...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.