Big exciting things will soon be happening around these parts!
After almost two years living in the country, we’re nearly ready to take the next step and make this house what it needs to be.
If you remember, the country house used to be our weekend home, and we spent most of our time living in our apartment in the city. Life was good…but we missed the country home so much every time we left, and we desperately wanted to spend more time up here. We had lots of fun talking about how and when we might be able to do that.
The pandemic expedited our plans – a real silver lining. And nearly two years later, I can say with confidence that we’re in the right place for our family right now. Amelie loves her school and the friends she’s made up here (and the pool and the beach…swimming is one of her very favourite things!). Hayden and I have been able to grow his business, to the point that it’s now our business, and achieve a work-life balance that I just can’t imagine being possible or easy in the city. We never have to leave when we don’t want to, and what with the pool and the landscaping and all the work we’ve been putting into the place, it looks better than ever.
That said, the house is not great. It’s perfectly liveable – in fact, more than liveable; I like it far more than I like most houses, and being an avid reader of home and garden magazines, architecture tomes, and watcher of Grand Designs and Love It or List It, that’s saying a lot – I see a lot of houses, interior design, and gardens on my daily travels. However, there is no escaping the fact that it was designed as a holiday house, not a permanent home, and when we designed and built it we didn’t have a child.
Living in the house as it is for all this time has given us a really strong idea of what we need and want it to be. Last year, we engaged some wonderful architects and told them what we were after, and they’ve been working with our thoughts and their ideas to design the most amazing extension. The extension will give us an extra bedroom and an entire new primary suite, with a new bathroom and walk-in wardrobe, a dedicated laundry/mudroom, an extra living space with a powder room, and a playroom for Amelie. We will finally properly have room for guests to stay, a separate bathroom for Hayden and me, and we’ll be maximising our views out over the ocean. We’ll have a much-improved space for cooking and eating outside, and we’re even putting in some hidden wine storage…
All of this is still a while away – we won’t be ready to start building until the second half of this year. Right now we’re going through detailed design with the architects, so things are still changing (and have changed since these renders were drawn up) but this isn’t too far from where we’ll end up…
Exciting, right?! We’re so excited! Of course, we just want to be building it already, but waiting is just fine, especially to make sure we get it right. This is actually the third time we’ve looked at how we could extend, but the first time we’ve felt 100% confident in our plan and ready to go ahead (and phew – if we had proceeded with any of the other, inferior plans I’d feel so disappointed with where we would be now!). It really speaks to trusting your own instincts and feelings, and to just how great our architects are (seriously, I cannot speak highly enough of them – hiring architects to turn our ideas into something that really works, looks amazing, and is actually buildable has been so worth it already).
Watch this space…!
The Judd Crew 
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