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.