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After my friend's dog stole my three year old's sandwich (out of her mouth!) I don't have dogs, cats are cleaner to have in a house as long as you provide kitty litter. A house with a dog smells so bad to us. My neighbour used her dog to clean up after her toddlers - licking the floor, the high chair tray, etc. and that was the wash they got. But I must say I do love dogs too - in the right environment.

I agree with everyone, the brickwork is craftsmanship and actually compliments the craftsman style of the house. It just needs to be broken up a little, the way a huge blank white wall would with art. Also a previous comment about the brick looking overwhelming closeup but fine in a longer shot with the bushland around it is also correct. In context, it's not as bad as you are probably perceiving it. Lots more greenery amongst the brick and a contrasting colour used on woodwork, pots of the plants and possibly even the bricks themselves (BBQ and pond) could really help, but most importantly, are really low cost. Google brick stain. Much cheaper than bagging the brick and easy to apply or maintain. It could also be used on terracotta pots of the plants and match a paint colour on the house. I'd go with a charcoal or blue grey to pick up on all the lovely bluestone used around your house. It really is a beautiful first home, very few first homes have a forever home feel like yours does!! You should be really happy with your purchase. Congrats!

As an architect, I have previously been taught that creating a sustainable home is about designing it so that living in it lowers energy and water use. This is achieved through designing for orientation, using thermal mass and specifying fixtures and finishes that are low impact, reuse water on site, etc. However, the latest research is showing that this is not enough to impact the rate of climate change. And that what we build from needs to be considered in order to make a dent. This is because the timeframe required to see the benefits of sustainable living in a home, is a longer play than the upfront construction from low tox, low energy, minimal footprint materials and methodologies. It has to be a two-pronged approach. Choose materials and products, and constructing efficiently with low energy and low waste. Having carbon neutral homes. And designing homes that over the long term, are low in energy and water consumption, and support the health and well-being of the occupants. A project was established in mid 2017, called “The Building Code Energy Performance Trajectory Project”. It involved the Sustainable Built Environment Council and ClimateWorks Australia, and is described as an industry-led initiative seeking improvements to energy requirements in the National Construction Code. The report was released recently, and what was amazing in this report was to read that 58% of Australia’s buildings in 2050, will be built after 2019 … which means that there’s huge potential to impact their performance and the environment through better energy requirements. And these energy requirements have not been rigorously updated since 2010, despite electricity prices having doubled over that time. Detached housing will comprise 64% of the new construction between 2019 and 2050. So every homeowner has the opportunity to seriously change the landscape of energy use and efficiency in our country. There’s some sectors of the industry really pushing back against this … largely because they believe it will dramatically dent their profit margins to have to build houses with higher star ratings. Australian homes, on average, perform very poorly, and our expectations are super low. Steve Baczek, an American architect, said something about American houses that I think sums it up for Australia as well ... “It’s not that High-Performance Houses cost too much; it’s that our idea of a fairly priced home is based on a history of building houses to meet embarrassingly low performance benchmarks. Clients don’t realise the difference between built to code vs built to last”.