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At McCarthy Homes, we know due to the increased amount of time spent homebound, more than ever are Australian families seeking relief from city living and relocating. If you have been tempted by the space, quiet and freedom of acreage living, we have the perfect home designs to enhance your new lifestyle.

Acreage living may provide you with a more traditionalist lifestyle, but that does not mean your living space has to reflect this turn of the times. McCarthy homes can help you navigate the shift from urban to rural living and cultivate a space which still feels like you- enhancing the newfound freedoms you get to bask in. 

Luxury Acreage Homes

By drawing on the rustic elements of the rural setting and innovative design, your new living space can complement your new found rural lifestyle. Our open-plan kitchens and living spaces guarantee plenty of space for your family to evolve. This configuration ensures that whilst you may have access to more space, your family is still brought together. Our homes empower you to start new hobbies in this new environment, and give you access to the room you and your family need to do so.

By using the surrounding open spaces as inspiration, this means you can experience more all-day sunlight, with a living space that seamlessly transitions into outdoor space. Prioritising open spaces in the design can offer you the opportunity to entertain more and have more guests and visitors than ever before.

Your new acreage also means there’s no limit to the home you can create. Now having access to the space to make your dream home, we recommend formulating a wish list of design elements, features and styles for the plans we develop together.

Acreage Home Designs

McCarthy’s acreage home design embraces a classic layout and design aesthetics to work alongside the open environment. With a range of knock down rebuild home designs suited to acreage land or a custom built home design, we can work together to create your dream acreage home. Here are two popular acreage home designs to provide inspiration.

Manor

The Manor Home style has been designed for larger plots of land in mind, to enhance the feeling of more space and privacy. With an open plan living area, as well as a separate lounge and study, the Manor can provide you with a home design which brings the family together whilst affording spaces for just working or just relaxing. With four sizable bedrooms, the Manor can be the perfect home to transition your family into acreage living, with the space to have guests stay. 

With your choice of inclusions, you can turn the manor’s house details into a space which reflects your style and preferences.

Windemere

The Windemere home has been designed exclusively for acreage living, ideal for a modern family living a more rustic country lifestyle. With an open plan living space and alfresco, the Windemere also has a separate study space and lounge space to ensure you have spaces for just relaxing and just working. The secondary bedrooms are located away from the master to maximise privacy – perfect for hosting guests. 

Both of these designs give you the freedom to customise a home that feels right for you, and empowers you to create a luxury acreage lifestyle, designed to work with your family’s needs. 

To learn more about Acreage Homes or to begin building your own dream home with McCarthy Homes, contact our friendly team today on 07 3358 9704 or through our online contact page.

At McCarthy Homes we design and build houses that you will truly love. Our inclusion packages are just one of the many ways you can instantly elevate your home design to the next level of luxury.

Our inclusion collections are all designed internally by our expert design and selections team. These are the same designers that work on our custom home designs, so you can rest assured that our inclusions collections are perfectly designed to accentuate the interior of your new home. 

Through the Sandstone package, we aim to provide you with a perfectly curated foundation for life to be effortlessly lived. Your McCarthy home will integrate Sandstone through classic and streamlined design elements.

The Sandstone inclusions helps McCarthy Homes achieve our vision of empowering our clients with the freedom to create and customise your ideal home. Your personal styles can be incorporated in our customisable and adaptable foundation. Our Sandstone inclusions make high quality dream homes, which still feel like you and your family.

Starting with the kitchen, McCarthy homes believe good taste and functionality go hand in hand. The Sandstone Kitchen relies on white melamine shelving systems with formica cabinetry in customisable colours and a range of handles. With the addition of black glass ceramic and caesarstone benches, Sandstone provides you with the perfect kitchen foundation which can be customised to suit your family’s needs and styles. Classic tones and features support you in fostering your ideal living space, which can evolve with you and your family’s needs and preferences.

For the bathroom, McCarthy seeks to curate a space akin to a retreat through sleek and contemporary finishes and calming colours. The Sandstone bathroom uses semi-framed shower screens and micro framed mirrors to open the space and create the feeling of an oversized bathroom regardless of the home. With your choice of tapware and basins, you can select bathroom elements that suit the functionality you require and the style you are after. 

In the living spaces, the selection of internal features with the Sandstone package allows you to curate according to your lifestyle and aesthetics. With your choice of tile colour and type, alongside customisable door handles and house-wide paint colour, we can design a space which brings your dream home to life. These chosen elements are enhanced by the Sandstone almost two and a half metre ceilings, extensive melamine shelving and convenience and safety focused electrics. Sandstone living spaces are dedicated to creating an environment for you to unwind and live with ease. 

The external features of your home can represent the personalised and classic elements of the interior. With the addition of James Hardie products, your home’s exterior can set the tone of functionality and design for the rest of your space. External features such as wind rated slabs and roofs, two garden taps and termite barrier systems help protect your home from the outside in. Additions of customised coloured garage doors, your choice of door handle and entry door type allow your own preferences and needs to be reflected. 

McCarthy Homes’ inclusion packages deliver a home design with tried and tested functionality and operation, whilst still including your own personality and styles. Sandstone is the ideal foundation for your home which has been carefully designed to handle the changes and continuity of your family. 

To learn more about upgrading to our Inclusion packages or to begin building your new home contact our friendly team today on 07 3358 9704 or through our online contact page.

After months or years of planning, you’ve finally found your perfect piece of land and are ready to build your new home. Maybe it’s that home on a hill with the views you’ve always wanted, or the rural acreage dream that you can retire to. Whatever you’ve chosen, it’s an exciting move, but if you want your new home experience to be as smooth as possible, it’s best to be aware of all possible site and building costs before you start. 

At McCarthy Homes, we conduct site checks for all of our clients project home builds, to gain a better awareness of any challenges their block may produce during the build. This allows our customers to plan ahead for any possible construction costs and our team to prepare a house plan that is best for the block. It is important to know that not all projects will cost the same. In this article, we’ll go through some of the common variables that you should be aware of when planning for costs to build.

Sloping Blocks & Excessive Fall

This is one of the most important factors influencing building costs. When it comes to slope, generally, the flatter the land, the less it will cost to build. With slopes and uneven terrain, a lot has to be done to ensure stability, whether it is levelling or using steel for the foundation and the structure. However, the additional cost to build on a sloping block is usually offset by the views your home will achieve by building onto the side of a hill or valley etc.

Potential Flooding

There are various locations that are susceptible to flooding. In Queensland, Brisbane is one such area that has experienced its fair share of floods in the past 100 years. If the area you plan to build in is prone to flooding then this will also add to your final cost as your house needs to be designed in a way that if a 1 in 100 years flood comes through that no one in the property will die. 

Traditional Character Council Requirements & Council Overlays

A commonly overlooked issue that you might run into is a building proposal for vacant land in a Traditional building character overlay or Character residential zone. You will need to discuss your options with the local Council and your proposal will be assessed on how it impacts on the streetscape character. 

Driveway Gradient & Access Issues

You may love your house and it’s location on a hill, but steep driveways can have a range of problems. Your local council will require proposed driveways to comply with a number of technical standards prior to driveway permit approval. You can find your Council’s recommended gradients for driveways on their website, which also includes details for driveway loads and materials. Your builders will make sure your driveway meets these requirements when planning your new home.

Bushfire Zones

Building a home in a rural or coastal area can be a great change of pace however these areas can also fall into bush fire prone areas which will impact the costs of your new home build. There’s no need to panic as building materials have come a long way in implementing materials that can still give you a beautiful home that also meets any fire zone regulations. The first thing you will need is a BAL assessment to determine the level of risk and therefore, the level of compliance your new house will need. Once you have your BAL assessment, your builder can design your home with the appropriate construction methods and materials.

Potential Boundary Setback Requirements

The Queensland Development Code (QDC) defines where and how homes are located on a property. There are different setback requirements for lots under 450 square metres and lots 450 square metres and over. Your builder will need to be aware of these requirements when planning your new home on your lot.

Acoustic Overlays

Acoustic overlays is another possible cost of building that is not commonly known among our clients. Acoustic overlays measure the effect that any surrounding transport noise from roads, from rail, or air may have on your home to ensure the health and safety is protected for anyone living in the home. Depending on the location of your home, you might need to apply specific noise reduction protection to certain parts of your home, creating a safe environment. 

Choose A Builder With Experience

While this list of building home costs might first appear long, it’s nothing to a builder with experience in custom blocks. At McCarthy Homes our team has custom built hundreds of homes on blocks with issues from above. If you’ve found your dream block of land but are worried about the price of building a house then contact our friendly team today to learn about your options. Contact us on 07 3358 9704 or through our online contact page.

McCarthy Homes is excited to announce that we have been awarded another townhouse project! This new development is located in Loganholme and is another showcase of our service offering to the multi-residential space.

The project, Nest on Torres, is located in one of the prime locations in South East Queensland. Loganholme is conveniently located with a short trip to either the Brisbane CBD or the beautiful Gold Coast. Quiet surroundings and nearby schools make this development very attractive, whether you are an owner occupier or investor.

The Nest on Torres project spans 4,291.33 m2 and comprises 22 stunningly designed townhouses, ranging from two to three-bedroom home designs. Created in line with top sustainability practises, these townhouses have been designed to maximise northerly orientation and natural light. The windows in our townhouses have generous proportions and have been located to maximise daylight penetration, and the ceiling heights have been increased to allow light to penetrate further into the buildings.

This approach to maximising solar access and daylight within the homes reduces reliance on artificial lighting and heating, as well as improving energy efficiency and residential amenity.

Further to this, window hoods and roof overhangs will be utilised for sun management, providing shading in the warmer months, and allowing warming light to penetrate in the cooler months with the lower sun angles. The hoods and overhangs also provide further benefit to the home designs by adding aesthetic interest and depth to the facades.

McCarthy Homes is proud to be involved in this project with such a strong focus on home energy efficiency. With the sod-turning ceremony taking place today, the project is due for competition in September 2022.

McCarthy Homes has been Brisbane’s trusted townhouse builder for many years. From townhouses to large scale property developments, you can trust McCarthy Homes to deliver your project.

To learn more about McCarthy Homes builders, contact our service team today on 07 3358 9704 or through our online contact page.

The Location

“We had a pretty good idea of what we wanted and like to think we have a knack for design. We couldn’t afford a waterfront block so we purchased an vacant block 90 metres from the canal where we later purchased a pontoon and have our little boat stationed there. We really enjoy the privacy of a dry block and have used bamboo to enhance this privacy.”

The Build

“Considering we only had a 12-metre wide block we used 3 and 4-metre ceiling heights with soaring voids to create the feeling of light and space. We used polished concrete as we just love it and went for a slightly smokey wall paint colour because a stark white may have seemed a bit cold in such a voluminous area. We both really like mood lighting and used hand-picked feature wall lighting and pendants throughout to achieve this.”

“We went with an open plan living concept as we don’t feel that a theatre room would have been used, so we bought a big TV that you can watch from kitchen whilst cooking, dining and just relaxing on the couch. The design is perfect for our lifestyle – there are basically six zones in one space! It’s just so relaxing!”

We did everything design and decorating wise by ourselves and we are really proud of what we have achieved.

Ready to discuss building your dream home? Get in touch with us today.

Hear from Damian and Alison about their journey with McCarthy Homes.

We spoke with David Farrer, Director of McCarthy Homes, about what the new owners can expect.

Who do you feel this home would be suited to?
It’s a real family home! It’s especially suited to families with children who are looking to have their own private spaces away from Mum and Dad. The bedrooms are generous and include walk-in robes and built in desks, which you won’t often find in secondary bedrooms. Parents are also treated to a luxury master suite with a deluxe walk-in robe and double vanity ensuite.

What will the new owner’s think of the fittings and finishes in this home?
Once you walk into this home, you don’t only see the quality, you feel it. We’ve worked with a team of perfectionist tradesmen and sourced fixtures and fittings from only the best suppliers. It’s the same standard you’ll find in any of our builds, paired with a few extra options to really boost the wow factor for its new owners.

What has the feedback been from people who explore the Carrington?
We’ve had exceptional feedback – people love the under stair wine storage area. It’s both aesthetically pleasing and great for those who love to entertain. We’re hearing a lot of people say how much they love the open plan design and clever separation of living spaces, and how the home feels significantly bigger than it is. The Carrington is now one of our top sellers.

When can the new owner’s move in, and why is it a great idea to buy a display home?
There’s quite a few perks that come with purchasing a display home. Firstly, we lease the home back to its owner until they can move in, in approximately two years. We clean the property weekly to ensure it stays in immaculate condition, our maintenance team looks after it inside and out, and lastly – you know exactly what you’re getting in your new home!

Call (07) 3358 9704 or submit an enquiry via our contact us page.

 Harness the Power of Light

It’s incredible how much a bit of outdoor lighting can transform a space. Lighting allows you to direct focus to specific areas of your backyard while on the other hand, obscuring others. This is the easiest way to highlight your backyards strong points, like the pool or decking, while hiding poorer aspects, like the garden bed you can’t be bothered weeding. Filling your backyard with light also extends the time where you can use your garden. There’s no point in decorating your yard if it can’t be used after the sun goes down. Turn your backyard into a 24-hour space of usage.

Use Paths

The mistake most people make with their backyard is failing to create points of contrasts and division. Paths are the best way to do this as they perform the dual purpose of giving everyone easy-access through your backyard while allowing you to make the divisions that are so important in creating a visually exciting area. The best material to use for anyone wanting a durable and low-maintenance option is concrete, and you can make it look exactly like brick, tile or natural stone without paying for these materials.

Running Out of Space?

Homes are getting smaller, which means backyards are also getting smaller. Not many of us will have enough room to have huge garden beds, so why not use the walls of your home as spaces for vegetation. Vertical gardens and green walls are becoming a mainstay in backyards, particularly in urban areas. By incorporating this form of gardening in your yard, you will add visual interest to bare walls, while also providing better insulation to your home so you can cut energy costs.

Don’t Forget a Deck

No matter how big your backyard is, a timber deck is the best way to give you a whole new living space. A deck performs two purposes. Firstly, it gives you a space for dining, drinking and relaxing, and secondly, it gives your yard a focal point that you can design around. Decks are also a sure-fire way to add value to your property because nothing sells like a beautiful hardwood deck. This is just a sample of what you can do with your backyard. The elements you include aren’t as important as your commitment to invest in this critical part of your property. Whether it’s a long-term family home or a short-term money-spinner, you sell your property short by ignoring the backyard.

After 70 years in the removals and storage industry, Kent Relocation Group has developed a step-by-step system that will teach you the tips and tricks that come in handy during this kind of process. Following this guide will allow your treasures to stay safe, ensuring they return to you in the exact same state as you left them.

Step 1: Use High Quality Packing Materials
When packing fragile items, many make the mistake of skimping on the process. While it may seem like a tempting money-saving technique it can actually cause you more time and money in the long run. Invest in sturdy moving boxes and materials, avoiding the allure of re-using boxes or newspaper when packing fragile items.

Instead of old cardboard and paper scraps, utilize a superior quality, double-corrugated boxes and plenty of bubble wrap. These are far better protection options than newspaper: firstly because it is thicker, but it also won’t leave ink stains or transfer marks on precious items.

After arming yourself with all the materials you need, set yourself up on a large, clean table.

Step 2:  Line Your Boxes
Creating a sturdy base for each box is an important step in securing it. To ensure a solid foundation is created, line the bottom of the cardboard with packing paper or double wrap. This will re-enforce the box and also create a soft, cushioned base in which your valuables can rest, protecting them from any potential movement or bumps along the way.

Step 3: Wrap Your Items
When you pick out an item to pack, individually wrap it in bubble wrap. While it may be tempting to cut corners and wrap multiple items together, this can create a space where they rub together, resulting in breakages or imperfections. When maneuvering your bubble wrap, ensure that thin areas of your valuables are also protected: places such as the arms on vases or stems on a wine glass.

Step 4: Pack Strategically
Packing a moving box is like a hard game of Tetris. And packing delicate items is an even harder game of Tetris. Simply throwing together bits and pieces and hoping for the best, is not packing. Placing items purposefully is packing. Ensure you are placing the heaviest items in the bottom, using sections of cardboard to provide extra protection, and to divide your box into sections. For empty space within the box, fill it with paper or excess bubble wrap, allowing you to avoid excess movement.

Step 5: Label, Label, Label
When you have completed the packing process, label every box carefully to indicate exactly what it contains. If you have sought the help of a removals company to move and pack your fragile items, ensure they are aware of which boxes need to be handled with extra care. This can be done by giving your removalists a quick briefing when they arrive, and by marking specific boxes as ‘Fragile’, also drawing an arrow to show which way up the box needs to be handled.

There you have it – whether you’re storing your household items long-term, or just for a couple of weeks, if you follow these tips, even your most fragile belongings will remain safe and sound.

 Consider Kent Relocation Group for removals, storage and relocation in Brisbane – visit http://www.kentrelocationgroup.com