Windows and light

The morning light coming through our family room windows this morning was beautiful. We are lucky as this area faces North and so we get great sun all year around. The only issue is this means it gets a little hot in summer. Something we are looking at fixing with the renovation.


Unfortunately this beautiful sash window and these French doors will soon be removed. Where the French doors are we are extending out for more living space, off which will come a hall to lead to two new bedrooms, a family bathroom and laundry. At the end of this new living space we will be putting in wooden framed, double glazed, sliding doors. The window will also be replaced with sliding doors to lead out onto an alfresco deck.

We did think it would be great to reuse the French doors but we wanted better energy efficiency with double glazing. Now I am trying to think how I could reuse them elsewhere. Maybe in the garden?

We did it - contract signed!

Yesterday we finally signed our building contract after seven weeks of almost daily phone calls or e-mails between us and the building group. It has been a long and frustrating couple of months why we waited for questions to be answered and new quotes to be done. Everything seemed to take so much longer then I thought it would and we haven't even started the build yet.

However I am glad we were thorough, so hopefully there won't be too many surprises during the build.

Now I thought I would give a few examples of things we questioned to give you an idea of what to consider if you are negotiating a building contract.

We asked to see what internal doors, external sliding glass doors and windows they were going to put in - so glad we did as they weren't what we wanted even though we had specified high quality in the beginning. Fittings such as these are worth checking as builders often use cheaper models so they can pass on a lower overall quote.

This was also the case with flooring, cornices and picture rails which weren't what we expected in all rooms.

Timeline - we were given a number of days but make sure you are clear what is considered a builders day and what contingencies have been included. It is also good to have a clear commencement and end date.

Anyway we may have sorted the contract but I am told that now the real fun and games begin especially as we are living in the house for the whole build.

Window design and the environment

Windows placement and style can add so much to the house, they let in the light and as some say provide the soul of the house. So how do you decide on what windows to use? What is more important to you the style and size or how well they protect your home, by keeping heat inside during Winter and heat out in Summer - the energy effectiveness? Can the two go hand in hand?


These are all questions my hubby and I recently asked ourselves as going through our building contract we realised exactly what windows and glass sliding doors we were getting. We didn’t really think about it until we saw it in writing.


Initially we weren’t keen on getting the awning windows listed and wanted double hung ones but then we checked them out on the Trend website and discovered the star rating was quite high so decided to keep them. This is important to us, one because we want an energy efficient home but secondly because two of the bedrooms face West and so are heat boxes in Summer. With this in mind we are getting all new windows double glazed with PVC frames. Did you know that PVC frames transmit less heat then others? I certainly didn’t until I looked into it.


The other important thing with windows is placement and this can be looked at more easily when building from scratch but as we are extending an old house we unfortunately can’t change this as much. We are lucky however that our main living space faces North and this will be the area with the glass facing doors, good for the Winter sun but we need to make sure they are well shaded in the Summer and so are looking at our eaves and a pergola for this.


If you are interested in finding out all about windows and energy ratings – visit the Windows Energy Rating Scheme website.