Exterior Philosophies

Sounds profound, doesn't it! What it refers to is the tortuous path we took to arrive at the exterior cladding and appearance of the house.

One of the biggest drawbacks to the appearance of the house was wrapped up in the shallow pitch of the roof. Being a romantic and heavily influenced by North American architecture, I prefer a 45 degree pitch most days of the week. This place didn't cut it.



In our original discussions, we planned to ameliorate the pitch by raising the centre third to a second story, with a gable running front to back and the existing roof line remaining to present a barn like structure.


Unfortunately, our resources wouldn't stretch that far. The compromise was a board on batten
effect which would draw the eye upwards on the front and back of the house. On the two shorter sides of the house, we played off a house 3 doors down which had corrugated iron running vertically on two of its walls. (The fact that Steve got a good deal on iron which was second hand - oops, recycled- may have had some influence on the decision as well!)


The colour scheme was the source of much despair. Having traveled through the province of Quebec and seen the wonderful colour schemes of their houses, my greatest desire was to paint the house a deep raspberry colour. We played around with some paint pots but most required a grey undercoat before the red was applied - and all the reds were a bit garish. We then turned to our store of mis-tints and tints we'd inherited or picked up cheaply. The brown and the grey/blue trim are the end results of our playing. I must admit that for me it was second best, but, in hindsight, my dream was probably not suited to the Australian landscape. Besides, I used red inside the house instead.

The end result was quite satisfying on the back of the house where it is level with the ground, but at the front of the house the exposed brickwork of the foundations caused a problem. Visually, there still seemed to be a squat house on high foundations - the house did not look settled into the landscape at the front. Two things eventually improved the situation. The first was the addition of an attic bedroom over the dining room; the 3 diamond pane windows under the eaves draw the eye up. The second was as simple as painting the brickwork a slightly darker brown (which only happened between Christmas and New Year '08). This removed the horizontal line across the house, It is amazing that so much discussion and angst could be summarised in such a short post!



The final efforts to connect the house to its location and provide a transition area between inside and out will be discussed in greater detail when we get to them.