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So: you’re looking at the plans for your new home and landscape, You can't wait to plant the vegetables beside the compose bins and water tanks. Or buy the furniture, pillows and throw rugs. You have thought through each activity and entertainment your family enjoys: A room for theater, play station, quiet reading, book keeping for the business, Lego, dolls house, etc. Entertaining: when the tennis club come to your place, they are wonderful friends who relax and hang around the family room happily for hours. Family dinners are quite crowded and easier if more formal so dining room is required. Lots of folks pop in through the week and of course the Scrabble and bridge nights. Life is busy and wonderful. Looking at the house plan allows separate area for each activity and more not listed above. This house is enormous: you will issue a map on entry! The mortgage figures are enormous too: not comfortable do-able even on two good full time incomes. Look again at the block size, plan and additions. How happy are you at mowing lawns, weeding long garden beds? How many cars do you really need to provide for? Look at reducing the house footprint: not smaller rooms but try eliminating passages, halls, traffic and large circulation spaces. How much pantry space do you really need? If you need an extraordinary length of linen cupboards: have you collected too much “stuff”? Think through the houses where you have lived in the past, consider what was in each area of the house, how often items are in use, how much you really need now. Consider too the appliances: how different is one oven to the other several hundred dollars cheaper. In ten years time will the $1,900 bath still feel like a “must have...” when the $400 will be just as relaxing? Once a new home is completed there are always hundreds of little things to be spending on too: towel rails, toilet roll holders, rubbish bins, clothes line, furniture (Oh yes that can be a big one!), garden setting, garden tools, blinds or curtains, fences, gates, letter box, house numbers! The list can go on and on..... Erring on the side of caution, economy and good sense makes for a wonderful new home or renovation. Every detail of the site, the plan, the inclusions, fittings and fixtures can be beautiful, practical and avert extravagance. Stress, worry and anxiety to meet mortgage and bills payments is not conducive to rest or contentment. Preference should be given to providing maximum time with family, friends ensuring your happy relaxed life. Rather than over spending, a calculated, reasonable and cautious, financial investment will ensure your new home provides you protection from the weather and time to fully enjoy your lifestyle.
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Outdoor areas is shrinking as sites become smaller and closer. It becomes vital that we use every inch or our expensive land and design our gardens as efficiently as possible to assist in the comfort, privacy and appeal of our homes. This should be thought through at plan stage. We will know on site where the sun will be hot or low and in what seasons so we can benefit from pre-planning our gardens if not pre-planting as the construction of the house moves on. An ideal block has a long side to the north with the plan showing the living areas along this side. Ideally we have the main out door fresh air “rooms” this side too. Establishing deciduous trees along this boundary will shade the living and out door rooms in summer when the trees are covered in leaves. In winter when the canopy is twigs the lower sun can easily stretch into the home for FREE heating! “What to do with an avalanche of autumn leaves?” I hear you say. “Easy!” I say “Compost!”. Kitchen scraps and oak leaves are fabulous for composting down to rich loam which is so good for gardens generally but vegetable gardens especially. Along the south side of your home from where the worst wet and windy weather comes, thick, evergreen shrubs will protect and buffer the wind and rain assisted by the eaves in protecting the home. Eaves are valuable at protecting windows, walls and doors. The length of the eaves on the north side of the home calculated correctly will allow the sun's entry into the living rooms in winter and stop the sun short of the sills in summer. Perfect efficiency! Gardens can provide us protection to walkways by using arbours, can, of course, provide flower decorations for interiors and as gifts, vegetables with travel distances calculated in millimeters which ensures the freshness and health benefits are intensified enormously. It is a very therapeutic occupation to spend time gardening, especially for children who not only benefit from the fresh air, they need to know where our food comes from and they will build immunities through contact with soils, plants and bugs. By taking time at planning and thinking stage the garden can be created to be of huge benefit to the comfort, efficiency and production of your home. Laying out the beds with rich loam after house construction has finished will give the best start. Adding compost and mulch occasionally will ensure only a small amount of time will be required to water and maintain the plots but the profits of enjoyment and production will be wonderful!
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AuthorMargot Kirke is a qualified architectural drafts person with a passion for practical living, making the best use of space and use of natural light and warmth. ArchivesE-newslettersCategories |
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