Day 8

After the site was cut last Monday, there was daily activity at the block all week. By Friday they appeared to be on schedule to pour the slab today, just as the site supervisor had advised.  

We headed off on a day trip to the Sunshine Coast on Saturday with me contemplating whether I would sneak down and watch the slab pour today or not. As we had my sister visiting from Melbourne, we decided to swing past the block late Saturday afternoon to find......

Lo and behold, they poured the slab on Saturday! So the first phase of our build was completed in six days. It looks like we will be getting a rather large invoice for Christmas. 

It was so exciting to wander around and imagine ourselves living in all of the rooms and to start to think about the landscaping. We have a lot of work ahead of us but I think it will be very rewarding to see it all come together.

We don't expect to see any more work on the build until mid January, but I'm sure that will come around very quickly given how the rest of the year has flown by.

We are both looking forward to some downtime over Christmas. It has been a hectic year to say the least.

Day 2

Day 2 signalled the arrival of the all important porta loo and silt barriers plus crushed rock on the driveway to provide all weather access. The Bureau is predicting rain for the remainder of the week. We hope it doesn't have too much of an impact on the schedule for the plumbers etc.

We also met our neighbours on the right hand side (part of a different subdivision) last night when we were inspecting the excavation work. They are a young couple with three children who all seem lovely and think that we picked the best block of the land available in our section, so we like them already. :-)

I have been trying to condition myself to be patient throughout the build. Clearly I failed, as I am already thinking "whats next, whats next" and I can't guarantee that I won't be down there checking progress every day that I can. It seems that living less than 2km away from the building is a blessing and a trap.

Day 1 - Site Cut

We missed a call from our Site Supervisor last Friday as we were out of phone range. By the time we got the message it was well after 6pm, so I called him this morning. Much to our delight, he advised that they were cutting the site today! Luckily I had a busy workload to prevent me from going for a sticky-beak before Andy got home. 

Tonight we headed around to the block for a peek before it got dark.

I don't think we will need much of a retaining wall on the left hand side.

King of His Castle - looks like we have some landscaping to do!

I can just see over the top of the dirt pile!

The site supervisor said he is planning to pour the slab next Monday 16th Dec, so if all goes to plan we will be getting several tonnes of concrete for Christmas. What an awesome present. :-)

Time for some action

Other bloggers are so right when they say that building involves a lot of waiting, interspersed with a few highs when major milestones are reached. It really is a roller coaster.

After drumming our fingers patiently waiting through the production phase, we headed to Melbourne for some work commitments and most importantly to catch up with friends and family before Christmas. 

It seems that every time we fly somewhere, it prompts some action. Sure enough, as soon as we got to Melbourne we received an email saying that our file was ready for the construction team. Funny... I thought we were building a house, not a file. Dad that joke is your fault! :-)

We have been given the names of our Customer Service Administrator and our Site Supervisor and have been told to expect a call from the Site Supervisor within the week (by this Thursday) to advise when construction will commence.

Whilst they have quoted a 6.5 month build time (not including the Christmas shutdown period) they have advised that based on current work, they expect to complete it in 5 months. Adding on the Christmas period of about one month, this brings us to a late May or early June completion.

I'm running a large conference in early June so I hope it is finished either a fair while before that, or just afterwards. In the past I moved house two weeks before a major event and it was not good for my mental state!

And the official countdown begins.....

After receiving council approval for our plans there was a mad flurry of paperwork from our builder last week in order to move things to the next step. We got our final drawings to check and return, we received quotes on the last two items to be included in our plans and quickly organised a small modification  to our butlers pantry shelving. We received a post contract variation to sign for the minor changes and quickly signed and returned it.

On Friday we were advised that the last thing needed was an authority from our bank to commence construction. I wasn't holding my breath given how long they took for the approval process. Whilst waiting for the authority the actual loan documents arrived in the mail yesterday. A quick email to Plantation Homes and they said that a copy of the loan docs would suffice and they have now moved our file in to the "production" stage. So I've now got an image in my head of them building our house on a production line. He he. 



What it actually means is that they will start allocating materials, appoint a site supervisor and get ready to start building our home. This initial phase is expected to take two weeks, after which we will hopefully start to see some action on our block.

I can't wait to start posting photo's of the actual build! In the meantime, we have found a couple more light fittings for the house, and the perfect coffee table for our family room. 

Our long list of criteria for our coffee table - not timber because of the timber floors, not black  because of the dust factor, not glass or perspex because of the finger print factor, and big enough to put some magazines, drinks and snacks on. This one from Freedom is perfect AND it was on sale. Bargain!

This pendant for above the dining table, and a similar one for the master bedroom.

More excitement than one can handle in a day!

This morning we finally received unconditional approval for our construction loan. What a relief! It took so long we were starting to get worried. However, they have a good interest rate offer on at the moment so maybe they have received more applications than they are staffed to deal with. Either way, the letter came through this morning to a chorus of Yay's from both us and our Mortgage Broker. 

We promptly emailed our pre-construction coordinator at Plantation Homes to tell her the good news. She responded with even more exciting news that council approval for our plan has been received - two weeks quicker than we anticipated. Double Yay!!!!

We have a minor issue with our basin selection for the downstairs powder room to sort out, then one last item to be costed up and we are good to go. We expect to receive our final drawing revisions in the next 48 hours to sign off on, and then Plantation Homes just need to sight the mortgage documents (hopefully we receive them later this week to forward on) and they will start their two week materials allocation period. Then it will be allocated to a Site Supervisor, and all systems go!

So the chances of having a slab down before Christmas are increasing. But I am not going to count my chickens until..........

Final Drawings

Whilst awaiting the results of our Mortgage Broker putting a rocket up the bank which has been sooooo slow, we received the final draft of our house drawings on Thursday night. After checking them thoroughly we found only one minor error. The extra noggins we asked for in order to wall mount the TV are marked on the wrong wall. Not a big deal really, considering the amount of detail involved in the build, electricals, colour selections etc. I have to say I have been very impressed with Plantation Homes so far. 

The same can't be said for our erratic lender. Super efficient with the land purchase, yet now has dropped the ball completely. Thankfully we are still waiting for council approval too, so it's not a huge issue. If we were ready to turn soil and only waiting on the bank, then harsher words might be said. Other blogs indicate our bank is notorious for this. I wish I had known that beforehand. Hopefully we hear back from them this week. 

Since the block settled on Monday we have been contemplating the best way to deal with the weeds that have gone a bit nuts along the fence line. We don't want to annoy our neighbours before we even meet them. However, a heavy downpour and rain forecast for most of the week means it might be next weekend before we can do anything about that.

The land is officially ours!

A few minutes after 2pm today a huge wad of cash disappeared from our bank account and a home loan appeared in it's place! It was all part of the settlement plan, and means that the block of land is now officially ours! We are so excited that we are now one step closer to our goal. So tonight we're heading out for dinner to celebrate.  Tomorrow I will chase up the paperwork to send off to our builder as evidence that we own the block we want to build on.

The next things on the "to do" list are:

• Follow up construction loan approval - the broker tells me that the bank is taking ages at the moment. She is going to give them a hurry-on tomorrow.
• Await council approval - plans were submitted 3 weeks ago and we anticipate a response by the end of November. 
• Source the last 4 or 5 light fittings for installation when the time comes.
• Sell some of our possessions that we won't need in the new home on eBay.
• Remember to not get too stressed - we want to enjoy the build process!

Some photos of our purchases for the house

Since the land was registered things seem to be chugging away in the background with Plantation Homes. Last Thursday we received our final Post Contract Variation but it had a few things missing. We pointed out the missing items to our rep and received a revised PCV from her on Friday which we checked over the weekend and returned by email yesterday.  We also sent the PCV off to our Mortgage Broker, and now that he has all of the paperwork he has ordered the valuation on the house. Fingers crossed the bank approve it, and that they don't take too long to let us know!

Our final costings indicate we went over budget by just under 1%, which we are rapt about considering the price includes all of the bells and whistles that we hoped to have, but weren't sure we could justify. 

We have spent some time working out where our existing furniture will go and also browsing online and in some homeware shops for things we would like to buy for the new house. We have both had a tendency to choose large timber furniture in the past, and we have decided we'd like to mix things up and include a lot more colour in the new place. 

Our first mission was to source a long table for the hallway. The wall is about 5m long so we needed something substantial, and we were hoping to find something with some colour in it. We didn't plan on buying anything yet but when we chanced upon this one-off piece in a homewares shop we couldn't resist! 

We think it will go perfectly with the timber floors in the entry hall, and it's about 1m high and 2.1m long so I plan on getting together a good collection of black and white family photos to create a gallery above it.

We have sourced all but 3 or 4 of our light fittings. The living areas and stairwell seem to be the hardest for us to visualise. We found one that we loved for the Family Room but it has been discontinued, so the search goes on.

We've chosen the Satori pendant below for our master bedroom, plus a funky green industrial pendant which will look great in the home office. 

The downstairs Powder Room will have the Mechanics Cage Pendant shown below. It will illuminate "Bruno" as he stands guard over the loo! Bruno was sitting in the front doorway of a home wares shop on Long Island when Andy photographed him during our New York trip last September. We're not sure of his real name, but Bruno seem's to suit him perfectly. I'm wondering if he is expecting royalties once we display him on the wall!

  

Needless to say, the spare room is quickly filling with boxes of light fittings. One large order is being stored at a lighting shop. When we have to pick those lights up in December it will be standing room only in that room until it's time to move in. But I have to say, that feels like all part of the fun and lead up to our build, so I don't mind in the least. 

Land registered!

Well, lo and behold, less than 48 hours in to our Palm Cove holiday we received an email advising that our land has registered! We promptly forwarded the details on to the builder and they will submit the build plan to council very soon, probably this week. 

The land will settle on 4th November. It is anticipated that council approval will take about 6 weeks, so by the time the land settles we will be several weeks closer to council approval. 
From council approval to the build commencing is about 3 weeks, so we may in fact have a slab down by Christmas. That would be pretty cool, although we will consider that a bonus, and not an expectation. 

On a completely different note, our friend's wedding in Palm Cove last night was beautiful. The reception was under the stars and included a fireworks display. It was pretty amazing, as was the 1.5m long Brown Snake which slithered behind the bridal table during the speeches! Quite memorable!

We get home late this Wednesday night and will chase up everything to do with the block. Loan papers have needed to be reissued as they got my date of birth wrong, but that is now well along the way to being fixed thankfully. 

For now we will relax and enjoy the last few days of our holiday.

Waiting, waiting... but our electrics are sorted!

Unfortunately our land title still hasn't been released which is a bit of a pain. We were hoping to have it mid September at the latest, but we are at the mercy of council and so will be as patient as we can.

In the meantime we have had our electrical meeting to sort out extra power points, light fittings etc. This is one area where we have blown the budget a bit, but we figure that most of the work would be harder to do, if not impossible after handover, so we went ahead and locked in the things we feel are important (plus a few toys!)

Clipsal Saturn Switches to add some glam!

In addition to some extra light and power points, we will be getting some surround sound speakers installed in the Living and Family Rooms. They are a bit of a treat, but will help streamline the rooms and add to the feeling of space. Our other speakers might end up on EBay once we're in and connected. Although being able to hook everything up correctly without cursing and swearing might be a challenge. I think it best that we schedule a few days in between this task and the assembly of the Ikea flat pack wardrobe inserts we plan on getting. Doing both in quick succession might just tip us both over the edge!

Last weekend we headed out to source some down lights and pendants for the house. Our first trip was a bit frustrating as we probably looked at too many shops and options. Our heads were spinning. Then on the Sunday we headed to Lighting Illusions in Windsor and received fantastic help from one of the guys there. We worked through our requirements and he helped us with advice and recommendations to suit. 

Similar to this for over the freestanding bath (40cm diameter)

To light the steps on our staircase

We've chosen some great energy efficient down lights plus some bathroom and external lighting. Between this visit and a few other shop and website orders, we have about 80% of what we need all sorted and either hiding in the cupboard or on layby so that it is not taking up too much space at home.

I'll be sure to post some more images when I have them.

We're off to Palm Cove for a friend's wedding in less than a week, so hopefully something has happened with the land by the time we get back. 

More interior colour details

Okay, so you've seen some of the exterior, kitchen and flooring choices, now that I have a few minutes spare, here are the wet area details.

Upstairs
For the main bathroom we have chosen a charcoal tile for the floor and the bath hob, matte white rectangular wall tiles in the shower and a simple but lovely charcoal and white feature tile strip for the shower. I can't find the feature tile on the suppliers website to show you, but here's the bench top and floor tile images. The cupboards will be Laminex White Silk Finish Gloss which has a nice shine to it and complements the wall tiles nicely.

Quantum Quartz Luna White Benchtop

Lifestyle Charcoal 400 x 400 Floor Tiles

For the ensuite we really want to make a feature of our lovely white freestanding bath and the double vanity, so we have gone for the above 400mm x 400mm charcoal tiles on both the floor and all the way up the walls to make the white really stand out. We have once again gone with Luna White for the Vanity Top, but in this case the cupboards will be Polar White Silk Finish Gloss as it is a better match to the bath than the standard white. We will have the following feature mosaic in a strip 30cm wide up through the shower and also in the two tiled niches (one in the shower and one at the head of the bath).  These are the ones that look purple when I try to take a photo of them. They are actually black and silver with a bit of shimmery bling to them! I think they will make the ensuite look moody and really beautiful. We can't wait to see that room come together. 



Downstairs
In the laundry and powder room we will use 450mm x 450mm floor tiles in Belga Grey. They are really lovely and look good up against the timber flooring downstairs. If we weren't having timber flooring downstairs we probably would have picked these for the entire living area floors without hesitation.



Benchtops in these downstairs rooms will be just a small section around the basin and laundry tub, so we have chosen a dark colour, almost black, for something different to the upstairs rooms. The cupboard doors will be in Laminex Zincworks. I'm not including an image of the Laminex because the sample online is not very accurate and doesn't show its lovely silvery sparkle! It will add a bit of glamour to the rooms without being over the top.

There is no news yet on the release of title for our land, but we have an appointment in a few days to sort out the electrical plan for the whole house, so we will be closer to being ready to go when the land is ready. The electrical meeting will include any extra power points, exhaust fans or lights that we would like, plus they can do internet prewires and home theatre prewires. They can organise to install light fittings that we purchase elsewhere, but they won't do pendants or ceiling fans, so we will get them sorted after handover as we would like some pendants in the kitchen and dining area and have found a great ceiling fan for the alfresco area (see below). Apparently airflow from a fan is a mosquito deterrent, so we may end up with 10 of them whizzing away given my track record with bites!
 
Ciao for now!

Our Selections

After our contract appointment on Tuesday we had our Colour Selection appointment to choose everything from the roofing to the cupboard handles. The appointment was booked for three hours but we were done in an hour as we had decided on almost everything before we went in.

External Colours
We have selected roof tiles over Colourbond as we love these ones from the Bristile Classic Range. The colour is "Coal".
 
Our front facade will be in the following tones:
Windows, guttering and garage door - Colourbond Woodland Grey
Bricks - Moondust (they are not quite as pale as they appear in this photo)
Two render colours - Dulux Namadji (lower facade) and Dulux Stony Creek (upper facade).
Stone Cladding - Beaumont Multi Colour to a portion of the fascia around the front door. 

Internal Colours
Main downstairs flooring - spotted gum laminated timber
Carpet for upstairs and living/media room - a medium charcoal with warm tones.
Walls and trims: Dulux White Duck Half
Doors and Ceiling: Dulux Whisper White
Kitchen Benchtop: Quantum Quartz - New Diamond White
Kitchen Cabinetry: Laminex Silk Finish in Parchment
We upgraded the staircase to stained timber rather than carpet.



We will add three black pendants over the kitchen island bench to give it some drama. Once we have moved in we will use accessories and maybe some paint to add other colours.

I will source some photos of the bathroom and ensuite colours and post them soon!

Contracts and decisions

Our first visit in the colour selection process was to our chosen builder Plantation Home's colour selection venue Cosham Studios. It's a fair drive from our place so we researched the location of the brick, roof tile and wet area tile suppliers nearby and made several day trips. We'd leave each shop clear in what we wanted but I would get home and start second guessing our choices. I think it had more to do with the colour that things showed up in the photos that I took than any level of indecision. A mosaic tile with black and silver in it showed up purple on the iPad, and the carpet we liked looked very green. It was quite off-putting. Once we were able to accumulate some samples we quickly worked out what we wanted and then tossed out any unwanted choices to avoid confusion.

Yesterday we attended Plantation Homes in Springwood to go through the costings of all of the things we wanted to include. Neither of us slept very well as we had been up late looking at last minute details on the draft plan we had received. I was nervous, having read all sorts of horror stories online about nasty surprises at this point in the process. 

When the consultant spent more time than I anticipated going through the soil test I was expecting him to turn the page and show us a bill for tens of thousands of dollars for dealing with rock etc. Thankfully that wasn't the case, and we found that the allowances and estimates included in our initial proposal covered pretty much everything. The bill was at least $20,000 less than I expected. I was soooooo relieved. After three hours of signing our lives away, we are the proud owners of even more paperwork, and a big to do list! 

I'm so glad we went through everything with a fine toothed comb beforehand. All the hours of trawling other people's building blogs, reviews etc really paid off. Other blogs helped us to consider upgrades, pitfalls and extras we might not have thought of, and I think we were more prepared as a result of this.

The main things we upgraded were:

• Ducted airconditioning (not standard in the range of house we chose but considered essential since I work from home).
• Nicer carpet
• Roof tile upgrade - we're not so keen on the colourbond. 
• Some really lovely mosaic tiles for around the kitchen splashback and in the ensuite
• A beautiful freestanding bath in the ensuite
• Now that security screens are compulsory on 2nd floor slide-opening windows, we upgraded to the nicer, stronger mesh without the "security door" look to it. Luckily none of the front windows or ground floor need to have it as I'm not a fan at all! 
• We added in a second stacker sliding door so both the dining room and family room will open on to the alfresco.
• We also reconfigured the upper level to give ourselves a bigger ensuite and WIR.
• We have added a beautiful stacker stone feature to the facade. (We love it and may also use some in our landscaping down the track.)
• We have also positioned the house so that we have the option to put a pool in later on if we want to.
  
  Below is the stone we are having on part of the facade
  
  That's enough for one post I think! 

Soil Tests and Colour Selections

Things are moving very quickly at this stage of the process, probably because we are clear on what we want and have been able to make some prompt decisions.

The builders have done a soil test and the results are as they expected, so there are no nasty surprises or extra $$ there thankfully. I'm sure most of the extra costs will come from our choice of fixtures and fittings.

If we are able to come to agreement on price with the builder next week, things can move as quickly as we would like them to and we can submit the plans to council as soon as the land is registered. So our pre-homework on colours, materials etc will come in handy.

The builder has given us a list of all of the aspects of the house we need to make decisions or colour selections for and the list is HUGE, which is a bit overwhelming but also makes me feel quite excited too. 

Obviously we need to be diligent with our budget, but within that, we plan on having lots of fun choosing our kitchen and flooring colours etc.  We have already found lots of things we love. Many are in the builder's standard range thankfully, but we will probably go for some upgrades too if we can justify them. Especially for structural things that we wouldn't be able to change after the build is completed.

We plan on having a window for our kitchen splash-back. Very much like the one in the picture below, minus the view in to the neighbour's house!

The kitchen window will be fairly close to the fence, so we'll be sure to create a nice outlook for that area when we plan the landscaping. Dad, you might be called upon for some inspiration in this regard.
The Brisbane Home Show is on this weekend so we might pop in there if we have time. We'll just need to leave our credit cards at home!

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, and plans!

After months of research it's exciting to see things fall in to place, but finding time to read all of the associated paperwork has left us with severe brain drain. The mortgage documents for the land are signed and witnessed and on their way back to the bank (not without a couple of boo boos from the 300+ year old Justice of the Peace who kindly volunteered to help us!). Awkward! 

Andy and I have been fortunate to discover that we have very similar tastes in house layouts, decor and furniture. So the process of working out which house to build has been fairly straightforward. 

We are looking to build something like this plan below, although we would be flipping it so that the garage is on the right and the walls with the least windows are on the Western side to minimise the hot afternoon sun getting in.

We have an appointment with the builder for next Tuesday to fine tune our wish list and work out if it fits our budget. Yikes!

It's great to be able to progress this aspect of our plans whilst the land is waiting to settle. Hopefully by the time the land settles we will be all sorted and ready to submit the plans to council for approval.

I'm being my usual stress-head and worrying about things that may not happen, whilst Andy is online browsing all of the lovely furniture and fittings we would like. I need to take a leaf out of his book and chill a bit!

With that in mind, I got up early this morning and went for an hour long walk. Hopefully that calms my frazzled brain and helps me to sleep a bit better!

Let's start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start!

After relocating from Melbourne to Brisbane in May to be with my true love Andy, we set about planning where we would like to spend our life together.

After all of the packing, relocating and unpacking was complete, we set about clarifying the options that were most desirable to us. City or Suburbs? North Side or South Side? Buy or Build?
We decided we wanted to stay around the same area on Brisbane's North Side, but existing properties that suited our needs were few and far between.....pretty much non existent actually. 

So we started exploring vacant land and......voila! We found this little piece of paradise with the perfect aspects just one suburb from where we are currently living. It's one of 13 blocks in the subdivision of a large piece of land. 

Having a Northerly aspect for winter sun and summer shade was high on the wish list. And this block fits the bill perfectly! Title is due to be released in September, with settlement due 30 days after that.

We are soooooo excited!