A Hut tour

Recently a new online friend asked if I had any pictures of our finished hut on the blog.
I thought yes surely, I post photos on the blog all the time. But in reality I've teased you with parts of the hut but never taken you on the full tour (our hut is quite small so don't worry it won't take long!) I did do a quick version on Instagram, but I took these photos with Rob's DSLR.
The last full tour was exactly a year ago. The hut had just had the first undercoat of paint inside and it started to feel like it was close to finished. Officially at lock up stage, we still didn't have bathrooms, a kitchen, flooring or any finishing touches done. It was probably best that at the time we didn't know that it wouldn't be ready to occupy until late June!

But I can almost forget the annoyance of waiting. Almost.

Without further ado, welcome to the hut.

This is our front door, entering into our breezeway off the terrace.

Just a reminder of before and after, last year the timber cladding was not even on site, and the polished floor was kept covered with black plastic. The timber door in the picture to the right leads to our hot water cylinder, or more importantly Rob's beer brewing cupboard.

Once inside the breezeway, you would normally find a few simple coat hooks, some baskets for our shoes, a retro chair and a small myrtle table that Rob restored. However, the wardrobe for the spare room is still parked here while we work up the courage to dismantle it. The door as you can see leads to the living end of the hut.

If you were to turn around to the other end of the hut you can probably see our secret loft door up high. The dumping place for anything we don't need to see all the time.
The walls are clad in celery top pine, inside the hut we used China Wood oil to finish all the timber. The timber cladding has become so golden over the last 8 months, and will continue to darken. All our skirting, window and door trims are in myrtle.
Ok, if you were here in person I'd probably then take you into the living room end of the hut first. Visitors often comment on the spaciousness of the hut inside, after seeing how narrow it is from the outside, it's only 4m wide. The windows, cream walls and retro furniture all contribute to that I think. Rob and I (luckily) both dislike clutter so we keep the hut pretty spartan. Anyway, you walk down a short narrow space into our kitchen.

The living space is broken into three roughly even spaces. The myrtle window seat draws your gaze as you walk in to the big window at the end of the hut. But really the view is to the north side, along the long axis of the room. We chose double glazing for the windows and door in this end of the hut, which means we don't need blinds or curtains. We love that this means that the lines are kept clean. Originally the cathedral ceiling was to be timber clad too. But the budget didn't stretch that far. So plaster board it is. But you know what, I think we prefer it now. The ceiling soars and lifts the space rather than feeling closed in. The poor builder and plasterer were quite frightened when we chose our lights, those little white rectangles on the side (there are actually three of them, one is out of the frame). The "Surf" up lights are designed by Neil Poulton, and were quite a splurge for us, but the three lights  do light up the whole space so well. Frightening for the plasterer as he had to get our ceiling absolutely perfect as they would show up every flaw in the joins between boards. But we are so happy with them, the plasterer did do an excellent job.

The bench you can see is our main workspace in the kitchen, nearly 3m long and 800mm wide, we had our bench tops made to be 1m high, as we're both tall. Nine big drawers provide plenty of storage for crockery, plastics, and bakeware. But we'll swing around and have a look at the kitchen from the other direction.

The cabinetry and bench tops are solid celery top pine, most of which we purchased at an auction a few years earlier. It too is getting darker. The four drawers on this side of the bench are for cutlery, place mats, candles and serving platters, so that it's easy to set the table without heading into the kitchen.
To keep the clean lines in our kitchen we opted for a domestic oven and ceramic cook top. But splurged on a Parmco extraction fan (the little silver rectangle above the cook top), which works well, the fan is in the corner cupboard so it's not too noisy. Things we love here: the view from the kitchen sink, the little hidden knife drawer to the left of the oven, and the open wire baskets for our collection of copper Scanpan saucepans underneath. The watercolour of an olive branch was painted by a friend, and is the only artwork we currently have on the walls. We just can't bring ourselves to put anything else up on the walls yet. Ok onto the living area.

The Tas oak floorboards are covered with a soft golden rug. A legacy item from Rob's parents. We think it has silk in the pile as it is so soft, the dogs love lazing on it! The window seat is obviously the pride of our home, but the two Blackwood Fler Narvik lounge chairs are pretty special too. The two Fred Ward myrtle sideboards house our glassware, napkins and cake stands. We may have fallen into collecting mid-centry furniture by accident, but the style is perfect for the hut, with the pieces raised off the floor with the tapered legs extending the space.
If you were to sit on the window seat (which I highly recommend) you would then look back to the kitchen like this:

Our retro myrtle dining table faces the bifold door that opens out onto the terrace and overlooks the dam. Our collection (which has grown again but we need to recover them) of Blackwood Piper Tru-line chairs may be a little daggy, but they are comfortable. If you walk down the room and back into the breezeway you would then see this view down our hallway:

The mirror on the dresser in our room creates a perfect reflection, creating a feeling that the hall will go on. The long narrow windows provide light and the internal doors are all single lite glass doors so that light can flow from one side of the hut to the other. The polished concrete floor is great for our dirty dogs! The one techo item in our hut are the low sensor lights on the right hand side of the hall. These are fantastic at night when you are visiting the bathroom.

First room on the left is our guest bathroom:
The polished concrete flows right into our shower, with the best view of the dam and bush on the hill opposite (where the wedge tailed eagles soar).

The sink sits on floating bench of myrtle. We found this retro Blackwood framed mirror which is perfect for this room.

The spare room is the most unfinished room. It's yet to get a proper double bed (still on the look for a mid-century myrtle bed head) and the wardrobe in the breezeway needs to be moved in here (magically). I have actually sold the chest of drawers under the window, the one on the far wall matches all our other Fred Ward pieces, and we leave two of our dining chairs in here for the moment.

Our bathroom is the next along the hall, the same as the guest bathroom except for the shower over a bath. The view is pretty good here too. Rob's sisters gave him the round mirror for his birthday last year and it works perfectly here.

Last but not least is our bedroom. With a set of french doors that open out onto the terrace and a window that overlooks my flower garden and the orchard. Fred Ward features here too, one day we will replace the modern Tas oak bed with a mid-century style myrtle bed. I didn't take a photo in the opposite direction as the only building job left to do are the timber doors on our built in wardrobes. Hopefully we can tick that off this year. The two bedrooms have a wool plush pile carpet, called Velluto, which apparently is Italian for velvet, in a caramel colour.
So there you have it. A tour of our little home. Hope you have a lovely weekend.

Red

My clandestine love affair with the colour red had remained hidden until recently. I don’t think I can deny it any longer. I thought perhaps I’d moved on from red. The hut was going to be cream, blue, and sandy yellow.
But red has been creeping back into our life.

It started when I unpacked our favourite red stoneware plates and bowls. Suddenly, I wanted to serve all our food on them. I know white dinnerware is more chic, that most food looks better on white. But every time I opened the crockery draw (that in itself is quite a novelty!) my hands would pass over the neat stack of white plates and choose the lovely glossy red plates.

Then I remembered a happy afternoon spent in an Italian café at Cottesloe Beach, and loving the look of their bright red napkins on the long communal timber tables, and thinking one day I’m going to have a table just like that. So I picked up a set of plain red cotton napkins recently.

Our bedroom also got the red makeover. We’d always had a cream bedspread. But then we got Claudia. She can’t help herself, she loves beds. But she also loves mud. So we thought this red check would camouflage the worst of the paw prints.

My favourite jam just came back in stock at Coles, I love their gingham lids, as you can tell.

Rob found us these Fler Narvik chairs on ebay, we’d be on the look out for pair, and happily for us they came newly upholstered, in lovely soft red chenille corduroy.

So now that Rob shares my love affair, I can quite openly sneak some more red into the hut. I found these red reindeer tealight holders at Spotlight on Saturday. Kitsch I know, but also beautiful at night. It’s going to take all my will power not to keep using them every day until Christmas.

Finally the window seat arrived last week. We’d oscillated over the colour of our cushions for over a year. Blue? Sandy yellow? I’ve ordered enough samples from Warwick to make a bedspread! But none of them were quite right.

We sat on our makeshift cushions. We looked at the samples. I looked at Rob. “You know what I’d really like?” He laughed, I think he already knew, “I’d like a red check just like our bedspread!” Not quite as elegant as we were originally planning, perhaps a bit clichéd, but at the moment it feels right for our little hut in the country.

Welcome back red, I’ve always loved you.

A tour through the freshly painted hut

Welcome to a tour of our little hut. After returning home from a flying visit to Launceston we were pleasantly surprised to find the first coat of paint had been done.

Looking from the kitchen into the living space. Originally we had wanted exposed beams and vj timber lining on the ceiling, but, ahem, due to budgetary restraints we had to settle for plaster. But now it's been painted Rob and I have fallen in love with it. The plasterer has done a fantastic job the ceiling just disappears above you, creating a light filled space. Oh and have we told you we love our bifold door? Sorry to gush, but we're pretty happy with how it's pulling together at this stage.

The opposite view looking towards the kitchen and the hall.

Our entrance- the breezeway, there's a matching set of french doors on the other side too. Don't worry, they haven't forgotten some plaster, these will be clad in the celery top pine vertical boards to match the outside of the hut. With the polished concrete floor, we reckon this room is a winner.

The guest bathroom, a shower with a great view.

The spare bedroom.

Our bathroom.

Our bedroom, overlooking the laundry hut and my flower garden.

Looking back from our end of the hut to the other. The hallway looks dark at this time of day, but once the sun swings around the corner it will come through the three full length windows. A lot of people worry we don't have enough space. We laugh to ourselves, we don't need the home entertainment room, several spare bedrooms, huge bathrooms with spas, the "good" room. This hut is for us to live in, not wasted space that will need cleaning. But it's also for us to feel connected to the nine acres of space we have outside. Once the hut is all finished our next job is to pave the flat area in front of the hut. Slightly ambitious, but we have decided to pave the full 30 x 4m. I think that will be enough space don't you?

Hut inspiration

We have come to think of our (yet to be built) home as the hut. A couple of years ago (try 5 years!) Rob found a book in Fullers, ‘25 Houses Under 1500 square feet’ written by James Grayson Trulove. His favourite house was a very small (only 10 feet wide), simple house in a rolling 20 acre hillside vineyard overlooking Mt St Helena (USA). As sweet as this house looked I couldn’t imagine living in a house that narrow. Indeed, it was built by two architects, William Turnbull and Mary Griffin, as their family retreat, with the building an exploration of how minimally they could impact the site. Apparently they were inspired by Charles Keeler’s definition of California architecture as "landscape design with occasional rooms in case of rain."

William and Mary’s house in the vineyard.

Photo sourced from Turnbull, Griffin & Haesloop Architects website.

Looking inside the living and breezeway.
Photo sourced from Turnbull, Griffin & Haesloop Architects website.

The house, only 640 square feet (69 square metres), is deceptively simple and combines architecture and landscape to make large rooms out-of-doors. It is sited on the only flat area in the vineyard, the house and its companion building, the wash house, flank two opposite ends of a carpet of grass. It is a narrow, gabled-roof building divided in half by a pass through covered porch. In the summer the doors can be opened, the porch serves as a breezeway. In winter with the doors closed the porch becomes a mud room.

Inside the breezeway.
Photo sourced from Turnbull, Griffin & Haesloop Architects website.

The kitchen and living area.
Photo sourced from Turnbull, Griffin & Haesloop Architects website.

Looking through the end window.
Photo sourced from Turnbull, Griffin & Haesloop Architects website.

Rob was completely infatuated by it though, drawing plans, and making little balsa wood models. Gradually I came around to liking the design, he was right, we spend a lot of time outside and if designed well the space would feel more spacious than it is. We did make our hut a little wider and longer. The hut is 4 metres wide and 27 metres long. The hut is split in two by the breezeway, which will have a polished concrete floor, so that muddy feet (both human and dog) don’t matter. This will be the entrance to the hut, with a set of double glass doors on either side which we will be able to open flat to the outside walls. This will be the place to dump coats, hats, shoes, keys. To the left will be a corridor that runs down the back of the hut, leading to two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Our bedroom will be at the end overlooking our vegetable and flower garden and the orchard. It will also have a set of double glass doors opening out onto the front patio. The other half of the hut will be an open plan living area with a cathedral (hopefully timber lined) ceiling. On leaving the breezeway, you will enter the kitchen which will flow into the dining area and sitting area. Like the original house, there will be a full length window seat under the end window with book shelves at each end. There will be a set of bi-fold doors that also open out onto the patio, blurring the boundary between the inside of the hut and outside. There will be a second smaller hut that will be the laundry and shed.

We have twiddled with the materials the hut will be made of. The original house was constructed of vertical Douglas Fir cladding, with a shingle roof and timber windows. We thought in keeping with the huts locality, it will have vertical celery top or eucalypt cladding, a silver corrugated iron roof and solid aluminum glass doors and windows.

The hut design did limit the sort of property we needed to buy. We wanted a block facing north so that the length of the hut took advantage of the aspect. Also with the length of the hut it needed to be quite big! However, we had already decided on a rural property. After only a few years of looking we found 9 acres of pasture in the channel region of Tasmania, with a northerly aspect. The hut site overlooks our block, looking down the gentle slope to the dam, across to a bush covered hill opposite. The other drawback was more subtle and one we hadn’t foreseen. We have been penalized by only building a small hut, one that suits our needs. The hut, unfortunately, has proved difficult to value! Strangely enough, there isn’t a house exactly like it in our neighbourhood that has sold recently. But after being patient for so long we can wait a little longer; hopefully soon there will be a little hut on the block.

If only it was as easy as photoshop!