Hardwood Flooring

We will have hardwood flooring throughout the house, except for wet areas (bath, ensuite, powder room, laundry) which will be tiled. This is because 3 out of 4 family members of the Sasanqua household are allergy sufferers, and it's important to reduce their allergy load by eliminating dustmites from carpeting. Mrs Sasanqua likes the easy clean aspect of hardwood flooring, and timber is not as cold on the feet as tiles can be (we don't wear shoes in the house). But hardwood flooring comes with a big price tag. We are allocated $65 per m2 for the supply of flooring in our tender, so depending on the species and grade of timber we end up choosing, we may be up for some extra cost.

We are currently tossing between Blackbutt (Janka hardness rating 9.1) and Spotted Gum (11). We think Blackbutt might be just slightly too blond in colour (sports gym like?) and it's a softer species of hardwood timber. Spotted Gum is a harder wood but it may look too rustic because of its variation in the hues (although that's one of the attractions of this species too). Our mostly white kitchen and living will be a very open plan, north facing (we're in the southern hemisphere) area with 2 x 3 panel stacker doors leading out to al fresco area, so we need to keep in mind how light will affect the look of the timber floor.

We need to go to a timber display centre and have a look. Reading some forum posts, we found out that the wear on the floorboard will depend more on the surface treatment product used, than on the timber species (as long as it's a hardwood species). We will look at each species' different grades (Select, Standard, Feature/Natural), think about what width we want (60, 80, 130 mm etc), and the price of each, before we make our decision.

Blackbutt (it's a yellowish hay colour)

Spotted Gum (different hues of brown)

House design revisions

February, March, & April 2011 - We revised and fine-tuned the house plan, sometimes changing things based on our sales consultant's advise or on costing, sometimes based on what we read on internet forums.

We were originally going to have the house rendered, and have hardwood flooring throughout the house. But due to cost blowout we had to make a compromise somewhere and choose between (a) have tiles instead of floorboard downstairs, or (b) have smoothfaced bricks (sales consultant's suggestion) instead of render. In the end we decided to keep the hardwood flooring throughout (tiles are so cold and we take shoes off in the house), and give up the render. Hopefully the smoothfaced bricks will look streamlined and smooth as we were told, but if we are very unhappy about the bricks we can always have them rendered 5 or 10 years later when we can.

Another thing we had to give up was the skylight in the pitched roof in the foyer. Because of the direction the roof is facing, if we were to put a skylight in it would have been visible from the street on the roof above the front door. We really liked the idea of having a very high pitched ceiling filled with natural light in the entrance foyer, but instead we will have to put in lots of lights there, and hope that will still give us the WOW factor.

We went back and forth, did a lot of research because we didn't want to change anything major further down the build process. During this time a new survey report and bushfire report were done. Our sales consultant was helpful and communication was very good on email and phone, we also had a meeting at our house and picked his brain for ideas and recommendations. We took our time in getting the house plan the way we wanted, and quite enjoyed this process.

What the house will have:

• Nice open entry hall with high racked ceiling
• Large butler's pantry off the kitchen with window and sink
• High ceiling on lower levels
• Open plan living leading out to alfresco area at the back
• 4 bedrooms, study, media room, open plan kitchen/living/dining room, play room
• Main bathroom, ensuite bathroom, powder room
• 2.5-car garage (storage/workshop)
• Landscaped garden
• Swimming pool
• Polished floorboard throughout except wet areas