Land Update

Well....we are still waiting for our land to be released.

Apparently Australand have lodged compliance with the SRO last week, so now we are waiting for them to release titles.

However this is not going to help us start building before the end of the year. We heard from our CSC today, and we along with all the other Porter Davis clients from Wallara Waters will begin our builds in the middle of January when they get back from the Christmas break.....delays, delays....
...so at least we have a definate start date now (fingers crossed), this means that we will NOT be in our new house in time for me to celebrate my 50th birthday in June...bummer! so we have decided to celebrate it when we finally move it, even if its a few months after :)

House Plans

Tony very kindly informed me last night that I hadn't put the house plans on the blog yet, so, here they are.....

This is the Hayman 34 by Porter Davis (probably the last one to be built), structual changes we made include the removal of the 2nd WIR in the master bedroom/ensuite; voids in the study/master wall, master/ensuite x 2; family/rear hall, added a door to the rumpus room and removed the wardrobe and wall between bedrooms 3 & 4 ( this is to give our adult daughter her own sitting room/bedroom), in bedroom 2 we are putting taller doors onto the wardrobe as this will be my craft room.

We have about 95% of the upgrades that were in the display house, so therefore we have 9' ceilings, the fireplace in the lounge, french doors in the master bedroom leading to a sm verander at the front, bi-fold doors from the kitchen to Alfresco, French doors from the lounge to Alfresco and Sliding doors from the Dining to Alfresco...i know i know...3 different types of doors all leading out onto the one area.

We also have extra overhead cupboards in the kitchen, 2 pot drawers on one side of the oven and 3 graded drawers on the right side.

Nearly forgot...we have extended the Alfresco, so it doesnt finish flush with the house and we added a 3rd garage.

There are heaps more things but at this very moment I cannot think of things...

Porter Davis's Hayman 34.

Land...

This is a waiting game......we wait and wait and wait.....

When we made enquires in Jan 09 we were told that the land should title in June but was running about 6wks behind....that was okay. June came and went, and so did July.....and August...September...and we are still waiting.

According to whispers around the estate, the developers have lodged the compliance with the SRO...so things should be moving soon.

The longer the land takes the more $$ we have to pay to our builder to hold the contract price...it is getting ridiculous.

Feb...the first time we actually saw our block...even then we guessed which one was ours.

May...roads nearly done.

June 09

Begining of July....footpaths and crossover ready to be poured.

Early September...except for the street signs, nothing else has happened.

Banks...

Our Brokers did a real sweet deal for us with Westpac, overall we would start off with 3 loans but end up with just the 1 loan. Our first loan would be a refinance on our existing property along with a third of the money required for the land, the second loan would be soley for the remaining finance for the land whilst the last loan would be for construction and the absorbtion of the second loan.
While the deal was good, we are not too sure what to think about the bank itself....I think we have supplied Tony's income details about 4 times so far.
At the moment we actually have no loans running as we sold our townhouse and paid back loan 1 keeping the land portion aside and our land has not settled yet so obviously construction hasn't started.
In August we had to resubmit Tony's income details as it had been 6 months since approval was first granted, this was not a problem as since the original application he had gone full time and was therefore earning more money. Thankfully it went through without a hitch.

Post Contract Variation #1

Middle of June our Post Contract Variation came through......signed it and returned it to Porter Davis...now all we were waiting for was for the land to become ours and we would be well on our way to start building.

Contract

At the end of May it was time to front up for our Contract Appointment at Keilor.

Having already done both our colours and electrical we knew what our contract price would be, much better than having them done after contracts.

There were only a few adjustments to be made to the drawings and just a few more things we had thought about that would have to be added to our contract.

Time to pay the balance of the 5% of our original price. That has to hurt...now we were poor.

Also it was confirmed that we would have to pay an extra $3000 to hold the build price as we were definatly not going to start before the end of May...think that might have been obvious, so now we were locked in until the end of August.

Light Pics

Nope, can't show you any pics of our lights, you will have to wait until they are installed...like in about 9 months time...as they are pics off the website and i can't manage to get them installed onto the blog. Any ideas?

Let there be lights.....

So, if we couldn't have our squillions of downlights, we would have to have something pretty to look at, wouldn't we!

As i have said before, I love the internet, it makes it so easy to shop if you have some idea before hand what you are looking for.

I used Beacon.....my daughter and I were able to pick out what we thought would go in each room, write down the price add it all up....then die at the cost of it all, but at least it was still cheaper than the squillion downlights.

Off we trotted to out nearest Beacon store and started wandering around and around and around the store, made note of what we actually did like when we saw them in the flesh and what we didn't like, decided to try a different store....they actually had different stock, they all have the same basic items, but then it is up to the manager of each store as to what else they stock.

Went back to our local store...as it would be far easier to go there to make layby payments. The Manager there is so, so helpful. Explained what we were after and how long it would be before i required them, that wasn't a problem, I just had to let her know when my painting starts and then she will order all my lights for me.

We orginally planned just to get the pendants and wall sconces but ended up also getting our fan for the Alfresco and the standard lamps that we needed. Alot later on we went back and added Fluros for the garage as well as heating lamps for the bathrooms...to date i have nearly finished paying them off.

I love what we have chosen (otherwise I wouldn't be getting them now would I), we have opted for what I call a Provincial look, very old world, hopefully they will all go once they are up. I will see if I can find pics to put on the blog.....I know that not everyone will like my choices but then again they are my choices.

Electrical

After our Colour appointment it was time to do the electrical. In our Contract we had allowed $3000.
The good thing about doing the Electrical was that you had a running total of what you were spending on the board in front of you.

The biggest disappointment for us was the price of the downlights, $115 each, yep thats right, EACH. So there went the squillions of downlights that we were planning...we are big fans of them.

We had already planned our powerpoints so that did not take us long at all to plot, the only improvement was a 'powertainment' switch in the Theatre room....this has 6 powerpoints plus a TV point.

Back to the lights...

The only rooms we retained the downlights in were the bathrooms, some in the kitchen , the home theatre room and in my Craft room, for the rest we went with the standard Chinamens hat pendant.

The toughest part was deciding where the switches were to go and if we wanted two or three way switches on some, overall it didn't take us too long to do all this and in the end we only just went over our allowance, so we were happy with that.

Colours....

Today would be a big day, our Colour Selection and Electrical Appointment.

Colours came first, as I have said before, we had researched our items and had most of them all ready picked.

So we stuck with our choices, Lawson Bricks, Ironed natural mortar, Barramundi roof tiles, White Birch windows our Consultant helped us with some of the finer items, such as chosing Monument for the gutters/downpipes and Surfmist for the facias to go with the Garage door. She asked us what colour we wanted for the trim on the render, we just looked at her.....we hadn't realised that the render had trim...she got all the colour samples out, in the end we went with Dune for just a bit of contrast. The roof also has gables, we stuck to the colour scheme and went with Surfmist panels with Dune trim.

As we are having timber windows and French doors at the front we then had to pick a timber stain, which wasn't hard, we ended up picking Rosewood, the Front door would also be stained this colour, along with the doors leading out onto the Alfresco...(sliding door, Bi-fold doors and more French doors).

We had researched our own front door as I wasn't happy with any that PD had to offer....an upgrade...we opted for a Windsor with Jewel Zinclight glazing from Corinthian Doors and for the Laundry we chose an IBP also from Corinthian, this door had a internal blind in it...so i never have to try and clean it (unless the door breaks...lol).

In one of the previous posts I mentioned how we wanted to try and get the same colours or as close to as possible for the internal paintwork as we had in our home. After a few minor adjustments with the help of our Consultant we went with New Pale Cream for all the walls, the Architrave would be Koscuisko Pebble and as I didn't want the doors in that colour I had no choice but to go for an upgrade to have them painted White.

Picking the skirting boards/architraves was interesting as this is one of the items that they didn't have out on display at Hopetoun...had no idea what i wanted here, so i tried to match it up with the Cornicing...so it will be interesting to see how it comes out when its up. Oh yes, the cornicing we chose was the Symphony 75mm. We didn't realise until we have been reading peoples blogs and posts on Homeone that you could have two different sizes in the house...grrr we would have gone for a larger one in some of the rooms...never mind.

For us the Laminates were easy....the kitchen and bathrooms would all be in Vinyl Wrap Gloss in Polar White with white kickboards in Laminex. In the butlers pantry I went for Diamond Gloss in Starlight....which will tie in nicely with the Starlight Black Quantum Quartz on the benchtops. After picking our tiles for the laundry we took another trip down to Laminex to repick our colours, we chose Tuscan Marble for the benches while the trough doors would be in Moleskin...I am not having any other cupboards in the laundry as i only end up putting junk in them anyway.

As part of the promotion a glass splashback was included, it might sound boring but we went with white, originally we were going to have the upgraded glass but under the samples the white actually looked better with the normal glass, so normal it was! figured if we dont like it then we can do something about it later...like take it off and tile the area.

The handles for all our cupboards! This i think took the longest, ended up having the same handle on everything through out the house, a stainless steel bar handle.

All the external doors with the exception of the Bi-fold and slider are having the Durabrass Traditional Trilock lever handles, we had had these at a previous house and I absolutely loved them. The internal doors are all having Chrome lever handles.

The only other thing of interest would be our carpet. We have pets, currently one dog and two cats, we are definatley getting another dog once we have moved, so our choice of colour for our carpet is reflective of this, we upgraded to the next category to get the Oakley in a Cocoa colour...to me its like a milk chocolate

Tiles

This for me was going to be the hardest appointment, get it wrong and your house is...well, disappointing to say the least.

Least we had visited the showroom 3 times trying to decide what we wanted...the appointment didn't take long at all, our tile consultant gave us about 10 minutes to have a look at the tiles while she set up in readiness for us. We spent this time looking at accent tiles for the bathrooms and laundry.

I found the tiles for the laundry straight away - glass tiles in shades of brown. While we were searching with our adult daughter for tiles for her bathroom we came across the same accent tile that we had used 3yrs earlier on our current bathroom, so that was an easy pick for us. Kelly had alot more trouble picking out her tile, she is into purple and wanted something in that range.

We decided to wait until we had finalised the actual tiles for the bathrooms and get the consultant to help us.

As i posted earlier we chose Alexa Rosso 400mm x 400mm as our main tile through the house, this is a light brown tile with a fine white vein running through it, in the Entrance we turned the tiles to form a diamond pattern and added Alexa Grigio, this tile was also 400mm x 400mm but would be cut in half to form a border. This tile would also be used in the Laundry on the floor.

For the Ensuite, Bathroom and Toilet we picked Abitare Carrara a white marble looking tile with a very faint blue/grey vein running though it. This tile would also continue on into both showers forming the base and the walls, they would also continue on to become the splashbacks behind the vanities.

In our ensuite our accent tile would be the Oasis Border tile, this is a 100 x 300mm pale blue tile made up of 12 smaller rectangles with paler blue and darker blue vine silhouette on it, this is going to run across the splashback and continue on into the shower across both tiled walls, it should sit just under half way up the wall...i am now starting to worry about whether it will look okay or not, but have decided to check with the tiler when we get to that stage.

As for Kellys bathroom, she couldn't decided between two different colours in a pencil tile, a lavender one or a aubergine one, I asked her why not have both alternating them we also decided to go with two rows, offsetting the rows. She elected to put them across the top of the shower about head high and along the long side of the bath front.

Luckily we didnt need to pick tiles for the kitchen as we are getting a glass splashback as part of our promotion.

As we are putting a trough in the garage Tony just picked plain white tiles for there.

Pre Tender

Because our block had so much extra dirt piled on it PD were unable to do our soil tests, so our Tender Appointment in Mid March turned into a Pre Tender, we rescheduled our appointment to May hoping that the block would be okay by then and that they would have been able to get onto it to do the required soil test. Our consultant also rescheduled our Contract appointment to late May.

The Pre Tender gave us the opportunity to update our evergrowing list of add ons and to sort out some of the items that had been misunderstood from our Sales Consultant.

This also meant that by the time we got to do our Tender we would have been and finalized our Tiles, Electrical and Colours.

Standing on a huge pile of dirt in what will be the park looking at our block on the left, this is in April with nearly all the dirt pile gone.

External pics

Carpet for the Master bedroom, its an off white colour.


Carpet for the rest of the house- a milk chocolate colour.



Middle item is our tile colour "Barramundi" in the Elabana style.




Our render colour- 'White Duck"





Bricks, Austral 'Lawson".

The other external colours are in the previous post, Monument for the gutters and downpipes, surfmist for the facias and gable infil, and dune for the edging on the render and gable infils.

Pics...

On the right is the vinyl wrap for the kitchen cupboards and bathroom vanities. On the left is the tops of the vanities.


Our kitchen bench top, Quantum Quartz - starlight black.




The top colour is Surfmist, being used for the garage doors, facias and infil on the gable; the one underneath it is White Duck the Render colour while the darker colour is Dune being used on the trim for the render and the gables.


White Duck, Surfmist and Monument (which you can only just see) , Monument is for the Gutters and the downpipes.


The small tile is for both the Bathroom and the Ensuite for the floor and showers as well as the splashbacks. The larger blue tile is for the ensuite as our border tile. There are no pics of the purple shades for the bathroom borders.

The Main tile throughout the house.

The Laundry tiles, the large tile on the right is for the floor as well as a border tile in the front entrance. The top tile is the splashback in the laundry. The top Laminate chip is the bench tops in the laundry while the bottom laminate chip is for the trough doors.

Interior Colours...

We did a couple of trips out to Hopetoun Interiors to have a look at their wares.

We knew straight up what colour we wanted the internal walls to be painted, Hog Bristle 1/4 strength with the woodwork in the 1/2 strength, only trouble was that Hog Bristle is a Dulux paint and PD use Wattyl paints, trying to find paint samples for Wattyl was frustrating, in the end we took our colours with us to our Colour Appointment and matched them from there, so we ended up choosing New Pale Cream for the walls with the woodwork in Kosiosko Pebble, we upgraded the paint work as i wanted the doors to be white - later on we will change them to suit us.

Tiles

We also did a few trips to National Tiles, naturally all the tiles that I liked were NOT in catergory 1. I am definately a bower bird, i love shiney things and thats what i gravitated towards. We looked at a few that were 400mm x 400mm that came in 4 different colours; a fawn, a honey, a mocha and a chocolate all had white veins running thru them ( and yes, they were shiney).

Originally we were going to go with all of them bar the mocha but on a subsequent visit we deceided that the chocolate was too dark, the mocha would go much better as the main tile from the front door through to the kitchen/family room and dining room with the fawn as a border tile in the entry way, this tile would also go into the laundry as the floor tile.

When we had our Tile appointment we found our main tile for the Ensuite and Bathroom, a white 400mm x 400mm tile with a faint blue vein running through it. We took our daughter with us to the apppointment so she could pick out her border tiles for her bathroom she ended up picking out 2 different purple pencil tiles, one was a lavender colour while the other was more of a Aubergine colour. For the Ensuite we picked out a pale blue tile with a mushroom coloured flower ( description not very acurate). The only other room that needed tiles was the laundry, in here I chose a glass tile in differnt shades of brown, this was my favourite tile.

Laminates

I was very definate on what i wanted for our kitchen, white vinyl wrap for the cupboards with a black granite top, we had had this previously and it looked a treat, okay, so we opted for a black quantum quartz but it will still look awesome, we are going to be boring and have a white splashback but i figure we can tizz it up with coloured accents :)

The bathrooms will also have the white vinyl wrap cupboards. For the laundry the only cupboards in there will be the ones under the trough, these will be in moleskin with the benches in a tuscan marble.

Carpet

We chose a milk chocolate carpet for the rooms that were not tiled except for the Master where we chose a off white, the idea behind having brown tiles and carpet is for the animals to try and minimize the visible lmess especially during winter.

Sorry for the delay between postings....silly when I'm recapping everything thats happened upto the current time.
We sold our townhouse in July but settlement was depending on when the Insurance Company got their act together to repair the damage caused by next doors leaking hotwater service. We were always told that we would have a fortnights notice before work started, and did we?...no, we were notified at 4pm Friday 18th Sept that work was going to commence on the following Monday.

As you can imagine the S*#t hit the fan trying to organise everything, luckily we already had most things packed and put into storage, all that was left was the final pack, the daughter off to her Grandma's was first on the agenda, then moving what furniture we were taking with us to our son's place, before the removalists came on the Thursday to move the rest of our furniture into storage.....this left us a few days to remove everything else to our sons.
During all this the the insurance was repairing the house, so we had to be up or at the house by 7am.
Anyway, settlement went well, so we are now homeless and relying on our son :)