“We’re on a 384-square-metre block, not the hugest bit of land, so we had to be careful with the way we designed it,” Damian says. “We pushed to the boundary as much as we could, made the bedrooms functional but compact, and didn’t go upstairs. Our experience was it’s hot in summer, harder to cool, and in 20 years we’re going to be 70 so don’t really want to be climbing upstairs to our bedroom. And it’s certainly more expensive.” Draftsman Bernie Trahar of Trahar Design “had done hundreds of houses before and had all these great ideas, especially for one of our keys: getting light into the place,” Damian says.
The trio developed the floorplan through an iterative process that involved Damian painstakingly drawing up every space, indoors and out, to test possible room configurations, dimensions and layouts. “I did very detailed drawings … to see how things would fit, and moved things around,” he recalls. “I’m big on function.” This went beyond floorplans to interiors, helping the couple visualise spaces in three dimensions. “We maybe spent more time than other people might have on how rooms work to make sure that what we designed with the draftsperson would be fine,” he says. It paid off given the scope of change required. “I think we moved every single wall,” he adds with a laugh. “The shell at the front of the house remains, but we took out five fireplaces as well. So that obviously opened up a whole lot of opportunity.”
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