Tag Archives: House in Glenbrook

Property development.

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Do you like this house?

47-park-street-1About five years ago we bought this house, In Glenbrook (a village near to where we live now).

It had six bedrooms, a large kitchen, a tandem double garage and a swimming pool.  However its main virtues were the fact that it stood on a 1000 square metre flat block of land, 50m from Glenbrook shops and restaurants, across from a public park and only 2-300m from the train station.

I trust you noticed the tense of those last few verbs, and I hope you didn’t like the house, because this is what it looks like today:47-park-street-2
This is the start of a year-long process of rebuilding the house to our own liking.  It will be a four-bedroom, sandstone house with solar panels built into the roof tiles, water-conservation plans, double-glazing throughout, thermal efficiency, top-class insulation all round.  In many ways I accept that it is an incredible indulgence, but it should set us up well for our declining-mobility years!

I will provide instalments here as we go through the process.

New House

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About five years ago we bought a block of land (OK, technically it has a house on it as well) in Glenbrook.  This is a village on a train line with direct (just over an hour) trains into Sydney Central.  The block is 200m from the railway station, and also 50M from shops, so it’s a good place to have a house.

The exciting development is that we are in the first stages of building a house there.  This is the initial design:

47PSt-p147PSt-p2The block of land was attractive when we bought it because it is also flat – the survey shows only a variation in height of 1/2 metre throughout.

The block is about 50m by 20m, so there is plenty of room.

It will be as environmentally-friendly as we can make it.  Double-glazed, sealed to make it thermally efficient, solar panels on the roof, rainwater-collecting into tanks, etc.  The main construction will be in local sandstone, and we will try to use materials from as local a source as we can.

Click on the images to enlarge (if you are interested ….), these are the ground and first-floor plans:

47PSt-p3Ground floor: large living area, garage swung around so as not to dominate the facade of the house, downstairs bedroom, large deck outside a large sliding glass door.

Front entrance with view up to the second level.

 

47PSt-p4

Upper floor: three bedrooms.  Large room above the garage for hobbies, etc.

 

 

47PSt-p5

 

Roof with “Velux” windows over the train hobby room.