haven’t seen in person is my toilet, which is kind of weird, because nobody had it in stock. But I did actually go out to Decina. Oh man, I sat in a bazillion baths, took so many photos. My poor camera reel is full of building products. Trying to find photos of the children… If someone’s like, “Show me a photo of your family.”

Amelia Lee
“Let me get through these 40 bath photographs first.”

Janet
“I’ll get there. Building, tiles, sorry it’s been three months since I’ve taken a photo of the family.” Yeah, in Decina, the lady was really helpful there. She’s like, “Make sure when you’re looking for a toilet, get one that’s got a five year warranty and make sure it’s got a warranty on the cistern, and this other thing”, and I can’t remember now, I wrote it down at the time, but I don’t need to know it anymore so I’ve forgotten it. Yeah, so just talk to lots of people, really helpful. They give good advice, yeah.

Amelia Lee
Yeah. All of the stuff that we teach inside HOME Method is not being scared to ask all those questions, and to have those conversations, and that this is information you can access and you can know and you can dig into. Because so many homeowners just don’t know that these are things that they can actually suss out for themselves. I want to just talk about any hiccups that really presented themselves to you and how you navigate it.  

You mentioned the windows, and I think that having space for wall hangings and those kinds of things is important too, so it’ll be interesting to see once you’re actually living in the home in that way. But is there anything else that did go a little bit pear shaped or was a little bit unexpected? Or you mentioned right back at the beginning the sewer easement through the property and then that impacting the design, how did you navigate these hiccups? Because a lot of these hiccups can really derail people in their project experience. But obviously, you’ve been able to get to where you’re at now, so what’s been your experience with the hurdles and the hiccups along the way?

Janet
I guess, first of all, learn to accept no as an answer. But also, don’t. There is this really fine tension between no is definitely no, you cannot cross this boundary line. This sewer line, this is it. Nothing goes over this, you don’t even landscape this. You just will batter it, batter your backyard, that’s it. And I kept looking and go, “Where’s my outdoor area?” You can work that out down the track. “But I don’t have any outdoor area, I don’t have anything with a roof on it. What exactly is going into the courtyard? ‘It’s a garden.’ Oh yeah, okay, can I have a deck in there? ‘Talk about it with the landscape designer.’ Okay.” 

It’s so weird, though, that this central major part of the design actually was completely unresolved until about two months ago, or a month ago. But I guess you’ve got to be really okay with a lot of uncertainty and just sitting, just dwelling in that I don’t know, patient to wait for the time for things, not so patient that you’re not proactive. There were times some of the biggest hiccups and biggest problems came because we were just waiting for, “Well hang on, when will we start talking about the kitchen? I know we’ve got a kitchen drawn there, but that’s not the question we’re having, is it?” Yeah, just negotiating assumptions, I guess.

Amelia Lee
And I remember you coming into the HOME Method group, actually, with a kitchen sketch and saying, “Actually, we want to redo this, being able to rework that whilst we could.”

Janet
Yeah, I felt completely disloyal. Because we had a kitchen design meeting that horrible week when we left here, and then went back, designed the kitchen and then moved house. But we did all the cabinetry in one two-hour session. But the kitchen got left to last. So we went through entryway cabinetry, bathroom cabinetry, ensuite cabinetry, my study, which may I just say in the revisions, no entryway cabinetry, no study cabinets. We spent a long time on things that are not actually eventuating, and not very much time on the kitchen, which is the really important bit.  

So if I could have done anything differently, I would have actually asked to have that sooner. I mean, I wasn’t completely passive. I do remember saying, “Hey, when are we going to talk about the kitchen?” “Ah yes, we’ll have the cabinetry, we’ll do that next time or whatever.” But it just happened too late, and there was too little. And, look, on paper, the kitchen that was designed ticked the boxes. It did fit the brief, then I started fiddling and fixing, where can I put that? How can I do that? Which I’m sad that I had to do because I didn’t want to be that person who’s redesigning a professional’s design. But it just didn’t fit us.  

And at that point, we were not having any more design meetings. That’s it, design meetings were finished. So the next meeting was going to be all the changes, all of them all wrapped up into one, summarised, ticked off. This is what we’re building. And sorry, we couldn’t just go back, not unless we wanted to pay another 200 and something dollars an hour to change that. 

That’s the other lovely thing about the HOME Method, and that’s what Paul really likes, it’s the community, it’s the brains trust, it’s the access to an architect all the time. A friend of mine said, “Well, you know, when you’re building and renovating, unless you actually have someone holding your hand the whole way through and telling you what’s coming next, of course it’s going to be a difficult and confusing thing.” I laugh, because that’s what Undercover Architect is. It is someone holding your hand and telling you what’s happening next, it is someone giving you advice about well, this is a good way to go, but maybe try this. This is a good professional, this one’s not. It’s a hilarious thing. 

And your advice, actually going back, helped us to dodge a very, very dodgy professional. We spoke with one builder, great fine conversation. Then Paul went and did his due diligence, and we looked at QBCC, and this guy we spoke to, he wasn’t even the builder. And then we spoke to him later, “So actually, who’s the builder?” “Oh, I am.” “Dude, you’re a real estate agent. And then what about the guy with the licence?” “No, no, he’s just…” Oh, this is sounding worse and worse. “Hang on a second, and how long have you been in business?” “17 years, 20 years. We’ve got stuff from the 1990s.” And then you go looking, nothing. The house that was on socials, that’s their very first house. So thank you for the advice.  

But anyway… So kitchen, gave it to the brains trust, workshopped it with family, friends too, and the advice you gave me. Well, you can see it is the kitchen that we came up with in HOME Method, that’s what we ended up with. And then the other thing was the ensuite and bathroom. So the way that the shower and toilet, I wanted its own room for the toilet and the ensuite, because that’s just marital harmony. You know, just put a door on it, people. The way it had been designed, it was almost like they were side by side alleyway sort of affair. 1800mm long, 900/1,000 wide. 

And this is where our marriage got interesting. We learned to constructively disagree. We learned to allow each other to have an opinion that was not the same as our own. We learned to realise that having a different opinion is not a personal attack. It’s just a different opinion. But that really took some very strong discussions to work through. I mean, I wouldn’t say we fought, but we really discussed it. We walked away a few times, we’d come back to it. Paul has had so much trust in our designer, which is so valuable, but like you say, you can’t have trust to the point where you end up with spaces that don’t work. Because you’re the one that has to live in it and not them. And just because we disagree with the designer, it’s not personal either. It’s a professional decision. It’s a you’re not going to live in this, I have to live in this.  

So I took Paul into our current toilet, which was the same dimensions as the shower. I’m like, “How do you feel standing in here?” He’s like, “Fine.” “Well, I don’t want a shower that looks like this. We’re going to change this.” So in the end, I think, somewhere in the HOME Method suggests, why don’t you swap the spaces? Or I think I just went ahead and swapped the spaces. And then after I did it, I asked for opinions. And then after I’d asked for opinions, then I showed Paul.

Amelia Lee
I remember that, I remember that conversation happening in there. So Janet, thank you so much for your time. This has been such a cool conversation, super grateful for you taking the time and being willing to share in this way.

Janet
My pleasure.

And that’s it for Part 2 and my conversation with Janet.

I’ve been really loving these conversations with HOME Method members, and there’s loads more coming your way, so I hope you’re loving them too!

Janet will be back on the podcast in the future to talk about the construction process of their new home, and her insights and learnings from that. 

In these conversations, I’m finding it really interesting to see which of the resources inside HOME Method our members use, how they use them, or what they don’t use as well.

For example, we have a full selections schedule for exterior and interior products that can be used as a template to put all of your selections on for your project. The templates are based on the ones I’ve used as an architect in my own projects over decades of work. 

There’s also a ‘shopping list’ of all the items you’ll need to choose, so you can start working on your selections super early in your project if you want to. And we now have added a Materials Directory to HOME Method which contains lists of the products, fixtures, finishes, materials and items that HOME Method members have asked about or discussed for their projects.

Like Janet pointed out, not all builders or designers will provide you with a selection list of what they recommend, or you may not want to include it in your scope of services. So that can mean you’re doing what Janet and Paul were doing in terms of spending a lot of time visiting manufacturers and assessing products. 

Some love doing this – sussing these things out for themselves. Others like to outsource it fully to their design or build team. And others pick a hybrid approach.

Just know – every item your home is built from will need to be chosen. Either by you, or a member of your team. And chosen from scratch, or chosen from a predetermined set of selections. 

So, get ready to make those decisions, discuss them with your team, and allow the time and learning you need to research and choose confidently. 

Because getting a call from site and saying “hey, we need you to choose ‘x’ by tomorrow” only makes for a stressful project, and potential regret as you select something in a hurry.

RESOURCES

Check out these podcast episodes

Janet’s Project Instagram >>> ‘buildscarlettshomewithahole’ https://www.instagram.com/buildscarlettshomewithahole?igsh=MXRmYXU4M2x3Nnd0NQ==

Access the support and guidance you need (like Janet is) 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 

Access my free online workshop “Your Project Plan” >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/projectplan

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