Felicity Banks

Houses & Fashion Part Two

June 1, 2025 at 3:42 pm (Reviews, Uncategorized)

The two most prevalent fashions inside new houses these days are:

1. Having a connected kitchen and living area (and usually the dining area too). As someone who gets up to fetch snacks during a movie, I love this. The down sides are: Firstly that kitchens are messy and this layout makes that mess very public. Secondly, kitchens are noisy (jugs, dishwashers, mixers, etc). To me it’s worth it.

2. Marble. I don’t hate marble, but there is SO MUCH and in my opinion it should never be on more than one surface in a room. And, more importantly, it should never EVER be used for flooring. It’s too smooth. Black marble is clearly ‘super classy’ in the minds of some designers (or just black generally). It’s certainly super dramatic, which I generally like, but it’ll show dirt way too clearly and (for those who care about that sort of thing) it will 100% date the house to this precise era. Despite this, a shocking number of bathrooms have marble floors AND floor-to-ceiling marble tiles. It’s too much!

This bathroom brilliantly manages to combine all the most extreme trends into one face-slapping monstrosity.

Not only does it look revolting, it’s so reflective that it’s a little like trying to navigate one’s way through a goth mirror ball. It’s genuinely dangerous (especially if you have to take your glasses off to shower, and therefore can’t see very well in the bathroom). But at least when you smack your face into the shiny shiny walls you’ll know it was fashion that killed you.

The trend of floor to ceiling tiles is good, however. It’s practical in a bathroom, and I appreciate it. Ditto the ‘floating’ vanity thing—SO much easier to clean than the vanity with an annoying gap on one or both sides.

Another trend related to the two items above is the trend to have a walk-in pantry. It’s obviously related to the trend (several decades old) of having a walk-in wardrobe, especially in the master bedroom.

When I first started looking at houses, I was dead-set against WIRs. I hate all corner cupboards! Corners are bad! I love a kitchen where people have carefully designed it so there are no corner kitchens (eg by using that corner space for a cupboard facing in the other direction). I am very large and very uncoordinated (to a medical degree) and it hurts for me stand up for more than about twenty seconds. So (a) the slight awkwardness of retrieving something from a corner cupboard can turn to a dangerous ordeal (think I can’t seriously injure myself doing a simple task? Think again), and (b) if I’m in a WIR and someone else wants to access their clothes, I am trapped in a standing position until they move, which means they are directly causing me pain. This is not helpful for family relationships as I feel like I’m getting tortured.

There are some enormous WIRs out there, and I’ve been won over. Some have chairs, which is excellent. Some are so big they have a table in the middle for wanky white guys to display their cuff links and/or watches. Those I hate: it’s a barrier to movement, and if there isn’t a full metre of space between the table and the cupboards then I’m claustrophobic again.

I really like WIRs with a window, open shelves, and full-length hanging space.

WIRs are often used as a buffer zone between the bedroom and the ensuite, which is excellent because ensuites turn real nasty real fast if your loving lady wife is laying bricks loudly exactly 70cm from where you’re trying to sleep. In my view, the perfect main bedroom has a ‘flat’ cupboard with the ensuite behind it, like this:

In practice, Chris and I hang most of our clothes on hooks. We like to be able to glance at them all (and I get tangled up in coat-hangers with remarkable speed). So for us the cupboard would have shelves for part of it, but no doors. Doors get in the way.

(The trend to leave doors off an ensuite, however, is simply wrong. Ew. For hygiene reasons, and for steam-from-the-shower-getting-into-your-carpet-and-clothes reasons.)

I spend a LOT of time in bed, so ideally the master bedroom has a nice view (so I can feel less imprisoned if I’m bed-bound) and total privacy ie the window is into the yard, not the street. And/or maybe tinted? That would be super cool.

In a perfect world, every single bathroom in every single house is wheelchair accessible. But even the most luxurious bathrooms rarely are. So at least the main toilet and bathroom should be—for guests, if nothing else. Because disabled people shouldn’t have to request a detailed floor plan to decide if they can visit their friends’ houses. And because everyone who lives long enough WILL BECOME DISABLED. Having at least one fully accessible bathroom in every home should be international law.

Going back to the topic of walk-in pantries… at first I hated them. More corners, bleaugh! But I have warmed to them, because you can put the noisy devices in them AND your dishwashing sinks and dishwasher… and then suddenly the kitchen’s noisiness AND mess is magically much improved. More importantly, if the walk-in-pantry has a door that looks like the rest of the cupboards, it’s a secret room. Every house should have a secret room!

I once saw a walk-in-pantry that had a door to the laundry room at the other end. I liked that a LOT because it would massively reduce my claustrophobia. Plus I adore circuits in a house. The more circuits the better. A window in the walk-in pantry is very helpful (for my anxiety) too.

A lot of modern kitchens have an island bench, which I love. It’s a barrier to stop people wandering willy-nilly into my space (I get super stressed cooking because there is time pressure plus the claustrophobia thing, plus pain from standing… even though I also love cooking). It also naturally gives me an escape route: if someone comes around one side, I can exit the other way.

Some island benches have the main sink on them, which is bad. It means all the dishes would be on the bench, virtually on display (and making it useless as a working surface). However, having a non-dishes sink there is great. Handy for grabbing a glass of water or washing hands. Assuming one can train one’s family not to put their dishes directly into that sink.

I HATE island peninsulas, because of course anything that makes me more trapped in the kitchen is bad.

Kitchen floors should probably have tiles (ditto bathrooms). Three-quarters of my immediate family is both uncoordinated and has medical-grade memory issues (eg ADHD). So yes, we will spill water. And yes, no matter how hard we try, we will not always remember to mop it up immediately.

I adore wooden-look floors, AND they’re not as cold as tiles, which is excellent. It’s particularly important as my daughter is not super in touch with her own body so her feet get extremely cold but she usually refuses to wear shoes, slippers, or socks because of sensory issues. She’s so unaware of her own cold feet that she gets chilblains! Not okay! So MAYBE whatever the very very best non-vinyl (because vinyl feels cold) wood-looking floor is would be best for our kitchen/living/hall.

(Most bedrooms have carpet, which is usually good unless you want to use them for someone who has severe mobility issues, as the friction of carpet makes movement a lot harder.)

I’d also like that fake-wood floor surface for my cat rooms, because cats look GORGEOUS on wooden floors… but they also spill water, throw up, etc a lot so it needs to be extremely waterproof and able to be mopped. (Carpet holds a lot of sins, including the incredibly resilient ringworm fungus, so it’s a very bad choice for a cat-fostering or cat-encounter space.)

So! A perfect kitchen has waterproof yet warm floors, an island bench with a sink, and a large walk-in-pantry with a secret back entrance, window, dishwasher, noisy devices, and dishwashing sink (and it had better be a double sink with a draining space because that’s the most practical thing).

A perfect master bedroom has a cupboard in between the room and the ensuite, so the toilet is as far away as possible while still being close. I like a high window that lets in light (and a view of the sky) without anyone being able to see inside. And full privacy but with a great view from the bed. It should also be a reasonable distance from the living room, so other people’s TV watching doesn’t disturb you. That’s true of all the bedrooms, of course, but in my opinion kids’ rooms should be modestly sized (bigger for kids with ADHD or mobility issues) and not toooo nice because that just builds up expectations that may not be met when those kids grow up. Because one of the hardest things for my generation (elder Millennial) onwards is living in a house smaller than the house where we grew up. Being worse off than our parents despite doing the equivalent amount of work is incredibly depressing. Which is not the topic of this blog, thank goodness—too sad.

Moving on.

To me, the perfect bathroom (and kitchen) design has a pale floor, white walls, and feature tiles that should be blue or green or both (water colours for the bathroom; the kitchen should have a different colour palette), with a mixture of ceramic and glass. I love that. And I have almost that in my actual house, which was built in 2012. Sadly, this particular style has gone out of fashion.

When designers aren’t adding fake wood (which I love) or marble, or pure black to things, they are ALL ABOUT DAT BEIGE.

Which is boring. Obviously. Also obviously, they’re trying to create a ‘blank canvas’ so the homeowner can imagine themselves in the house. Which makes sense. And it’s super easy to paint over beige. But still, boring.

I personally adore feature walls, which still appear sometimes in modern houses. I love deep, rich, heady colours that are far too potent for a whole room. They’re also great for photos, of course.

Speaking of bathrooms, our house has ‘lever’ style taps, which are sort of really great because they’re super easy to turn on and off. But I’ve realised they require a different sort of finesse: you need to veeerrrry carefully not put the lever up too high, or it splashes everywhere. So actually they’re a bit dumb.

But the dumbest possible thing in a bathroom is having a glass shower door that opens directly onto the door handle of the bathroom. (To be fair, we have this in our house and we haven’t shattered the shower door yet, even after twelve years, so yay us.)

I love:

*Wall niches.

*Internal ‘window’ holes from one room to another. (I love them even more outside, especially when they frame a view.)

*Arches, both inside and outside.

*Internal garages with two doors leading inside (options are fun and it instantly creates another circuit—and thus less claustrophobia, as getting in and out of the car is awkward and crowded and painful too). A double garage with one giant roller door is great, which I believe I mentioned last entry.

*Fabric walls. This is a rare and weird trend which is silly as the cats would shred them… but the cats would have so much fun climbing the walls, AND it’s great for people who are hard of hearing as fabric dulls sound. Hard to clean, though.

*More sinks. Sometimes it’s a kitchenette, sometimes it’s a sink niche in a wall near the toilet, sometimes it’s a bonus section of kitchen slightly separated from the main kitchen, sometimes it’s a ‘bar’. I love them all. Partly for convenience, but mostly because any space with a sink can become an additional laundry and/or kitchen. It is GREAT to be able to divide a house into a flat that can accommodate an adult child who can’t move out yet but wants independence. Or that can be rented out for extra income. Or that can be used as emergency accommodation (during fires, or for newly-arrived refugees, etc). More sinks means more freedom.

*Round or arched windows. Not particularly practical, but awesome.

*Secret passageways. Strangely, these have not appeared in any of the houses I’ve seen. (Or were they there all along, but SECRET?!?)

*Curved walls. The “Arte” display home by Prof Homes (currently open in Denman Prospect) is really excellent, with curves both outside and inside. Even a vanity has curved edges, and I love it!

*Lofts. I love the feeling of being up high (although my body REALLY can’t handle stairs—and both my kids have hyper-mobility, so stairs are bad for them as well) and I love the funny little nooks you get at the top of stairs, and I love it when a living area has a room above it with an internal balcony. I also love a murder hole. In medieval castles, these holes overhang the entry so defenders can pour boiling oil over invaders. In modern foyers, there is often a double-height section which gives a feeling of grandeur but could also potentially be used to pour boiling oil on unwelcome guests. I love that! Both the grand foyer thing, and the hint of an ancient castle. It warms my fantasy-novel-writing heart. And would be terrible for the next time Canberra is the site of a major smoke event. I really like split-level rooms for that ‘high-up’ feeling as well, but they are so bad for me, because of the stairs—and they are really inefficient space-wise.

The Arte house does the loft thing really well, with a rumpus above the ‘formal’ lounge room. This is the view from on high:

I was finally resigned to refusing all dream houses with stairs when I discovered that Chris also adores stairs. So they’re back on the menu, boys! Of course that means I need a space for a lift, and a spare $100,000 or so to buy it. But cats also adore racing up and down stairs, which is fun.

The other option is to buy a single-level house on a steep block, so you enter the house from ground level but the back of the house is well above the ground (and with, one hopes, wonderful views from the back windows). It should have the front of the house facing south, too, so the back (and lots of big open windows) faces north.

*Chandeliers are cool. I really like the French/art deco ones. A lot of modern ones are tubed fluorescents in unusual shapes. I don’t really like them as the fluoros are too bright and can cause migraines for me. But I appreciate the creativity.

*They’re probably terrible energy-wise, but I love high ceilings, especially slanted, especially with high windows (north-facing, one hopes!) for indirect sunlight and glimpses of sky. I also LOVE skylights that show the sky.

*A lot of houses have an electric ‘fireplace’. I love that. The cats and kids would love it too.

*Quite a few houses have a ‘theatre’ room which I adore as we are an extremely screen-oriented family (sometimes it’s the only way to self-regulate the neurodiverse mind). A theatre room could also be a brilliant business space (cats & movies = perfection) or fundraising space (a movie fundraiser in my home would be quite cool and also extremely easy for me to run).

*Obviously, I love views. I have decided there are four types of views: City lights at night; greenery (eg a lovely enclosed backyard with great plants); hills (near enough to see trees and grass and maybe pretty rocks); water views (either a pool/water feature or an ocean, lake, or river); and mountains (distant grandeur that changes with weather conditions). My heart leaps when I see a pretty hillside, so that’s the most important type of view for me. I like a really nice tree too—lots of beauty for very little maintenance. And I’m obsessed with sunsets, so although west-facing windows are terrible for someone like me who’s super sensitive to heat… I want them. I have a portable spa outside in my real house which I use several times every week. Spas were originally invented for the relief of chronic pain, and they are GREAT. It also forces me to sit still for at least half an hour, without a screen. Just looking at the water makes me feel good, but I always face west (past our DIY cat space and the power lines) and cross my fingers and toes for a great sunset show. This is my happy place.

*I’m always enchanted by a pool, but I live in Canberra so it needs to be (a) heated, and ideally (b) literally inside. I guess the perfect pool has one of those roofs that can open and close, and cafe-style clear plastic blinds that can be down in winter (to keep heat in) and up in summer. And it should be a swim spa, so I could get actual exercise in there, but big enough for the kids to play in with their friends too. This was another idea that I’d decided was simply too silly until it turned out that Chris loves a house with a pool (“If we’re looking for a fantasy house, then it has to have a pool”). And yes, I’d like it to be visible from inside, because looking at water always lifts my spirits. With a fake waterfall over rocks! Bonus points if you can convince moss to grow there.

*And I want a spa bath, because although I still use our outside spa in winter I know it’s a huge energy drain to heat it up (the portable spa takes at least six hours to heat, so sometimes I’ll turn it on first thing in the morning but it still won’t get hot enough to use), and it’s VERY hard to get myself to get out of the spa when it’s super cold. Plus a spa means having to shower afterwards, whereas in a spa bath there’s no chlorine so I could actually just go to bed afterwards.

At the moment, my favourite house is 55 Annabelle View, Coombs. Coombs is a good suburb for us, as it’s close to Chris’s work in Woden. These days he spends at least two hours every work day going to and from work (either by bike—much kudos to him—or bus). It’s also close to his parents, which is a big plus as we see them at least once per week. And it’s still on the Western side of Canberra, so hopefully we wouldn’t lose our entire West Belco community.

It’s close to a high school (good for Tim) and in Primary Enrolment Area for a college that’s right next to Chris’s work. It would be weird for me to live on the South but I’ve done it before (we lived in Farrer when we first married). The Molonglo Valley district is funny because one suburb—Whitlam—is North side and the rest is South. There are bus stops on that street.

Anyway, it’s an enormous house which has a theatre and a pool and the most beautiful views ever. I think that hill is Bold Hill, and there are more to left and right. With bike paths, that we would all definitely use.

The Molonglo River is RIGHT THERE—this photo has the river on the right and the house (white) on the left. I think the gravel road is a fire access road. And there’s a half basketball court, which is awesome too! Tim got into shooting hoops during lockdown back in 2020, but of course our dinky little hoop is far too small for him now.

It’s somewhat boxy-looking, but I could have someone paint cats directly onto it, which would be cool. Assuming Chris let me, lol. It has a massive laundry (a great full-quarantine room) plus a large rumpus room which would be a great room for customers to meet cats, especially as it has a toilet nearby (I empty kitty litter about six times a day sometimes, and it’s very difficult to carry litter leavings through a door when kittens are clamouring for attention/escape) AND an upstairs guest room with ensuite (great for soft quarantine). Plus a large master bedroom with a huge ensuite (big enough for a spa bath MAYBE—the floor plan is wrong; there is no bath there so far) and huge windows looking at that amazing view. And a theatre room with a SINK (ie kitchen… which I’d use for washing cat dishes separately to human dishes… and as part of a separate flat when someone needed it). And it has a library room (the gym, which has no windows because it’s basically underground) with a wooden floor *swoon*. And a pool which I think is a swim spa. And two balconies, one of which has a door into the ensuite and is above the garage (so should be strong enough to hold a spa). And the kitchen has views of the pool, and a giant island bench, plus a pantry with sink and dishwasher. And the master bedroom has a his-and-hers WIR, which is excellent. And the garage is giant, which would be helpful for storing furniture for refugee families before they arrive in Canberra. It also has a really wide foyer with a murder hole and a chandelier which I quite like.

The flaws include a steep driveway, too much marble in the bathrooms, marble on the left-hand balcony (extremely slippery and stupid), and real wooden floors which are probably not moisture-resistant enough to handle my family (I’d put rubber-backed mats down in the kitchen to try to keep it safe). It needs a lift (I’d put one from the garage to Bed 4) and a spa bath. I don’t think the pool is heated (but it is possible to buy pool heaters for an existing pool). I’d also put a lockable door in the hall to the left of the stairs on the ground floor, so if we wanted to host refugees we could keep completely separate (traumatised people from other cultures who don’t speak English tend to be a lot of work and we would definitely accidentally mutually offend each other). The cat spaces have carpet, which isn’t ideal hygiene-wise but obviously that’s not a fatal flaw. The ‘living’ room would make a perfect study for Lizzie—separate from the main room’s noise, but also public enough that we’d be constantly walking past and seeing what she was doing/watching. It has three ovens (good for either a tiny bit of cooking or a lot—I’d love to host big events sometimes) and an ice maker (great because my kids love ice). The family/meals area is super spacious without feeling so big it’s cold.

This floor plan has a shocking number of mistakes. North is to the right, not up (good). There is a large front window in Bed 1 (good), and no bath in the ensuite (good). There is no joinery in the office. There is a sink in the WIP (good). The ‘bar’ in the theatre room only has benches along the walls, not sticking out (which is good). But you get the gist.

One of the cool things is that, because the block is steep, the balcony on the left is on the same level as the pool. I could hop in the pool for a swim, have a spa afterwards, and not get any of the wooden floors wet in the process (or have to navigate wet stairs).

So how much is this mansion of a home (including theatre, pool, epic views, and small-business spaces)? According to online calculations, it’ll sell for about $2.3 million.

Lucky I believe in miracles or that would be super depressing.