Doorway to...delay

Here it is 10 days later and not much else has happened on the block, except for the fact that the neighbours found it a useful place to rest their fibreglass pool and provide access for the earthmoving equipment. Both of the neighbours have their frames up already.

Despite the fact that the final details being sorted are only relatively minor, the builder is refusing to move forward until every "t" is crossed and "i" dotted. Sigh.

The biggest issue has been what to do about the front door. I never imagined it could be so complicated. The starting point - about four months ago - was when I requested one of those fabulous "wow factor" extra-wide pivot entry doors. The quote came back to say that it would be an "extra" $1300. Gulp. But more importantly, I learned that you cannot put a security screen on it because of the pivot placement.

As I have gone for a more environmentally sustainable design than the average for this area, this was a problem. I have opted for orientation, insulation and cross-ventilation, rather than the closed front doors and ducted air conditioning that are all the rage in this area at the moment.

So it was back to the drawing board and I was pretty proud of how quickly I was able to settle on an alternative. What nobody explained to me at the time was that the extra width and height that would have been taken up by a pivot door still needed to be filled somehow. The drafters drew in a sidelight, but it was only at the 11th hour that someone discovered a highlight was also needed and the proposed standard layout on offer was an unbalanced series of four panels of glass around my chosen door. Something like this:


To me, that looks very "bitsy" and unbalanced in the overall design. Even upgrading to single panels of glass on the top and side didn't seem to solve the problem.
Now that the front door was under the microscope other problems were exposed, including the fact that there was no ideal way to hinge the door as it would either overlap double interior doors on one side, or a decorative cutout on the other side (this situation was the result of some modifications to the standard floor plan to enlarge some rooms). It was also revealed that the internal doors would be larger than the front and back door, as they were automatically upgraded from 2040mm high to 2340mm high when I selected the super high ceilings (2740mm or 9 foot) option. If only all of this had been explained to me earlier...

Anyway, to cut a long story short, this is what I have now come up with - a taller door with a slightly different design, balanced between two narrow sidelights. I went for the six glass panel because I thought it had more impact in the taller version and because I thought it balanced the six windows of the facade (I hope it's not too symmetrical now). The back door will be the same, minus the sidelights, both in charcoal grey (Colorbond Ironstone), while the internal doors will have a similar design with four routed panels, painted white.

The end result should look like this. I hope I've made the right decision... Anyway, as a result of all this we now have a slab pour date: October 9!