Houses & Fashion Part Three
Not only do I have a few more strongly-held opinions to share, the house I thought was so perfect (55 Annabelle View Coombs) has been knocked off its pedestal!
As you can see, it’s somewhat boxy-looking, and the driveway is very steep (probably scrape-the-bottom-of-your-car steep, honestly).
Here’s my new improved dream house, 16 Chaloupka St Whitlam.
As you can see, it is an extremely grand mansion. Embarrassingly so, I would say.
That impression is very much continued within the house, with feature walls of colourfully veined marble and several obvious luxuries like super-high ceilings and an internal balcony from the upstairs sitting room to the living/kitchen (which is not just for luxury, but for holding yelled conversations between floors, which I guarantee we would do daily). And a front entrance murder hole. Lovely! And even a wooden ceiling in the family room, which is very pretty and super high (necessary, or a wooden roof feels claustrophobic).
Annabelle View is a wee bit ugly, but could be painted on. Chaloupka St has nice texture (and a full-length feature rock wall on the right hand side of the portico) and the main flaw is that it is so obviously big and fancy. Oh, and the front steps are stupid (the ‘natural’ rocks look tacked on and the white steps are very slippery when wet). Winner of first impressions: Chaloupka.
Annabelle View has a lovely murder hole, but Chaloupka St has a murder hole AND an internal balcony. Winner: Chaloupka.
Chandelier-wise I’m not passionately in love with either of the murder hole light fittings. I like the one at Annabelle View slightly better, but Chaloupka gets bonus points for having a matching-but-even-bigger chandelier in the family room. Winner: Dead Heat.
So let’s talk style!
Annabelle View’s bathrooms make me sigh over the classic error of having marble floors and marble walls, like so:
The effect could be calmed down considerably with nice plain bath mats. It’s not super offensive.
At Chaloupka St, there is a slight pattern on the walls and floor, but it’s barely there. The marble benches are dramatic. They’re possibly a little over-dramatic, but I could definitely handle living in a house (ahem… mansion) designed by someone who decorates like a 90s goth girl heavily into theatre. I was never goth, but I was always goth-adjacent. And I was always theatrical as f*ck.
This is the ensuite bathroom. The marble bench wraps around into the walk-through wardrobe, which is kind of cool except the designers really should have put a door there (eye-roll). There are four skylights, all showing real sky. You can see one at the corner of the WIR. There’s one over the toilet, one over the shower, and one over the bath. Which is actually excellent, because it fills the entire space with natural light AND the one kind of window that doesn’t need a privacy covering. And yes, there’s room for a spa bath (and I could lie back and look at the sky, which is so very very cool). The shelves that look curved really are curved, which I love. Sadly it’s the only curve in the house. But there IS a curve!
Sidebar: Double sinks are super fashionable at the moment. I think they’re silly, but reasonably rational (useful for two people brushing teeth at the same time and not wanting to spit on each other).
The taps in this photo are in a material that is SO fashionable at the moment; a kind of gold/copper look thing. I sort of like it, for the slight steampunk vibe. But I sort of don’t. (I know, weird. I don’t quite have a strong opinion, except for my usual aversion to anything so popular.) My mum and sister have that style in their houses, which of course gives me positive associations.
So, bathroom style: Chaloupka wins.
(Ooh! The toilets all seem to have heated seats and to automatically lift the lid as you walk in. That is a little silly but also cool. The really brilliant thing is that at least one sink tap has a motion sensor. Hurrah for hygiene!)
In terms of bathrooms, Chaloupka st is perfect on the ground floor: There is an ensuite for the master room; another bedroom with an ensuite (perfect for fostering kittens – it even has a shelf in the shower, and so does the ensuite); and a powder room (for humans to use). Which means that upstairs should have the main bathroom.
It doesn’t.
There is NO main bathroom. For some bizarre reason, the upstairs of Chaloupka st has THREE ENSUITES. It would make an excellent share house, but surely that’s not what this house is intended for!?! I guess it’s for teens that don’t want to share a bathroom with anyone else.
I have decided that one of those ensuites should be converted to a kitchenette (remove toilet and add a bench and you’re good to go), and at least one of the others needs to be converted into the ‘main’ bathroom so that everyone can access it easily (find a place to put another door into it).
The last ensuite room might be handy as an emergency cat room one day, so I’ll leave that one alone.
With an upstairs kitchen, we could divide the house into two fully-functional houses. Always useful.
Annabelle View has only one downstairs toilet, which would be the cat toilet. So Chaloupka wins on this one, big time, even though six bathrooms is seriously too many even for us.
Here’s the Annabelle View floor plan. The most notable thing is that downstairs would basically be for work (both my cat fostering and my husband’s home office) and special things (like watching movies in the theatre room), and upstairs is for living/kitchen/bedrooms.
Here’s the floor plan for 16 Chaloupka St Whitlam. Can you tell what one key thing makes this house MUCH better than Annabelle View?
Did you spot it?
Downstairs has everything I need: the master bedroom, the kitchen/living, and the cat room (aka Bed 5). Upstairs has a beautiful sitting room (which I could visit any time I was healthy enough), two rooms for the kids, and a room for Chris’s home office.
In short, Chaloupka St doesn’t need a lift. Ding ding ding! That’s a winner baby! And if someone in the family other than me develops mobility issues, we can move them into the study. The study is of course perfect for Lizzie’s study, but if we need it for something else we can make an adorable study nook under the stairs (which are open).
Now, can you tell what one thing is better in Annabelle View than Chaloupka St?
Chaloupka doesn’t have a windowless library room (“gym”). Sad! We’d probably put quite a few books in the theatre room, and also just all over the place around the house. We can survive without a designated library room. It’s a tiny bit sad not to have our own library, so Annabelle wins on this one.
Annabelle’s theatre room has about 10 plush chairs in it, and Chaloupka St has “only” four. So Chaloupka wouldn’t be nearly as well suited to medium-sized film events (only small film events). However, honestly I’d usually feel more comfortable watching stuff with four chairs for the four people that actually live in the house. Easier to heat, too. Conclusion: Another dead heat. (Chaloupka street has cool tiny starry lights in the ceiling, which I like too). It has a window, which is bad for screens but it has a gorgeous view, so it’s worth it.
Annabelle View technically wins on the ‘best view’ front but only because the reserve is literally across the road (and has a river, which is wonderful… but also probably a flood and bug hazard). The view from Chaloupka St is truly spectacular. It is on a corner with Maymuru St, which is 100% the best and highest street in Whitlam. Chaloupka St also has views in two directions instead of just one. And it has pretty rocks on the near hillside. The view from the kitten room is particularly exquisite even from the ground floor. And the sitting room is oriented perfectly to frame the view. I literally just want to sit there. Winner: Annabelle, but barely. And the view from the master bedroom looks over the backyard pool (excellent) plus some bonus hills in the distance—while also being private. Impressive.
I think the master bedroom’s privacy can even out the reserve proximity, making this a dead heat again. Which is AMAZING because this is the view from Annabelle View:
Even I can hardly believe Chaloupka St (or anywhere) can equal THAT.
Flooring-wise, Chaloupka wins again. It has hybrid floors instead of wood (safer for my unco family) AND the kitchen and bathrooms are tiled (YAY for common sense).
The walk-in pantry at Chaloupka St has a double sink and dishwasher, and the bench has one sink (an unusually big one, which is cool).
Speaking of the kitchen, remember our 90s goth girl theatre kid designer? Observe her taste at play:
That’s my drama queen.
Oh! I forgot to mention. The walk-in pantry has a glass door leading outside. ie it has a window AND a door. Perfection. And that left-hand wall in the kitchen pic above is SO GOOD for back-friendly storage (and plenty of it). The fridge is in that wall too… hiding.
I adore that the pool is very much on show from the family room and from the master bedroom (and from the upstairs balcony). And from the front entrance. (Which, incidentally, is so big and so nice that it would be the ‘customer space’ for Tabby Time Cat Encounters.) This also means that the pool is almost sort of inside. With a gazebo and some blinds, it would be enclosed enough to be used year-round (I think). However, it is definitely not a swim spa. (The solution to this is to buy a separate swim spa and put it in the alfresco area.) It is also solar heated. And 7m long. With a waterfall. Pool Winner: Chaloupka.
There are three errors on the floor plan for Chaloupka St. First, the fireplace is on the wall, not in the middle of the meals/rumpus area (good.. also, fireplaces are cool). Second, the upstairs balcony does NOT have a glass floor (great). Third, there is no laundry chute. Sad! We opened the narrow cupboards downstairs and upstairs, and found shelves. Which is cute, but not NEARLY as cute as a laundry chute. We could either use it as an actual laundry chute (fun) or as a secret passageway for the cats to climb up. So I hope that the ‘floor’ of the upstairs cupboard is really just another detachable shelf. That would be so cool!
Location-wise, Chaloupka St Whitlam is obviously closer to our West Belco community (including schools), but not as close to Chris’s work. However, it’s a lot closer to Chris’s work than West Belconnen. He’d save about 20 minutes per work day riding his bike, but actually lose time taking the bus I think. And the nearest bus stop is much farther away, which would be annoying for both him and the kids. Although it’s only 400m away so it’s not a total disaster. Car-wise, Chaloupka St is fantastic—very close to the Glenloch interchange, William Hovell Dr, and Coppins Crossing Road (which has a new name now for most of its length, but whatever). It’s not as close to Evelyn Scott School, but if the new William Hovell roadworks include decent bike paths then it would still be possible for the kids to ride to school (whether to their current schools, Hawker schools, or Evelyn Scott school). So, the location is a dead heat again. Mostly thanks to being able to keep Hawker as an option for high school and college (probably).
Huh. I really thought Annabelle would win that one.
Oh! Annabelle View has gravelly spaces all along the street, where people could park (although they usually park on the street). Chaloupka street has trees planted on those areas, so much less parking… but on Maymuru St there is some parallel parking, which is obviously very useful. I reckon Annabelle wins, but only just.
Let’s talk laundries!
Ninety percent of laundries these days have a great bench… that doesn’t allow for top-loaders at all. This sucks, as top-loaders are often (not always) easier for people with bad backs, and always easier for absent-minded people (who can pause the load to add their favourite bra which they forgot to add because they were wearing it). The laundry at Chaloupka doesn’t have ANY floor space for a washing machine… because it has SHELF space. It’s designed to have the washer and dryer slightly raised off the ground (about 20cm), which is actually brilliant if it works. (It still wouldn’t fit our top loader, but I’d put the top loader in the garage and use it for cat stuff only, buying a new front loader for human clothes.) The Annabelle laundry is massive which is cool, but the Chaloupka one should work well too (and Annabelle has very slippery marble floor, which is dumb). They both have external doors, where a cat flap to an outside cat run should go. So, a dead heat I think.
Both houses fail to have a door to the master ensuite, which is dumb. They both have over-sized master bedrooms, which is great. Annabelle has two WIRs, which is cool, but Chaloupka St has those cute curved shelves, plus skylights, plus lots of silly but actually slightly useful features, like a pop-out mirror. And Chaloupka’s ensuite is bigger, which is important for that spa bath (and it makes a door less important as the shower steam is a long way away from the cupboard. BUT the door to the toilet is glass! Ew! Incorrect!) Although Annabelle has a door to the balcony which was eminently practical. Chaloupka has no good path from the pool to a shower: every path takes you over the hybrid floor. So we’d need a lot of really good bath mats, I guess. We can handle that. The living room is tiled, so that’s good for hosting kids’ parties without wrecking the wooden floor with moisture.
Chaloupka St has another emphatic win: Annabelle View has an energy rating of only four stars. Which is good, but not for such a new house. Chaloupka St has an energy rating of seven… even without window coverings in the foyer. That is a big win and very important.
Chaloupka St claims to be disability friendly, and I’m not sure why. The benches in two of the showers? The generous size of the many bathrooms? The wooden/textured walls in some places (good for the Hard of Hearing)? All those things are definitely good, but not enough to call the whole house accessible. There are two steps up from the garage, and loads of steps to the front door, so it’s certainly not wheelchair accessible. There’s no ramp or hoist for the pool. There’s no railings in the bathrooms. So, I’m confused. But very curious.
Neither house has a cat run. Tsk, tsk.
Neither has a spa bath or spa. (We have our beloved portable spa, but no inflatable pool will live forever.)
So those three things would need to be added, starting with a cat run because Zipper (our older cat) refuses to use litter but is willing to fertilise a garden. Both Zipper and Zoom would NOT adjust to being fully inside. Whitlam is a cat containment area, which is a good thing. Cats are so bad for native animals! And they need to stop breeding, too—every foster organisation everywhere is over-run.
Foster kittens like Turtle (pictured) would enjoy a cat run, but they don’t actually need one.
I’d end the blog there, but…
I actually had a very odd experience with this house. I was looking at houses online, and 16 Chaloupka St Whitlam came up as a new listing. It had a price of $450,000-$2,000,000 (huh?) and instead of a description it had details about a grand opening for the display home. That grand opening happened in December last year.
I figured it was an ex-display home now for sale, and someone forgot to write a proper description. It seemed to indicate that it was still open on weekends, but it wasn’t clear. I caved and emailed to ask for clarification (they still haven’t replied).
Then, it vanished. First from allhomes, then realestate and then others. It’s still on Domain at the time of writing but I imagine they’ll remove it soon.
Chris used to look at display homes in Whitlam, but he said he definitely hadn’t seen it (even though he loves a house with a pool and/or a view).
I drove past it yesterday, and was pleased to see that it definitely does exist in the physical world.
Today I rocked up at 10am, hopeful. The pool waterfall was on, but all the lights were off. There was a display house sign, but no one else around.
It was raining. The street looked abandoned.
However, there were fresh muddy footprints leading up to the front door, and away again. Sneakers, so probably not a real estate agent. Someone else, like me, was trying to get inside.
I tried the door, and it was locked.
I tried the phone number on the sign and—surprisingly—someone answered! He said it would be open in an hour. So I went home, collected Chris, and went back. And we saw it! All of it! Actually, it was really nice to see it together.
Assuming it wasn’t all just a shared hallucination.
The real estate agent said it’ll officially be for sale in a few months, and they’re “accepting offers now”. So someone posted it by mistake I suppose. It’s real, and he assured me it isn’t sold yet.
I reckon the $450,000 figure is how much it would cost to build this house elsewhere, and the $2,000,000 is the approximate amount it’ll actually sell for.
Just don’t try and find it online—outside of the builder’s web site, here.
Pretty water! Yay!
Felicity Banks 
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