Since I took a couple of months off to project manage (read nag, whine, boss, slave drive ...) the house has been coming along a treat. All the studio doors and windows, complete with actual glass (oh, the heady excitement) are in, and finally the building - well, half of it anyway - has reached that long-yearned-for-but-almost-thought-we-wouldn't-get-there stage called lock-up.

In fact, the photo to your left is already well out of date, but I so liked the tunnel-like perspective of pumpkins, red door, blue door, Phil fitting handles, Ray's hardwood forest, and the blue-green peak of Mt Cooroy, that I thought it deserved top of blog billing.

I know I've posted about the doors before. When was it ... April? Back then I was waffling on about sources of inspiration: Eames, Scandinavian Modern, Play School, Split Enz ... okay, I'm getting a bit silly. But I guess, when you boil it down, it all goes back to those crazy Netherlanders, and the movement known as De Stijl.


In brief De Stijl is:

• Dutch for "The Style"
• A Dutch (obviously) art movement circa 1917
• A movement big on: primary colours juxtaposed with black and white; straight lines and rectangles; "pure" abstraction; and a fair bit of smug and avant garde posturing ... whilst riding a bicycle.

De Stijl pop stars include artist Piet Mondrian (1872 -1944), and architect Gerrit Rietveld (1872 -1947) - designer of a ridiculously uncomfortable but great to look at chair, and the wonderful, way ahead of its time, cute-as-a-button Rietveld Schroder House - a piece of primary-coloured, minimalist, architectural poetry.

Back to the Hincks Ward house:


Originally the doors were to be fitted with clear glass louvres top and bottom, but so greedily did our grey metal walls soak up that vermillion red, cobalt blue, and free range egg yolk yellow, that we decided they could well handle more. And so it was off to the Bat phone to order powder-coated louvres.


They arrived in these neat little wooden crates ...

... which I'm about to up-cycle into herb boxes.

Fitting them has been one of the quickest, easiest and most amusing jobs so far.

And those colours make me happy every time I see them.

Yep, on the emotional roller-coaster that is house building, we're currently right up there at the very top - smiling, laughing, waving like idiots ...

Door Specs
Design: Phil Ward 
Fabrication: Allstar Garage Doors and Gates, Noosaville (thanks Coz!)
Louvre frames: Breezeway
Painstaking fitting of louvres, frames and hardware: Yep, Phil again.
Colours: Dulux powder-coat in Signal Red, French Blue, and Yellow Gold