It’s been a few months since my last post, which is pretty lame. February in fact…! I cannot believe how or where the time has gone. But we have made significant progress. So, I’ll be trying to post a bunch of articles to catch up. […]
All posts tagged: australian architecture
Progress Photos 2016
Our Pettit & Sevitt Lowline by Ken Wooley before extensions. We removed unruly shrubs and repainted the long low white wall out front shortly after buying the house. We also painted bedrooms to freshen everything up before starting on restoration/renovation. March 2016: We were required […]
The Work of John Wardle
One of my favourite architects of recent years is John Wardle. Although well known for the Westfield Commercial Tower in Sydney and several notable city towers and educational buildings, Wardle’s residential work is of most interest. In particular, the Fairhaven Beach House captures my heart. Its full-timber interior […]
The importance of windows
As Andy Dwyer said in Parks & Recreation, “Windows are the eyes to the house”. A slightly offbeat TV character in our favourite TV show, and he’s not half wrong. Typically Pettit & Sevitt homes were characterised by floor to ceiling (or to beam) windows and […]
Getting out of the ground
We’re finally out of the ground, after about 8 weeks of digging, drainage, fill, pool dig and concrete, and foundations. Yay! At every step our builder has been excellent. As we are living in the existing house, being owner builders has worked well. We usually […]
Digging begins
Here’s a photo of our excavator turning the soil for the first time in late March. Very exciting! The weather was good, we’d nailed down a start date with the builder and started talking to the window manufacturer to place our order for the first […]
Vale Architect Ken Woolley 1933-2015
Vale Ken Woolley. I feel he has followed me around through his buildings somehow…having been born in St Margarets Hospital where he designed the 1956 Chapel, and then I spent many years in the University of Sydney Fisher Library as well as the Wentworth Building. […]
Plans approved, here we go!
Sam our architect was able to work more rapidly on the plans for council development approval once this modular idea had come to life. It feels like a huge triumph just to get drawings done, and yet we are miles away from turning soil. And […]
Lowline extension design progress
When I last posted we had stalled in our design process. Single storey or two storey? Could the budget handle it? Are we mad? And would we be doing the existing house justice? All difficult questions but we arrived at these dilemmas because the first […]
Houzz on Pettit & Sevitt
Photo: Lowline B by Ken Woolley for Pettit & Sevitt. Photo source: Modernhouse.co (Photographers © Michael Nicholson, © Tamara Graham) Houzz recently published a handy rehash of the reasons why P&S houses work on so many levels. It’s been hard to find much information about P&S […]
The Death of Model Making?
Is it real? Or imagined? Since our journey through the design process began for our own home, one thing has struck me. Computers, indispensible as they are, seem to have removed the one thing I loved about the idea of designing or building (or extending) a […]
Architect Virginia Wong See
Good friend Architect Virginia Wong See and family made a big move to the NSW north coast. And who could blame them – clean air, open spaces and buckets of opportunities. Different opportunities to those offered by the relatively over-crowded, tightly contested Sydney market where […]
Sydney House. 