Wow! I've just woken (time difference Down Under) to check the enormous response from all. I'm absolutely thrilled & I will need some time to read through and analyse all the wonderful input, thanks so much. I'm very keen to search MCM. I love Queenslanders but thought that was trying to change the style into something its not to so was swaying towards a bungalow style of a home. We are located in the hinterland of the Gold Coast in Qld and want a home that suits our surrounds. I do not like modern I like cottage/bungalow style if thats possible. Its now 'get ready' for school time, so I'll be back. Thank you for all your ideas and opening my mind. Some ideas I have in pics attached.

Q7) Louise - I live in a small federation single fronted cottage in an inner west suburb of Sydney and would like to freshen the façade to modernise it and improve on the street appeal. Within the next month I am planning on replacing the bullnose awning to one that is flat but angled, paint the exterior of the house and lay tiles in the porch and step areas (carport and planting to soften the façade will come later). The tiles that will be laid in the porch are artisan style ones shown in the pics below, steps will be marble. The house is north facing and I am going for the Hamptons look. I would like to know (a) if you think this colour scheme will work and if there is a better colour scheme that you can please recommend - Dulux tranquil retreat for the exterior, trims will be crisp white, surfmist for the awning and momentum for gutters, (b) should the awning have a corrugated or trimdek profile and (c) the tradie will be removing the timber post and replacing this will aluminium ones white in colour - is aluminium a terrible idea? The houses on the street are a mix of federation, bungalows and modern ones. Some are as-is in pretty much original condition and others freshened up with render and paint in pretty neutral colours.

dark windows can look great in certain contexts, but not on this type of residence. Lighter is always better on these. The problem with the tiled sills is more the window colour clashing with them, rather than the colour themselves. I'd be inclined to change the window colour rather than paint the tiled sills. The orange roof colour should be reconsidered because the orange overload is due mostly to this aspect. Perhaps it may pay to invest in some professional design/architectural consultancy to help balance all the various elements involved - they all need to be working together and be complimentary, and colour will play off adjacent aspects one way or the other and it would be worthwhile for you to get experienced advice and work through options. Best of luck Cheers PD :)

There are certain "standardised" specifications and construction details that if executed by a volume builder can be achieved extremely cost effectively. Once you stray from these "rules" however, with things such as higher ceilings, skillion roof forms, high level windows or whatever, it immediately enters "custom build" territory, that will of course equate to higher cost. The "reasonableness" of this however needs to be rationalised from project to project, from builder to builder. Additional $90/m2 for skillion roof stick framed vs standardised truss construction is probably actually quite reasonable, if it involved reasonable spans, and it takes far more time/labour to properly pitch a roof from scratch (with a raked internal ceiling) in comparison to just throwing up pre-fabricated trusses, that involve barely any tools other than a nail gun. I'd suggest as a general comment, rather than rule out options at such an early stage, it's better to develop a vision and see how close you can get to it, get the design/plan sorted first, and then see where it's sitting and what opportunities there are to have raised ceilings or whatever it is and then methodically and logically work through prioritised spec adjustments if budget is becoming pushed with the scale/quality balance of the design. Be careful not to just make big design decisions because someone tells you it's cheaper or better or not or whatever one way or the other. Yes budget is always important, but don't allow fear of blow-outs potentially hamstringing/compromising the design process/journey and automatically ruling out opportunity. With the right designer you may come to find that with more efficient planning you actually can afford some of the interesting/custom features that appeal as well as all the function you require for your family.