By March we had reached the 12 month mark of our project, although not all of that time has been spent building. Between August 2016 rains, a lot of excavation for the pool and drainage, Christmas break and so on…we probably had only done about […]
All posts tagged: Pettit + Sevitt
Rain, rain go away
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. […]
Our Pool
Deciding on the type of pool for our home was quite a dilemma for a while, which I enjoyed writing about. Happily, we went with the classic rectangle and felt we couldn’t go wrong with the geometry of the house. So that was drawn into […]
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 Middle Stage – Are we there yet?
I read once that every renovation has a difficult “middle stage” but until you’ve been through it, the concept seems less threatening. You reach half way and things get hard – for whatever reason. It couldn’t be too bad could it? More accurate for us […]
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 […]
When Dad comes to visit
Late August 2016: It was a happy day when my Dad came over for a peak at the progress. My parents tried not to visit the building site, as it was full of hazards. So, when he came around and had a look, he said […]
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 […]
March: Builders & Building Costs
It’s late summer and the weather is giving us time to dream and think in the outdoors. February 2016 Our large challenge for our extension has been our limited budget. So, we had always agreed to start building using a phased-in approach. The living extension […]
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 […]
Sydney House. 