External Choices...

Not long after we had paid our desposit our CSC rang us to introduce herself and to let us know what would be happening in the near future in regards to Tender, Contracts, Colours etc, this is when we started to get excited.

Our Tender was booked in for Mid March and Contracts for not long after, Colour & Electrical appointments with Hopetoun were booked in for early April.

Not long after that we received a call from National Tiles to book in our appointment for tile selection which was scheduled for late March.

Using the guide that our Sales Consultant had given us we went and visited all the places listed to see what was available for us to pick for our house, eg bricks, roof tiles, floor tiles, laminates, carpet.

We also spent hours driving around looking at new houses for inspirations and colour combinations.

We were lucky that everything except for the carpet were located within a 20 minute drive from us and most of them were in a small area making it alot easier and convienient.

Also having most of the companies on-line made it easy to look at their products so at least you had some idea of what you wanted before getting there, I'm not sure about anyone else but we started with our bricks, since really this is the first thing you see....

...this for us was an easy choice, we opted for the "Lawson" a cat 2 brick from Austral Bricks, we liked the redish colour with its touches of grey and fawn through it. On the other hand we kept changing our mind on what colour mortar to go with...Natural or White...the style of mortar was not a problem...Ironed, in the end we decided to go with the Natural coloured mortar.

Roof tiles were next on the list, originally we were going to go with Sambucca a black tile and thought to have the black windows to go with it but thought it maybe too dark so we changed our tiles to Barramudi a grey colour. So, sofar the only upgrade was going to be the bricks.

We had already decided on the garage door...the Caprice, which has long rectangle shapes on the front panel in the colour Surfmist, which to me always looks like a pale green colour.

Because of the garage door we elected to have our facias in the same colour but have the gutters and downpipes in Monument a dark grey colour which we thought should pick up the dark bits in the bricks.

Our windows now were going to be in White Birch, a total contrast to the earlier black we had thought to have. As we had elected to go with French doors leading out from our Master bedroom we thought it would be nice if the study windows were also wood instead of the aluminium, again an upgrade, so to keep to the theme the front door would also have to be stained to give a nice co-hesive look to the front of the house.

External doors...well i didn't like any of the doors that Porter Davis had to offer so we went looking for our own. We found a really really nice one at Doors Plus but we were a bit dubious about the workmanship on it so we gave it a miss, we ended up finding one at Corinthian Doors along with one for the Laundry which had an internal blind in it.

Probably the hardest item for us to finalise was the render, we had a list of the Dulux render colours to choose from but when you go looking for them it was very hard to find them as most of them we had no idea what colour they were let alone what shade, we ended up going to a Dulux Inspirations store where the lovely man went to his computer and numbered them all for us to find, it took him a long time to try and find them all, mind you some of the colours listed were nearly 10 years old and not current. After spending a couple of hours in the store we chose "White Duck" or as i kept calling it wild duck, this colour is very similar to the Surfmist on the Garage door.

While at the store Tony noticed that they had some durethane on sale, this is a 2 part polyurethene suitable for garage floors. Apparently someone had ordered it in bulk and then didn't pick it up so it was going cheap, why not we thought the colour was 'Lily Green' which as it would happen would go nicely with the surfmist and white duck.

I will try and organise colour samples later for you to see.

...Now for the house

After finding our block it was time to go back to the Sales Consultant and discuss the "K*ching" end of things.

Early Feb 09

We had a private walkthrough with him to discuss what was included and what would cost us extra....since we had already discussed this between ouselves we had a really good idea on what we wanted, which of course was just about everything that was in the display home. Our absolutley must have for our home was going to be the fireplace in the lounge..we were even prepared to go without other items just to keep it.

Where do I start.......hmmmm lets see, changes;
maximum ceiling heights of 2740mm through out the whole of the house; extended garage; extended alfresco; eaves to the front of the house only; taller doors to the master bedroom, alfresco doors, robes in bedroom 2, opening to study made taller, door added to rumpus; moved the external door in the garage to the entry hall; raised ceiling in the entry hall and kitchen/family room; fridge niche in the kitchen; removed 1 WIR to enlarge the ensuite; had niches put into the following walls; study/master; master/ensuite x 2; family/ rear hallway x 3.....and still the list goes on....

.....windows inserted into garage doors; roller door to rear of garage; island bench in kitchen raised; overhead cupboards in kitchen; re-arranged cabinetry in kitchen; center dining rm window; replace front window in master with french doors; replace alfresco/lounge window with french doors; replace alfresco/dining rm window with sliding door.......

.....and on; delete all shelving in wardrobes; open up wall between bedrooms 3 & 4 ( to allow Kelly to have her own sitting room attached to her bedroom); extra bench in laundry; trough in garage; evap air through out house; ducted vacuuming; enlarge ensuite shower; colourbond facias, gutters and downpipes.

I'm exhusted just typing all that..hope its all clear...might not mean much to some but it makes a whole heap of difference to us.

So, we got nearly all of this on paper (some of it came later), and thought...*gee, not as much as we thought it would cost...still a whole lot of $$ tho*

The next step was to find a way to pay for it all....we used the broker recommended by Porter Davis, this was a painless process....the young chap came out to our place in the middle of the heat wave just before Black Saturday, we went through everything...the land...the house...refinancing our existing house and he came up with a very sweet offer! one as they say "was too good to refuse", so we didn't, we took up the offer.

Now all we had to wait for was the Pre Approval from the broker and then the bank.

In the meantime we decided to go visit 'our block' on a Sunday...okay, so it was the day after the big disaster with the bushfires, there was no-one out at the Sales office, so we took a stab in the dark and found what we thought was our block...and hey presto, we were right :) there was not much to see out there...the roads had only just been scrapped, nothing was marked but having the park opposite our block made it a lot easier to find.

...and then there was land..

After finding our 'dream home' the hunt was on yet again, this time for a block of land.

Not sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing to have the house first...all we knew was that we needed a wide block to fit our house on, plus it needed to have some length in it for Mia to romp in.

Our Sales Consultant suggested Wallan as they had some House/Land package up there in a new Estate. He wasn't kidding when he said 'new'.

We showed us the subdivision plan for Stage 1 and let us know which blocks would be available through them. Originally we rejected the block we ended up chosing as it was on a "T intersection", unfortunately all the other blocks they had available were not big enough. So we hummed and harred and then thought about it some more and decided that 'yep' it would be okay.

Took a drive down to the Estate to talk turkey with the Land Sales Agent. At this stage in the game we could not take a look at the block, as it wasn't there yet....thats right it was non existant, all she said was.."it's over in that direction, somewhere".

She told us what was planned for the Estate...class A recycled water, shopping center, schools (not that we need them), a off/on ramp to the Hume Hwy (eventually), etc.

We went home and had a big think on it....what really sold it for us was the fact that we would have a park over the road from us....somewhere to take Mia for a run .

We went back a few days later and paid a holding deposit on our chosen block...Yay!!

Next step.....house

In the beginning.....

In the beginning(April '08).......our son got a new puppy, a Bernese Mountain Dog. They are soooo lovable, that in the end we decided to get one as well.

January '09 we took possession of our own puppy; Mia. Within a few short weeks we realised we had a problem.

Question; What does a small townhouse + a rapidly growing large dog equal?
Answer; Moving!!! or Mia's Folly.

You guessed it, there just was not going to be enough room for her as she grew, so as any sensible/responsible owner does, we started looking for a new abode.

We first thought about buying established but we couldn't find exactly what we wanted in both the house or the land. So let the hunt begin.....it was a very short hunt!

Love the internet, so much easier to hunt via the web than trapsing all around the countryside, we took a leap of faith from our sister-in-law and checked out Porter Davis who she had built with in the last 3 years and had no complaints at all.

Had our eye on a magnificent 2 storey house, the Windsor, so off we choofed to Mernda Village to have a look. As I said, the house was magnificent, but who wants to clean 5 bathrooms every week...certainly not I! So while we were there, as you do we went through the other 3 houses they had on display, and there she was......Mia's Folly...more commonly known as the Hayman 34. It was love at first sight for both my hubby (Tony) and myself, everything about it suited us down to the ground.

Off to talk to the Sales Consultant...got prices for a standard build and a "all bells and whistles" version.

Yes, we thought, this is it, now, where to build! Decisions, decisions.....land cost would play a big part on what "bell' or what "whistle" we could indulge ourselves with. Most of the land we looked at was just not big enough or perched on the side of a mountain......so, where did we end up buying land...Wallara Waters at Wallan.