Everyone who builds has their regrets: didn’t make the bedroom/bathroom/living
room big enough, windows wrong size, higher or lower ceilings and so forth.
Having now built our second house, I can still see areas which we could do better next time.
It's not always the most obvious details which makes the
difference to improving livability, but the small. Here are 5 details which
I’m glad we did because they have made a difference to function and appearance.
1. A drying cabinet.
We live in a part of Australia which has
climatic extremes. In summer we have prolonged dry days of up to mid-forty
degree temperatures which wilts everything. This is great for drying washing
outside, as most Australians do.
In winter, however, we can get minimums of -5°C with severe frosts and prolonged periods of rain –
terrible weather for drying clothes outside as we normally would. This leads to our living spaces resembling the laundries of yesteryear, with damp clothes draped over clothes
horses and furniture, attempting to be dried in front of fireplaces or
close to a heating duct. It is one of my pet winter hates.
I suggested to our builder that we include a drying cabinet into our laundry wardrobe space. As we had quite a bit of other laundry storage I
decide to give up one third of the wardrobe space to floor-to-ceiling railing,
with a ceiling heating duct inside. I can either drape clothes over the rails
or use hangers.
When in use we leave the sliding door open
for ventilation and it has worked a treat. When not in use I just keep the door closed but I find even in the warmer weather I've been using it for drying delicates, so it's had more use than I expected.
Even if you didn’t have enough space for a
luxurious wardrobe-style drying cupboard like mine, you could still install a
rail over bench space or even a vintage-style drop-down model. I looked at
these options when we were trying to work out what we could achieve. I you can
get an extra heating duct installed in the space as well it will make all the
difference and you can reclaim your winter lounge space and your sanity.
2. Roll-in shower.
Contrary to myth, roll-in showers are for
everyone. It’s a fact that a knee reconstruction or broken hip can befall many
of us. And if you’ve been restricted to crutches or a wheelchair as you recover
it becomes clear that accessing a standard shower cubicle gets tricky.
For us this has a more permanent
implication as we have a child who is largely dependent on a wheelchair. A
shower without a frame and with extra door width was paramount to him being
able to shower.
The other side of this is that it allows a
seamless flow of your floor tiles into the shower which gives a great look. By
extending the length of the space and ensuring mindful tiling to the drain we
have been able to effectively prevent any flooding. It also allows easy access for cleaning, and as long as it's dry, our robot vacuum can even give it a once-over.
This is just one feature of our house which helps make it more accessible. I'll be writing more about our accessible house in the future.
3. Stone window ledge.
As our kitchen sink is under a window, I
wanted that window to be functional as well as reasonably stylish. I reason
that if you need to do something drab like wash dishes or peel potatoes, at least have something decent to look
at, right? And the standard architrave-finished window sill is not particularly
well-suited to splashes, not easy to wipe stains from, and is usually narrow in
size for knick-knacks.
The solution is to ask your bench installer to use a scrap piece of matching stone to
create a ledge. This replaces the bottom sill and the tiled splash-back meets it directly underneath, creating a clean, coordinated and functional finish.
The cost is fairly economical as it is usually a narrow piece which might
otherwise go to landfill.
The finished effect is sophisticated and
could be replicated in bathrooms and laundry as well. For the relatively low
cost, the result takes an otherwise nondescript window sill to the next level.
4. Upgraded ‘line of sight’ doors.
It’s fairly common practice for display
homes to employ a trick whereby the entrance and first spaces of a home are
upscaled – high ceilings, dado boards on the walls, a fancy statement light and
higher grade, taller doors. This gives an initial impression of grandeur and you
feel good about that – this house is so luxurious, right? Once this is
processed in your mind, you continue on and take in the other details. But that
idea of grandeur has taken.
We wanted to play with this concept for our
doors. We couldn’t afford to put the solid profiled doors throughout the house
as we hoped. Instead, we opted to use the long line of sight through our house
created by our hallway to tease the mind a little.
At one end of our hall is our master
bedroom and at the other, about 25 metres, is the guest bedroom. By making the
doors to each of these rooms the upgraded solid profile doors we’ve been able
to give an illusion that all our doors are the same – in fact, the rest are
mostly much cheaper flat-panel hollow core doors.
So if you have champagne taste but a beer
budget when it comes to internal doors you might find this low-cost option, or the one
employed in many display homes, to be valuable.
5. A hot bath for longer.
I’ve written before about my love of a good bath. But a good bath doesn’t last very long if the water goes cold quickly. If
you’re installing a hob bath, like we did, then this little hack can help.
After your hob frame is built and before
the bath is installed, ask your builder (or do it yourself – it’s easy) to use
some ceiling insulation batts to line the inside of the hob. Put in as much as
will fill the space without overstuffing as it still needs to accommodate the
bath, but you want the insulation to be touching against the bath itself.
This bit of insulation has made all the
difference to how long it takes for my hot bath to become a lukewarm one and
was totally worth the effort for the very low cost.
So there we have it – quick drying clothes
in winter, easy-access showering, a functional and stylish kitchen window, the
impression of lovely doors and a hot bath to relax in for longer – all for what
is small change relative to the total cost of your house build or renovation.
So if the devil is in the detail, and that
detail makes my day a little easier …then call me a friend of the devil.
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