C.2 · The method
How to schedule a whole house
A new estate build hands over with fifteen to twenty-five bare openings and neighbours who can see all of them. This is the guide for that week: how to walk the house once, decide well, and stage the spend without living behind taped-up sheets while you do.
Walk the house the way we would
Start at the front door with a notepad and go room by room, clockwise, and write down every opening: the windows, but also the sliding doors, the highlight panes, the alfresco span. Most people planning "blinds for the new house" arrive at a number nearly double what they had in their head, and it is far better to meet that number on paper than on a quote.
Against each opening, write its job in your own words. Not a product, a job: "must be dark for shift sleep", "neighbours' driveway looks straight in", "afternoon sun cooks this end", "just needs to look finished". The triage guide turns each job into a covering direction, or the Whole-House Schedule does it for you as you go.
What comes first when the budget is staged
Almost nobody covers twenty openings the week they get the keys, and a good schedule is honest about the order. This is the sequence we suggest, and why:
| Stage | Openings | Why this order |
|---|---|---|
| Day one | Bedrooms and bathrooms | Sleep and privacy don't wait. Blockout where people sleep, wipe-down privacy where they wash. This stage is smaller and cheaper than most people fear. |
| Soon after | Street-facing living areas | These are the rooms the whole street can read at night. Privacy here changes how the house feels to live in. |
| Before summer | The western glass | Whatever faces west decides your February. Shade it outside before the first heat arrives; this is the stage most worth not deferring in the Hunter. |
| When ready | The dressing layer | Sheers, layered curtains, the finish that turns covered rooms into done rooms. It loses nothing by waiting a season. |
| Maybe never | The no-job openings | Hallway lights, stairwell panes, high fixed glass. If no job was written next to it, leave it bare and keep the money. |
One useful habit while staging: decide the whole schedule up front even if you buy it in stages. Fabrics and colours chosen as one set keep the house consistent; the same decisions made a year apart rarely match.
A typical estate handover, scheduled
For a four-bedroom build of the kind going up across Chisholm, Aberglasslyn or Gillieston Heights, a completed schedule most often reads like this. Yours will differ; that is what the measure is for.
- Four bedrooms: dual rollers, sunscreen over blockout, so daytime rooms stay light without giving up night darkness. Cordless or motorised where the cot is.
- Main living and kitchen: sunscreen rollers to hold the yard view and kill the glare off benchtops.
- Media room: blockout, face-fitted past the frame edges for proper dark.
- Bathrooms and laundry: aluminium venetians or PVC shutters, chosen by how finished the room should look.
- The west slider: a track-guided outdoor blind, because the heat problem lives outside the glass. The inside-or-outside call, explained.
- The alfresco: track-guided outdoor blinds if it is to be a real outdoor room; left for a later stage if it is not yet furnished.
- Living room, later: a sheer layer over the rollers when the dressing stage arrives.
Renovations and accumulated houses
The same method works on a house that got its coverings piecemeal over fifteen years: walk it once, write every opening down, and mark what stays, what fails and what mismatches. A schedule for an established house often keeps half of what is already there, replaces the worn third, and re-cords or repairs the rest as ordinary lines on the same visit. Consistency comes from the plan, not from replacing everything.
Free measure & quote
One visit. Every opening. A written quote.
Send an enquiry and we will arrange your free measure, inside and out, with a recommendation per opening and no obligation.