It's been a long time since the last update, but plenty has been happening!  I just haven't kept the blog updated... here is a roundup of the last few months ... and this post will be light on text, high on pictures!

At our May architect meeting, we saw a cardboard model of the house!



(Apologies for the camera-phone blurriness!)

Note the garden and (fortunately) driveway will not be tiered like that - those are the limits of using cardboard as a modelling tool!

At our next meeting in June, we received the final plans that will be submitted to council, including some 3D renders:





If you are wondering what sort of material the black sections of the external facade will be, it is something called Alucobond - I hadn't heard of it until the architect mentioned it!  It is a type of aluminium cladding ... I found some images of it used in a residential environment, reproduced from here (click link for bigger images):






It is long lasting and very low maintenance - basically needs cleaning once every ten years - which is great for people who are, lets say, home maintenance challenged such as ourselves!

Our plans are currently with the Hobart City Council and were advertised publicly on July 21st!



The public review period has ended and I don't know if the council received any submissions, but we did receive one call from a neighbour - saying that if we had any clean fill to get rid of, we are more than welcome to have it dumped on his block!

Last of all, I have been playing with Google Sketchup (which incidentally runs quite well under WINE) to design some of the joinery areas.  The most complete one so far is the kitchen:


More work to do on that one - and of course more parts of the house in progress!