Master Plan

Master Plan

We bought a plot of land in the bayside south east area of Melbourne and are now hoping to build the Porter Davis Somerville on it. We have found the existing blogs really helpful in our progess to this point so we want to pay it forward and hopefully we can help others with our experience.

The Somerville design is a relatively new design for Porter Davis but essentially it is their Sandringham design tweaked a little. We understand that PD felt they didn't have a good 5 bedroom option in their Lifestyle range and so they took the Sandringham from their Prestige range, made a few changes, and then created the Somerville.

We've always been attracted to having the master bedroom downstairs and with 3 kids and frequent guests, we felt a 5 bedroom design was a must. We liked the option to put an en suite option between 2 of the bedrooms. We will use one of these bedrooms as our guest bedroom which means guests will have access to an en suite but we're not having to spend money on a bathroom that is only ever used by guests.

There seem to be a lot of designs around that have different living areas downstairs but most of them abut onto each other. For example, a lounge and a rumpus room often appear to share a wall. We felt that this would concentrate the noise in just one area of the house. The Somerville has a study space in between the two main living areas so we are hoping that this will help to spread the chaos out a little.

Finally, we were really impressed by the void space at the back of the building. We think the house is already big enough that we can lose this functional space and instead use the void to add some volume and theater to the main living area of the house. Yes, it might add some noise/smells to the bedrooms but we are in a smaller single storey house at the moment where the kids are experiencing all that already. Only time will tell if teh void works or not.

Apparently, we are the first to be building the Somerville. In fact, when we put down our sales deposit there were 2 size options, the 44 and the 46. Now there is only the 46 but we got in whilst the 44 was still available. From what we could see the 46 only offered the Alfresco, a slightly bigger family room, Master en suite, WIR and Laundry. None of those were particularly important to us to justify the extra cost of the extra 2 squares - so we are building the 44.

8 comments:

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  2. How is your new home now?. I also looking to build this house and wondering the practicality of the void. It looks very impressive at display house but not sure of the living condition. I have also having the concerns of smell, noise, heat retentions, cooling effect. Can you please make some comments.

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    1. Hi there. I guess we will have a better idea once we move in but we still like the look of the void. The double height window will allow so much light in that we are happy to take a risk with smells, noise etc.

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    2. Yes, I agree with you. How far are you from completion. Thanks for sharing your experience and I will keep following your interesting comments. Good Luck.

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    3. Hi again. We've been given an expected handover at the end of October so fingers crossed!

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  3. October is not that far. Hope your dreams come true.:)

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  4. Hi. We are also considering the Somerville.. wondered wheat you thought of the void now you’re living in it..? How’s it working as a family ? Cheers, Sam

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  5. We are building the somerville 46 and have blocked in the void because i dont do well with heights. we are going to use the space as a library.

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