Now that the foundations are in place, it seems like a good time to post a copy of the ground floor layout:
This is a simplified plan but for anyone who might be confused here are some pointers:
The cottage is at the bottom of the plan. It is positioned south of the house, on the street and has the driveway on the left.
The driveway slopes downwards and turns right into the garage which is linked to the house through a door into the laundry/mudroom.
And then there is The House.
One or two people have asked ‘what sort of house’ we’re building and also, what I meant in an earlier post when I said I wanted a ‘South African house.’ To the first question I answer that we’re building a double-storey house with an iron (tin) roof, sash windows and wooden floors. These are the criteria I gave Bernard in a nutshell. To which he responded, rather to my surprise, that I was describing a ‘contemporary Transvaal farmhouse.’
This was something of a revelation to me as I had not before given much thought to differences in house styles in various parts of the country. With the exception, perhaps, of the beautiful Cape Dutch architecture in the Western Cape. So I think I’ll have to devote a future blog post to the reasons behind this choice.
Other features I mentioned were the direct link from the house to the garage, a covered patio and lots of skylights and, if possible, a sunny bay window. We wanted one open-plan living area and an open plan kitchen since at this stage of our lives we have no need of either a formal dining or sitting room. I also asked for separate bathroom facilities with outside access for casual workers as I’ve found this to be a bit of an issue in other houses. Looking at this plan, we seem to have covered all these points. But what Bernard (our architect) doesn’t know yet is that somewhere or other, inside, outside or on the patio, there is going to have to be a swing…. I’ll break that news to him further down the line.
home-in-the-making 
Looks and sounds lovely. I look forward to comparing libraries and sculleries! (But hopefully not bathroom tales of woe.) Is the cottage to be new also? What are you going to do with that? The garage to laundry and scullery plan sounds very practical.
We have a lot of books! I’m trying to pass on as many as possible to charity book stores but I know there will still be a lot to move. And as fast as I part with them, so more seem to find their way into the house. In our present and past houses we’ve had them in bookshelves in our tv/family rooms or studies. With us now having only one big living room, I am hoping to keep most of them in a more sort of ‘demarcated’ area which has somehow come to be called the library.
Because the kitchen is completely open-plan, I wanted a scullery where the heavy duty washing-up, the dishwasher etc will be out of sight.
The cottage is also new. Although the neighbourhood is made up of quite small stands, many of them have cottages which are let out to tennants. I suspect that some of them might have been staff quarters originally. Now that the area has become very popular with young couples and ’empty nesters’, live-in staff are not all that common and many outbuildings have been converted into cottages or flatlets.
At this stage my husband is hoping to use the cottage as a work-from-home space which would be useful because the house will not have a separate study.
I’ve waited a long time to have easy access from the garage to the kitchen; it makes carrying in groceries etc so much simpler. It can also be better from a security point of view and this is something we have to give quite careful thought to in Johannesburg. I had also originally hoped to keep the dog baskets in the scullery but I think we might find it a bit cramped for that.