Creating new living spaces

Part of the reason we started this project is that we only had one living space. The children are now in late primary school, and while we genuinely enjoy spending time together, we are all ready for a second living room so that we are not all on top of each other. There’s only so much Minecraft I can put up with on the PlayStation. As it turns out (after the en suite saga), the only room we are keeping is our lounge room. Prior to the build it looked like this:

But currently it looks like this:

But I am confident that despite the torrential rains and the fact that it is a construction site, that it will come out looking as fabulous as ever. This will remain as the adult living area – for adult conversation and adult entertainment (and just in case you’re thinking it, won’t be that sort of entertainment. Just TV shows with a rating higher than PG).

The children’s bedroom and old play room will become the new informal living area – the family room. There will be a deck straight off the family room that will open into the garden.

This is how it looked pre-demolition on the plans. You can also see how much change was needed.

This is how it should look when it is finished:

That area behind the children’s rooms has essentially been a utility area. It is not very attractive. The previous owners never put up a proper pool fence so the temporary one that was there was pretty ugly to say the least. We had always intended to do a new retaining wall and put in a more appropriate pool fence and now we are really glad that we didn’t get around to it as it would have needed re-doing with the current works.

So the above area will now have a large glass sliding door and will open onto a deck. We are doing a new retaining wall in concrete sleepers from Outback Sleepers. We had initially wanted a bluestone retaining wall but unfortunately, it couldn’t be done according to our engineering reports. This is the next best thing. We have chosen the McLaren. This will at least tie in with the bluestone around the garden

We came home yesterday to see that the excavator had been in. And wow. Some serious evacuation was done. The old pool fence and the pavers are gone. The stairs up to the pool are gone.

Getting to the pool without the stairs will be a challenge! We will have the stairs rebuilt to tie in with the retaining wall. The old stairs would have sat out too far into the new decking. We also need to arrange to have the pool equipment moved as it won’t be particularly visually appealing to look directly at pumps and pipes.