Countdown to Contract

One week until contract appointment and counting!
Madly trying to think of any last minute changes that we might wish to make so as to avoid any PCV's - don't like the idea of those. Have already contacted our CSC re possibly getting increased wall insulation instead of / or in addition to wrap, and changing from painted zincalume gutters etc to colourbond. We haven't got a price on these yet, need to wait until contract ( of course! ), and if the price is not too high then this is probably something we will get done.
I had also deleted the included extended bench top to the laundry ( why? - laundry is not that big and I wanted somewhere to keep the ironing board up. ) Now I think that some extra folding space will be good, so I want that bench back!
Also need to chase up about water tank ... fairly useless if it is not plumbed to a garden tap, as I have heard some current PD homes are plumbed to the toilets only!
And I may also get a price for extra soundscreen ( at the moment it is in the rumpus only ) to any bedroom that backs onto a bathroom/laundry. Getting everything will be out of the question, too much $$$$!! So hopefully we will be allowed to pick and choose what we want to keep in/delete once we finally know the prices at contract!!

Electrical Selection Appointment

Back in to Hopetoun yesterday for our electrical appointment. It was quiet in there which was good as we had 5 kids in tow! The appointment ran very smoothly, although very long - 3 1/2 hours! I couldn't believe that picking out where to put the power points took longer than the colour appointment. Our consultant ' D ' was just fantastic, very easy going and helpful, and even though I felt we were quite prepared in knowing what we wanted, he came up with lots of good ideas. It was also good seeing how much everything cost, unlike the colour selection appointment where we were flying blind with regards to the cost of our chosen upgrades. Our final price went quite a fair way over the amount that we had allowed for in the tender amount ( whoops! ) but at the end of the day, we are happy with what we have got. Here is a little run down of what we chose...
21 'chinamans hats '
37 downlights
3 outdoor flood lights( rear and side )
Front lighting
SS fan to alfresco
Numerous dimmer switches
Lots of extra power points
3 phone points
2 powertainment boards
Island bench power point
Bosch security alarm system
Pre wire package for future solar power system
Pre wire 5.1 Home theatre speaker points inc. subwoofer cable & GPO
HDMI cabling for wall mounted plasmas

K'ching, K'ching... the price continues to go up.. and i've realised that although we were there for over 3 hours, there are still things I forgot to add in, just hope I can ring on Monday and make some changes.
On the land front, the asphalt roads are down - Yay!! The developers are hopeful for a November title release. If PD aren't going to start until Feb. though, I don't really care if the land runs a little late - let that money sit in the bank a little longer!

Just a couple of pictures....

The Floor plan.

The Bricks ( Austral Hawthorn )

The Roof Tiles ( Monier Barramundi )

Colour Selections

The mandatory inclusion of the list of colours selected. "T" is totally over discussing colour choices, me - I love it, maybe it's a girl thing!

The Facade : Hotham
The Bricks : Austral Hawthorn
The Render : Jasper ( to garage and bedroom 2 )
The Garage Door : Jasper, Contemporary profile
Gutters and Fascias : Woodland Grey
Beam "thingy" above portico : Woodland Grey
Downpipes : Woodland Grey
Front facade and all main living room windows : Timber stained "cedar "
Mortar : Flush off white
Aluminium windows ( to dead side ) : Stone beige satin
Water tank : Slate grey
Roof Tiles : CSR Monier, Tudor profile, Barramundi
Internal walls : Wattyl Chalk Beige
Architraves, Skirting, Internal Doors : Wattyl Chalk Dust
Kitchen benchtop : Coral Reef
Kitchen cabinets : Vinyl wrap, country square profile, in " Parchment "
Bathroom and ensuite cabinets : As for kitchen but in " Polar White "
Bathroom and ensuite benchtops : Limestone
Powder room and Laundry cabinets : " Oyster Linea "

The PD experience to date.

It has been a mix of good and bad so far actually. Initially all good, dealt with either a genuinely really nice and helpful sales rep., or a mighty good salesman!! Did the usual walk through the house to see what was standard, what were upgrades and talked about what variations we wanted to make. Mr. Sales rep would say things like " go for ...... - that looks grouse." " Why don't you .... - they're grouse." " Get the .... it will be so grouse." Which is why we have now labelled him with the nickname - Grouse!! Walked through and picked out our 1st lot of upgrades- k'ching, k'ching..most of what was displayed were upgrades and the total goes up quickly and significantly. No problems there though, happy with what we picked, OK with the costs, so paid the initial deposit to sign up and get the soil test done. Next step was to go to our Tender Appointment. Additional site costs came back a bit higher than we we would have initially anticipated ( considering there is less than 1m fall across the block) ..k'ching. Adding on an extra 1.5m to the width of the garage PLUS further additional site costs for the bigger garage were higher than anticipated... k'ching, k'ching' k'ching!! Gee, this is starting to eat into my new furniture fund! Numerous mistakes in the tender doc. had to be fixed up on the day despite numerous emails prior to this detailing further changes we wanted to make. Left there feeling not too bad, on to colour selection we go!!
We probably made about 4 or 5 trips to Hopetoun Interiors prior to our colour appointment. How disappointing to meet most of the weekend staff there!! Really, why bother? Apathetic, ignorant, disinterested. And not being able to disclose the price of upgrades..that really bugged us. So around we went, picking out possible choices, always in the back of our minds to be careful...that choice could add thousands to the final cost. Who knows, there were probably things that we would have upgraded to anyway if we knew the price, but didn't in fear of budget blowout. I think that their process actually works against them... I think that they don't disclose the price hoping that you will just upgrade everything, get to contract, find out that it was actually more than you had hoped to pay, but you have fallen in love with your choices, too hard to go back and change things now because " gee, if I downgrade the bricks, I'll need a different render colour and if I change the render, I'll need different roof tiles" and so on and so forth - and I am not going back to Hopetoun so what the heck - just add it all on, and i'll say pretty please very nicely to the man at the bank!!
Our actual colour appointment went very well - quickly and smoothly, even with 2 littlies in tow! Our girl " K " was great and although we felt that we had done a lot of homework and were pretty set on what we wanted, she was great and had a lot of ideas and info. on what was used in certain display homes etc. I had fun, "T" attended and survived, but colours aren't really his cup of tea!
The tile selection appointment was attended by me alone - "T" more than happy to miss out the experience and stay home on dad duty. Not much to report from that day, because I chose 2 tiles for the whole house - 1 floor tile for ensuite/bathroom/laundry/powder room floor, and 1 tile for the showers and bathroom/ensuite/laundry splashback!!
Not long after these appointments, our relationship with PD soured a bit. Not to bore you with too many of the details, but we requested info about our prices that they were not willing to give out, and had to shuffle around a couple of appointments due to the baby being sick ( didn't want to go to contract without having done the electrical appointment 1st, which is what they wanted us to do. ) Also, we asked to see a copy of the contract before the actual contract appointment - whoops! Big NO NO apparently, not at all accomodating with that request! DH does the 'hard calls' here...he certainly had a few over a number of days, with a couple of people on the heirachy list, and finally all was worked out to our satisfaction. Wouldn't have happened in the 1st place though if the process was more give and less take, and more flexible when dealing with peoples lives!
So now it is on to electrical selections next week and contract the week after ( a bit scary to actually meet CSR considering our phone and email history. ) I dare say she won't be pulling out the tea and bikkies!

Land again - from another angle.

Enjoying the view.

Our Land

Somewhere off in the distance, behind the big tree...

Note to self....

Note to self .... work out how to get photos off the camera and onto the computer... no IT skills here!

Once upon a time..

Once upon a time, we were happily living in a lovely home in a beautiful and leafy Melbourne suburb, and for numerous resons, decided it was time to move on to a new home. 3 bedrooms, 5 children under 10, very large backyard, hard to keep looking gorgeous despite the water tank with continued drought, lounge,dining and family rooms...all very open plan and great while the kids are little but thinking forward a few years, no where separate for the kids to be kids and for the parents to have time out!! Being an older suburb, there aren't a lot of parks and bike tracks etc and being so hilly means that riding bikes out in the street was a big no no for the kids. Buying established and paying all that stamp duty was something that we considered briefly but it seemed that by building again we could get just what we wanted at a reasonable price. So it is off to the outskirts of Melbourne for us to build for the 2nd time!! Our chosen suburb was really the only place that we considered moving to and looking for land ( if you count out our recurring daydream of living in Noosa! ). We really like the country feel and the wide vistas and being only 13 minutes from our old home was a big bonus. Our 1st foray into land ownership went terribly wrong. We bought a re - sale block through a real estate agent who told us that there were no covenants or restrictions attached to the land restricting what we could build. Ummm, hello?? Yes there were! A very small building envelope... we are looking to build a bigger home, not downsize!! Quickly exercised our right to cool off in relation to that purchase, and then cooled our heels for a while so we didn't get burnt again! Our next step was to do the rounds of the display homes to find a home that we liked, then find the land to match. P.D. was about the 5th builder that we visited and we instantly fell in love. Initially we liked "The Hayman", but then we found "The Illoura"... a little bit more $$, but with a better layout for our family ( we have gone for the 5th bedroom option ILO study ), so all of the kids will have their own "wing" with a kids games room/ retreat to boot! Next to find land, which we did in early February. A 670sqm block, running east - west, which will suit our chosen house design perfectly, with the alfresco area being on the north side. Not quite as big as I would have liked but a) about as big as we could find at the time and b) as big as we could find, as flat as we could find and it was within our budget! I hope that ILO of our previous big backyard (1240sqm), the planned parks and bike paths will be great for the kids, and there will be enough room for us to create a lovely garden. Land was initially meant to be released in September, but now looks like being November. Fingers crossed, gutters are in, roads are graded. The next step for us was to sell our house 1st so we knew just how much money we had to spend on the new build. It was very important to us that we didn't end up owing more on the new home than on the old. So come May, the house was on the market and 8 days later it was sold. So now we find ourselves squashed into around 14 squares of rental accom. for 12 months while we wait for PD to build our Illoura! I sure hope they stick to their word and build in around 20 weeks ( supposedly starting early Feb '09 ) - it's crowded in here!!

Blog " Under Construction " !!!