The post Design Week: The Exterior – It’s reveal day! appeared first on The Dreamhouse Project.

Dreamhouse Front exterior

Dreamhouse exterior angled view of front & north wall

It’s still a work in progress but we’re absolutely LOVING how it’s looking so far!  It’s kind of surreal to watch the colour rendering come to life over time.  If you remember yesterday…

Conceptualized rendering of HardiePanels in Evening Blue

and now…

Front exterior

Pretty cool right??

Check out the fine details on the Hardie materials…

The south wall is almost complete and then they’ll be making their way across the back of the house.  We’ll update you with more pics as more progress is made.

South wall in-progress

One last look before we go..

Dreamhouse front exterior progress

The only thing we’re still a bit on the fence with is the trim.  I do love the contrast, but we’d spent so much time envisioning it in a darker grey, I think we’re still not quite 100% in love with the lighter colour.  I don’t know it’s growing on me, but I think I have to wait till its all complete & then decide.  Who knows – maybe we’ll make it a PARA paint project in the spring…

So what do you think?? Do you love it?  Are you a fan of the high contrast trim or should we tone it down with some paint? Leave a comment below & weigh in!

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The post Design Week: The Exterior – Colour choice craziness! appeared first on The Dreamhouse Project.

When it came to the overall exterior colour scheme for the house we had a general idea of what we wanted. We have a slight obsession love affair with the colour grey so we knew that no matter the material, a good portion of the house would be grey. And since we were initially entertaining the idea of cedar, we had a warm golden brown in mind as well. We figured for the stone we could find something that picked up bits of the other two to bring it all together. If you remember our initial conceptual rendering, here’s where we started:

Our original conceptualized elevation rendering & colour scheme

The Dreamhouse colour evolution:

When it came time to pick the actual exterior colours we thought being so prepared would make things easy…we were wrong! The first colour decision actually proved to be the most stressful – the windows. Because of the manufacturer lead time, the windows needed to be ordered first. In the overall colour scheme however, the window frame colour doesn’t make as much of an impact as say, the siding. So choosing that first, is essentially like picking your accent colour before finalizing the main one.

When you order vinyl framed windows they come in white. If you want them painted using one of the manufacturer’s standard paint colours, it’s an additional charge. If you want them painted using a custom colour, it’s another additional charge. If you want both the interior AND exterior frames painted, it’s yet another charge. You can probably see where this is going…

We knew we wanted dark frames, but how dark? Do we go for black? Brown? The standard grey? Do we spring for custom & get a dark grey? How dark? And how dark is too dark? Believe it or not these are all questions that came up in actual multi-hour debates conversations.

Kes’ first choose was black. For starters it was offered as one of the standard colour options and we knew we wanted black frames on the interior which would mean saving a bit of cash. Because GOD FORBID we should want 2 different colours inside & out. That of course would be – that’s right – another charge.

Conceptualized black window frames

Kes really liked the contrast & thought the way the frames stood out was striking & sexy. I on the other hand was NOT a fan of this look. For me, it was just too harsh. Kinda like a really pretty girl with WAY too much eye liner on. We tried a few of the other standard colours but couldn’t agree on any.  The brown was too chocolatey, the grey had too much taupe in it, and none of the others really worked. Finally after finding out that there was only a minor cost difference between having 2 different standard paint colours and having 1 standard  & 1 custom, we opted for the latter & chose a custom colour for the exterior frames called ‘Peppercorn.’

Conceptualized window frames in Peppercorn

With the window colours finally sorted, we moved on to the exterior cladding.  For the panels, the closest Hardie colour to the grey we originally had in mind was one they call ‘Boothbay Blue.’  For the siding, even though cedar was now off the table, we opted to keep with our original golden brown, with a colour they call ‘Tuscan Gold.’

Conceptualized rendering of HardiePanel system in Boothbay Blue with aluminum expressed joints. HardiePlank siding in Tuscan Gold

The JamesHardie products are actually engineered specifically for various climates - which means that not all of their colours are available in all locales.  Thankfully this didn’t pose a problem for the colours we wanted for either the HardiePanel system or HardiePlank siding. The HardieTrim, however was another story.  Surprisingly not one of the available trim colours was even remotely close to the grey we had pictured all along.  Of the 10 available trim colours (all various shades of TAUPE), there were only 2 that seemed to have any potential with our colour scheme…Sigh….

Conceptualized rendering of HardieTrim in Monterey Taupe

Conceptualized rendering of HardieTrim in Cobble Stone

After a lot of back and forth, we settled on ‘Cobble Stone.’  It’s a much lighter colour than we wanted, but we’re hoping that we’ll be able to choose a stone that will tie it all together. From there all that was left was the soffit & fascia, which was the only decision we didn’t even have to think about.  THANKFULLY, we were able to order them in a colour called ‘Charcoal’ that matches the ‘Peppercorn’ almost identically! PHEW…colours chosen. Case closed. Exterior in the books. Right??

Wait for it…

Just our luck – the day we went to put our order in, our supplier told us that the ‘Boothbay Blue’ we’d chosen for our HardiePanels was on backorder.  Crap!  But not all was lost, they offered to give us a discount on the ‘Evening Blue’ that was in stock – and as it turns out – we actually liked it better when we saw the actual product sample! Score one for us!! 

So with the exception of the stone, which is still TBD, here is where we ended up after everything was ordered…

Conceptualized rendering of HardiePanels in Evening Blue

 So what do you think??  Did we make the right choices? Come back tomorrow as we wrap up Design Week and reveal  the progress pics of the install to give you a  first look at how all the colour choices came together!

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The post Design Week: The Exterior – Mixing Materials appeared first on The Dreamhouse Project.

Panel Cladding

Many, MANY google searches, builder forums & manufacturer websites later, we found that we could use HardiePanel fibre-cement vertical siding to achieve the look.  By simply installing it horizontally with a recess or express joint between the boards, the HardiePanel is transformed from traditional to modern.

Traditional installation of HardiePanel vertical siding via houzz

Modern HardiePanel siding with EasyTrim via stormxconstruction

Siding

With the panels sorted, we set out to source our siding.  It didn’t take us long to figure out that as beautiful as cedar siding is, it was going to be cost prohibitive for us (not to mention the maintenance that would be required to keep it looking pretty year after year).  As an alternative, we opted for HardiePlank fibre-cement lap siding.

HardiePlank lap siding via James Hardie

Stone

Contemporary exterior with stone via househunters.ca

There’s just something sexy about the right mix of materials.  Sharp lines & industrial cladding, mixed the with earthy feel of stone somehow speaks to me. So to ground the whole exterior look, we’ll be including a hint of stone across the bottom third of the house. We haven’t quite made our final decision on our choice of stone veneer just yet but maybe we’ll put it to a vote in a later post.

Any suggestions on a stone product you’ve had good experiences with or one you think would work with our design? Let us know!

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The post Design Week: The Exterior – Achieving the look appeared first on The Dreamhouse Project.

The Inspiration:

Going back to our look book, it was pretty clear to us that the we’re drawn to houses that step outside the bounds of typical “builder beige” brick & aluminum siding. That’s not to say that there aren’t some beautiful homes built using those materials, but with our love for the modern aesthetic, we knew we’d be looking to use materials that lend themselves less to the traditional.

We absolutely love the modern sleek look of composite or fibre-cement panels mixed with cedar siding.

Gorgeous modern home w/ cedar siding & fibre-cement exterior cladding via drkdesign

So we had the look. We knew what we wanted. The challenge now was to find the right materials available in our market & climate to bring it all together AND to do so within budget.

Stay tuned tomorrow as we get into the specifics of the materials we chose…

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The post Back at it! Plus an exterior sneak peek… appeared first on The Dreamhouse Project.

First of all, I feel like I should apologize for the radio silence over the last couple of weeks. Between broken laptops, business trips, a sick pre-schooler & some much needed family time, there hasn’t been a whole lot of room left in my schedule for the blog. I know…BAD blogger!! Not to worry though cause I promise to make up for it.

Next week be kicking off our second edition of Design Week! If you remember the first edition, we left you with a first look at the the house plans & the colour rendering of the exterior.  Well  next week we’ll be taking you in-depth through the Dreamhouse exterior & what felt like 5 million decisions on colour & materials that went into it.

AND just because I’m in a good mood (maybe it’s all the holiday nostalgia from watching this morning’s Macy’s Parade), I’ve decided to leave you with a sneak peek at some of the awesomeness we’ll be going through next week…

Sneak peek at the Dreamhouse exterior progress

So what do you think?  Are you as excited as we are??

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The post Design Week: The Dreamhouse Revealed appeared first on The Dreamhouse Project.

We sat down with Kevin to get an understanding of the process he goes through when he approaches a design project. As complex and technical as his job is, at it’s core, he describes it as being incredibly simple.

I listen to what my clients want, and then I draw it.

To get more detailed, it’s really all about listening to people and watching their hands and body language as they describe what they’re looking for. Being able to gain an understanding of what their wants and needs are for their living space from their gestures and the emotion in their voices is a skill that Kevin has honed well over the years.

Coming out of our initial meeting, within a day he had rough sketches of his interpretation of the dream we had described to him. Incredibly, they were bang on. With the exception of a few minor details, his sketch was exactly what we had pictured in our minds.

Exploratory sketch by KW Design

Refined sketch by KW Design

From there, Kevin went through our wish list and created a rough plan for the layout of the living space.

Draft floor plan sketch by KW Design

Next, Kevin took his sketches and converted them into detailed CAD drawings which he presented to us. We were prepared for several rounds of revisions, but again, there’s something to be said for working with a designer who just gets you.  Maybe it’s the years of ‘telepathic’ Pictionary played in the Washington household (Kes and Kevin have actually been banned from playing as a team on games night), or maybe Kevin is just really THAT good at what he does.  Either way, outside of one or two minor tweaks to the layout, his initial drawings were pretty much the final plans we submitted to the City.  And here they are…

Washington Residence Ground Floor Plan by KW Design

Washington Residence Second Floor Plan by KW Design

Washington Residence Front Elevation by KW Design

Washington Residence Rear Elevation by KW Design

Kes got so excited when he saw these that he decided to take the elevation drawings into Photoshop to create colour renderings, lol!

Washington Residence Front Elevation Color Rendering

Washington Residence Rear Elevation Color Rendering

So there you have it!  The Dreamhouse.  We’d love to hear what you think!

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The post Design Week: The Look Book appeared first on The Dreamhouse Project.

Once we got through the initial research, we took a more in-depth look at the photos we had compiled. What we figured out is that overall we love modern contemporary architecture and we want our house to reflect that in its design both inside and out. That said, we’d still like to maintain a bit of neighbourhood charm because let’s be honest, we’re not trying to create an art installation in the middle of the suburbs!

We tried to categorize the photos into ‘wants’ and ‘likes.’ From there we could focus in on the elements of each photo we actually wanted to try to incorporate in the house design, versus just the things we liked – for example an overall look or colour scheme. Once that was settled, we started putting together what we call The Dreamhouse Project Look Book.

Our Look Book is basically our wish list of features broken down by room or space within the house, along with our final compilation of inspiration photos and notes outlining the elements we’d like to incorporate. The plan is for it to continue to be a living, breathing document that we can build on and get more detailed with as the project progresses.  Once we had the first draft of the Look Book completed, we sat down with Kevin and walked him through it to help him get the ball rolling on designing the house.

Here is what we came up with…

For the initial meeting with Kevin, we focused mostly on the exterior photos and design features since we knew he’d need that insight the most when it came to designing the overall structure and planning the elevations.

The Exteriors:

We love these 3 exterior styles…

Bowman Residence Front Exterior by Cornerstone Architects, Austin, TX

The home above is closest to what would fit our neighbourhood, but we’d like to push the contemporary line a little further. Something that sort of toes the line between ‘safe’ and ‘art installation’.

Goodwin Project Streetscape by En2 Development Corp, Toronto, ON

We’re completely in love with this house! The mix of stone & cedar siding is beautiful. And of course, stunning floor-to-ceiling windows!! We’d love to incorporate a ton of natural light into our space with windows like these.

Linden Hills Contemporary – by Andrea Swan Architecture, Minneapolis, MN

The cedar lattice work here is sweet – a great and unique way to provide privacy while still maintaining the visual aesthetic!

Other nice exterior features…

In terms of the interior, aside from our wish list, we pretty much relied on Kevin’s expertise & left the floor-plan layout to him.  The actual interior design of the house – colors, lighting, finishes &, furniture placement will come later (we’ll blog about those details in the next Design Week), but tomorrow we’ll take you through the big reveal – floor-plans and elevation drawings of The Dreamhouse!

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The post Design Week: The Inspiration appeared first on The Dreamhouse Project.

When we decided to chase the dream, our goal was to create a home that embodied the feel of the open-concept, urban contemporary loft, while satisfying our need for the larger living space generally only found at affordable prices outside of the city.

To get started, we took to the web to figure out our likes and dislikes in terms of style and quickly found Houzz to be a fantastic resource for all things home.

Here’s a look at some of the houses that were the jumping off point of inspiration for us:

Check out our full set of ideabooks on Houzz!

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