Land settlement

Our land finally settled today at 12.00p.
Very happy that it's finally legally ours ;-)
Can't wait for the start of our build!

Settlement finally :-)

Hi everyone,
It has been ages since I have posted as nothing much has happened since contract signing.
Today I received a call to organize our settlement, yeah.
Our land should be settled by the end of the year. It will be between 23-29th december.
So I quickly contacted porter Davis to inform them to quickly organise & book a site start for January. My rep came back & informed me that Jan is looking good.
Now I just have to wait for an actual start date to be booked in & hopefully notified.
We are very excited and looking forward to the start of 2011, which will become the journey of our house build ;-)

Merry Xmas to you all too.

House plans

Below are a few scanned pics of our house plans drawn up.
1. How it will sit on our block
2. Upstairs & downstairs floor plan

Contract signed today :-)

Well what an exciting day it was today to sign our life away. ;-)

we started our appointment at 9a and finished at 1.30p.

I was quite surprised that the contract was pretty much 100% correct with all my upgrades & selections. Have heard some horror stories. We decided on a few more things too & changes, which they were quite happy about in terms of making variations on the contract.

We added in a gas point to the alfresco & another outside tap on the other side of the house :-) I also decided to change our floating timber floors to Kempass from tassie oak. And bonus was that it was much cheaper. Was rapt :-)

We took out the broom cupboard in the laundry & extra bench, and made the benchtop in the pantry laminate, so it is sturdy for heavy things :-) we also decided to frost the 2 toilet windows.

My csv A, I will call them was really good. So far my experience with pd has been positive :-)

Am now rapt that it is all done. Well part 1. My csv said second soil test is being ordered as they had just received an email this morning stating that our land should title by end of nov. Yippee I say. Can't wait for the actual build to begin. Even though we have signed up for a dec site start (no set date as of yet) think it will be prob be Jan.

See pic below of new flooring chosen from their brochure.
Mel

Additional Walk in wardrobe for master bedroom

Today pd emailed me a pic of the additional WIR I wanted, the bedroom is huge & such a waste of space that I thought more space to put my clothes, bags & shoes. Yeah. See pic attached.

My selections chosen

House selections

External materials & fittings
Bricks: brushwood bricks - ironed
Mortar: natural
Roof tiles: Macquarie drk chocolate
Aluminum windows; Jasper
Garage door: paperbark
Front door: Corinthian doors- pmad 104 paperbark glass translucent.
Upgraded: front door lock & handle & added deadlock to laundry door & garage.
Laundry door: STD half glass - col paperbark
Gutters- Jasper
Fascia- Jasper
Downpipes- Jasper
Render - Jasper

Main internal fittings
Main walls - wattyl sand drift with flokati for trims
Internal doors- STD flush flokati
Internal door handles - STD matte silver
Linen/ robe - STD range - cicrcular ones!
Privacy locks - powder room, master bedroom & bathroom upstairs, toilet (x4)
Cornice - STD
Feature light fittings - down lights all downstairs (29) & x5 stair lights.

Kitchen fittings
Benchtop- upgrade as per promo, ceaserstone cols osprey
Cabinet doors - laminex polar white
Overhead doors- polar white
Glass splash - vivid white
Tapware- STD as per upgrade
Cabinet handles: long thick square types
Feature down lights - x1 either side of cabinets =2

Master ensuite bathroom -
Benchtop - upgraded promo - ceaserstone ivory
Cabinet doors - laminex fossil - drk brown
Vanity basin - round bowl type
Vanity tap ware - mixer
Shower - added niche
Floor tiles - Kimberley smoke
Feature mosaics: feat in niche & bathroom splashback. stone & glass tiles - see pics

Master bathroom
- like ens cols but bath all tiled like shower!
- bath tapware - upgrade to same mixer as ens bathroom.

Powder room
- match with bathrooms

Laundry -
Benchtop, cabinet & overhead doors - laminate fossil col bench tops, Peruvian clay laminex cupboards, smokey Kimberley stone tiles & cafe crm splasback tiles

Staircase - STD with carpet & flokati finish.
Lighting - a few lights 5 up staircase?

Flooring
Cat 1 - cardinal antique stone.
Underlay - upgraded to cat 4
Timber flooring - 1 strip tassie oak

Electrical
Under stairs- added light globe!
kitchen Master bedroom - all options tv, ph & paytv.
Data/ internal points/ pay tv - study, games room, rumpus & living rm.
Powerpoints - min 2 per bedroom & a few in each living area ( eg: living, lounge, games, rumpus) heaps.
Alarm system - 4 points (3 downstairs/ 1 upstairs?)
Ducted vacuum - 5 points & sweeper ( downstairs - living & front of house / sweeper in kitchen kick board)
Downlights - to all of downstairs!

Other:
Flood lights: outside front/ laundry/alfresco - all around house!
Dual lighting - garage, entry hall, staircase. Kitchen entry/ dining.
Upgraded fancy Light outside front door & balcony door.
Flyscreen door - rumpus sliding & balconey sliding door! - need to ask csv about this!

Colour & selection appointment just finished!

Hi everyone,
Just finished my colour appointment & did it all in 2 hrs. Rapt I was so organized.
I decided on the white kitchen, didn't upgrade to much! Big upgrade was the carpet underlay to the best category, front doors, locks to all downstairs windows, upgraded splashback to vivid white, upgraded kitchen handles. Added privacy locks, upgraded mixer taps, & frosted bathroom windows! Most things were STD! Pretty impressed! Now off to my elec app at 12.00 & then tile app at 2pm!
Pics are not uploading! Will try & add them tonight with my tile selections.



















Ok pics uploaded!

Pic of facade : bricks, tiles, gutters, etc.
Kitchen cols! All white - I'm so boring lol
Carpet col!
Bathrooms - tiles, mosaics & cupboard & benchtop cols.

So had my elec app & cost came to 8.5k. I had 6.5k budgeted. So not to bad :-)

Was pretty happy with the STD range, prob only spent a total of 7k today on all upgrades over & above my tender price.
Yeah :-)


More pics;







Internal paint col- sand drift & front door design - which will be painted in Jasper.




Sinks I've chosen - mixer tap on left for bathrooms & powder rm



Kitchen handles

Tender, new facade & site start locked in.

We had our tender appointment last Thursday & after much shock I'm doing ok now! Our costs are going to be more than double of what was on our initial sales quote. Those damn retaining walls & sloping land ahhh. I have learnt alot about site costs. And a big thank you to b from homeone forum (a great website blog that inspired me to start my own blog) that has been helpful in giving me lots of advice at this very stressful time. Thks buddy :-)
So with huge site costs we are now changing the facade, upgraded staircase & a few other things!
Site start has been locked in for dec start! I was told today that it's looking like nov for settlement!
Any way here is a pic of our new facade. We will only be getting the portico (balcony) rendered. And lastly am off to hopetoun next Thursday. Will post some pics of my selections.

House update - bricks, tiles & changing house plan

Well this weekend was spent at boral on Saturday morning & we decided on brushwood bricks with natural mortar & chocolate brown roof tiles.
Before that we went & visited the display hm we are building & were unsure whether we should have built the 42 versus the 35. After much thought & debate for the extra $ we have now decided to build the 42. Got onto my sales rep, & luckily we have notified them prior to our tender app this Thursday!! I am hoping we can still go to tender with such a big change, but it won't matter to much as the house hasn't been drawn up yet! This happens after tender. Thk god! The main reason in the change u ask? The size of the bedrooms. Downstairs would have been fine! But bedrooms smaller that 3x3, tiny! So here is an updated plan of what we will be building.

First visit to hopetoun & national tiles.

My first visit to hopetoun today :-) also popped into national tiles. Here are a few pics of some items I liked! Hopefully have another visit before my selection app on the 21st of oct :-)





Bricks & render: brushwood bricks with woodland grey!











Brushwood bricks with Jasper render: my fav











Tile colour - gunmetal ( col in middle)









Paperbark- for gutters window frames, grg door, really like this col, thks to my friend Mick at work - he told me about it








Jasper- same as above.








Floorboards - kempass










Or tassie oak- prefer the lighter col









Carpet- like the grooves








Didn't mind this one










National tiles - lots of combinations- this is where I really need work on! Ahhh am visiting lots of display hms Tom. But I did like the below combinations.

Signed up & put a deposit down

We finally paid our 1st deposit on our house to be built, which is called the cremorne 35 by porter Davis. I spent all of last week deciding on brick, roof tiles, window frames, guttering & render colour! Crazy & decisions, decisions! Getting prepared before we have our appointment to make all our selections in a few wks. Love envisage studio, it really shows how the house will look with everything you pick! Here is a pic taken of the house plan, only changes are that we will have the extended alfresco & be hopefully adding in another walk in robe to master bedroom. Also a pic of the facade, cols will be similar!

Pics of our land taken today

We went up for a drive this morning & met a nice couple that will be building 2 houses from us. Nice to meet some of our neighbours to be.

Hello & welcome

Hello & welcome to my blog,
We put a deposit down on some land in April 2010 in Doreen & am waiting for settlement which will be in October. Hopefully it settles on time :-)
We have chosen the house we want to build which is thru porter Davis, called the cremorne 35.
Looking forward to sharing pics, obstacles and everything we go thru in building our dream home.
Mel