Tanks and Poles and Signs

We went to the block today, and first thing we noticed is we have a sign! :) :) I took a pic of Tim pointing at it, cause he was amazed that they printed it up specially for us, with our lot number on it .. hahaha

We also finally managed to get a pic of our water tank.. :) We were wishing we had a shed or other roof hooked up to it, so it would be over flowing now.. ahh well.. its still 3/4 full , as we had a truck bring a load of water in..

We also have a power pole! yayy.. our electrician (B.I.L.) wasnt sure if it would have been installed as we had more rain, and may have been too boggy.. but we do. and it looks fantastic..

I know only 'Homeone' guys will understand my excitement at having a powerpole.. lol

I hope you enjoy the pics.. Oh and I will add a couple of pics of the kids, playing in the dirt of our attempted site scrape... Tim had to get his hand in too! ( biggest kid of all lol)

-Sha

more $$$$!!!

"M" called today to say the excavator guy had been back to our block, hoping to cut it again.. nope! still too wet. (not surprisingly)..
He advised us that we need to cut out the driveway and put some shale or roadbase down .. yes on all 85 metres of it!! First thought.. this is gonna cost some big $$$..
We got some quotes from a few businesses (not too bad priced, but they didnt seem confident with what had to be done), so we then called a 'local lad'. He knows our soil type, and says that it will not work by doing what the builder has suggested, as the water will simply push its way through, and we will make a huge mess, once we start cutting. Instead, he said we should not cut it, but just put some crushed sandstone down, mixed with cement powder over the top of the exsiting grass/mud. He seems to know what he is talking about, and we will be going with this method, even though its the most expensive. If the weather stays fine, then he will be on site on Saturday to get that done.. and fingers x'd, we will be able to have the site cut next week!
Also..
We had our water tank delivered yesterday. It holds 5000 gallons (22700 litres). So that combined with the one we are having underground off the house (another 32500 litres) should be heaps of water.
DH forgot the camera yesterday, and it was too dark once I got there, so I will get pics on the weekend :)
-Sha

Wet Wet Wet

Well.. we tried to get the trench dug and the gravel down on the driveway... but with so much rain around, it was not to be.... The builder is very keen to start, but he is going to have to postpone for a few days atleast until it dries out... Pictures speak for themselves.....

We only managed to get a few metres of the trench done, and the gravel is still in a pile where it was dumped.. With so much mud, the gravel will just sink into it. When it dries up a bit, the builder is happy to spread it out for us...

We think a few more truck loads will need to be ordered.

The kids wasted no time jumping all over it!!

-Sha

rain, rain go away, come again .. in 7 months time..

They attempted site scrape today, but it was sooooo boggy that it looks like the excavator must of bellied out in the mud.. He had to give up.. :( and... we have had more rain tonight.. *bugger!*

Tomorrow we have a friend and his trench digger coming to dig our trench for the electrical cables, and hopefully the local quarry is turning up with some gravel rocks for our driveway (we need to supply all weather access). Hope it dries out a lot over night! but we arent very optimistic..

Does this mean that today is still officially our first day of construction??

Here is a pic of our 'attempted' site scrape.. DH standing in the mud...

(Please excuse quality of pic, as it was taken with phone camera, and it was getting dark)

We have our rain tank turning up on Tuesday, and our electrician is coming out next week to install the power pole on our property, bring the cables in to the house and install our meter box near where the house is going.

Full steam ahead, if only the rain would stay away!

-Sha

YAY!! We are starting today!!

We had a call from our 'original' SS "M" this morning , asking us where our block is! lol as the excavator man couldnt locate it...(It is a little bit hard to define, especially since all this rain, the grass has grown quite a bit - We must get out there and mow!) So.. it looks like we are getting scraped today... wooohooo!! Now the fun begins :)
(Guess they just got the SS's name wrong, and "M" will be our SS for the duration.. hopefully :))
-Sha

No Action Tonight babe..

We were advised by our SS - "M" that our site scrape was booked in for today - 04/12/08.
Tim and I both had to work late, so it was a mad dash up there in the dark tonight. We were expecting to see lots of mud (we had storms this afternoon), and when we got there we did see lots and lots of mud.. and soggy grass... but none that had been turned over with an excavator :(
In the mail today was a letter from our builder, congratulating us on beginning our construction, and an invoice for the base payment! Since we havent even had site scrape yet, we think this is a bit premature!!
It also mentioned that our Site Manager "B" will be in touch with us prior to excavations.. What the.. or rather Who the..??
So we have no idea now when we will start or who will be running the show..
Lots of rain is expected for Friday through to Monday, so we dont think we will get anything done now until late next week.
That hasn't stopped us crossing 'everything' in the hope that we have a slab for Christmas :)
-Sha

More changes... how unusual! lol

We have decided to change the hallway light fittings (there are 3 of these) from this

To this.....

The shade looks pinky/orange in the pic here , but in real life it is white alibaster.. This should match the light we are having in the entrance..

On a sour note.. We were informed yesterday, that since we have gone over our 90 day contract by 2 weeks, our contract will now be reassessed to see if they want to charge us more money.. grr..

Also, Council has stipulated that we need a 45000 litre rain tank as minimum. We only planned on putting in a 32500 litre inground tank, with a 10000 litre poly tank off the shed.. Apparantly this is not good enough.. so we may be up for another $5000 to get another tank.. There are a few options so we will need to look into it more.... including calling the council, as our neighbour has just finished building, and I am pretty sure they only have an inground 32500 litre tank, identical to the one we are installing now... hmmmmm

-Sha

Final tile choices... I promise!! lol

Some time back, we had to choose new tiles, mainly because the ones we 'really ' loved were just too expensive to justify... Here are the choices we have now... these ones are 'keepers' as we have now locked them in :)
-Sha

Ps .. Please excuse our 'very daggy' green/white check tablecloth in the background.. lol (I can guarantee it wont be coming with us to the new home!)

Bright lights!!!

Today we spent a couple of hours choosing the lights and fans for our new home..
Here is what we chose so far...
For the entrance ... though I am sure we will have all of the lights working ;)
For our WIR..

For the Kitchen..

For the hallways (there will be 3 of these)..

For the loungeroom( x 2), the family/dining room (x 2). The blades for these rooms will be silver. We are also having these fans in the alfresco (x 2), with the black blades. On the bottom of all of these fans will be 3 little spot lights, similiar to the lights in the WIR only not on the long stems.. They look good and will be great to direct light for reading, studying etc..

We looked at the fanaway fans as they are what I originally wanted.. but after seeing them, they wouldnt be right for our house.. The lights are really large. They did seem to put out a fair bit of breeze, though I am not convinced its as much as a normal fan.

We still need to get the fans for the bedrooms, but we did get the spotlights, similiar to the ones mentioned above ( only in white ) that will attach to the basic ceiling fans we can buy cheaper elsewhere. We need bathroom lighting, and outdoor lighting still.. Everywhere else is now decided upon.. yayyy :)

council approval, insurance.. not long now..

We received the approval in the mail today from the council.....which was actually approved yesterday :)

We also received the certificate for BSA licence, in case our builder goes bust..

And more mortgage documents.. I don't think we signed some of the paperwork properly. Once we send that in on Monday, the bank should be all good to go.

Newstart hand their new jobs to the site supervisors every Friday.. so fingers x'd we make it to the next one..

We should be starting in a couple of weeks... woohoooo!! getting exciting now...

:)

Getting there..slowly..

Well we finally have the official bank approval today.. Yippeeeee!!! We had a verbal a week or so ago, but due to redtape, have been waiting for the official word...
One more step to go... the council approvals... then we are all set to start building...
Its been such a long process just to get this far but I bet this part will feel like nothing compared to the actual build lol

I am now starting to worry about my colour choices... I know its early days, but knowing I cant change them now without huge costs is what has me thinking... a worry wart I am!!! lol
-Sha

New Colour Selections

There were some choices in our colour scheme that didnt 'feel right'.. so we were back at Beaumont's yesterday reselecting some tiles (and cupboard colours - will have to let the builder know on Monday!) We chose some Gumnut tiles to scatter in amongst the white tiles for the splashback in the kitchen. We realise it's probably a little 'old fashioned' to put these kinds of tiles in, but as we are building in the country, and we are, 'country at heart', they seemed to fit in with our tastes.

Kitchen and Ensuite were changed. All other colour remain the same as previous post.

Today we received our contract in the mail!! There is some serious reading time ahead of us now.. :) I am also adding some pics of our plan, and elevation.. enjoy!

Colour Scheme

As promised... our colour choices... :)

One Step Closer...

Today we received our conditional approval! YAYY...
We also finalised our colour selections.
I will take pics this weekend and post on here.

One thing I am still unsure about, when we chose our bricks, we were told we would be getting 'Blueboard" above the windows. As we only raised the ceiling to 2550, we didnt think it would be an issue. I am now having second thoughts as this will be above ALL windows.. Has anyone else done this that they might have pics of? Does it look odd when all done and finished??
I guess time will tell as it is too late to make any more changes to our design...

-Sha

bricks chosen... roof colour??

After almost making the mistake of chosing a brick that looks purple when built !! Blah!! (as we discovered when doing a drive-by lol).. we have now decided to go with Austral Monticello bricks from the Santa Fe range. Here is a pic of a house with the same bricks.. the roof to me looks alittle washed out, so we are still undecided what colour to make the roof, guttering etc.. any ideas???

- Sha

We finally signed.....

Well, after all of our running around and never really knowing what we were doing, lol, we have gone back to our original decision. We signed a Preliminary Assessment with Newstart Homes, which will get us all of the tests/plans required for council etc.. We would love to have built the house below (our dream home!), but in today's market, we felt it would have been stepping too far above our comfort level.. We decided the termite problem was fine (after researching some more) as long as we have Kordon treatment. Bayer warranty it for 50 years, and our house will be under warranty for defects from Newstart for LIFE! - whilst we are the owners. If we sell the house, it reverts back to the original 30 year warranty for the new owners.. So we don't feel we are taking too much of a risk :) We have a few things to iron out before contract, so hopefully things will all go to plan.

Above is our slightly reworked plan and the original elevation...

-Sha

New Builder Chosen

We have totally gone off the idea of Metricon. Not for any other reason, but we have decided the house we were looking at building with them was not really what we are dreaming of. The inside was beautiful, but the external wasnt real 'homestead-style' like we are wanting. So we have decided to go with a new builder.

This is the house we have chosen. (I hope I havent broken any rules by adding the pic). Our design will be built slab-on-ground, and no balcony (rail) on the verandah, but otherwise very much the same as this one. Isn't it beautiful!

It will probably be 6-12 months now before we build :( but we are hoping the time will fly by..

-Sha

First meeting with 'G' at Metricon

Things went very well at the meeting we had with 'G' at Metricon display village. He seems very nice, and extremely helpful. We have been waiting for the total cost with all the changes we have added in, and this afternoon we received the email. It is quite reasonable, even though he has added in a 'general' figure for some items, as they are changing company and unable to quote exact prices at this time. I am pretty sure they will be the builder we are going to go with. Tomorrow I will post off all the paperwork to the bank and see how we go there.. fingers x'd!!
-Sha

The House Hunt

We have been reworking a plan for the past couple of weeks with Newstart Homes, and have finally come up with a plan we love! The problem is, they have now advised us, that due to a meeting the company has held, they have decided not to build in steel anymore. (probably due to the rising cost of steel lately). We are pretty keen on steel as we have literally millions of termites on our block. We have been told that with T2 treatment on the timber and Kordon treatment to slab, we will be covered, but with only a 25 year warranty, we aren't so sure. We are planning on making this our last move, so will be there alot more than 25 years hopefully! So.. We are now looking at Metricon. I like the Denver plan, though would like to have the bedrooms, and most of the middle section as the Denver33, but upgrade the main bedroom wing, and the kitchen to be like the Denver46. We have an appointment at the Heathwood display at 11am to go through inclusions/exclusions. They have some great package deals on at the moment, that means we are able to upgrade items that otherwise we may not have been able to. (packages include steel upgrade with free colourbond roof, stone benchtops, higher ceilings, plus more).. We shall see how things go today.

-Sha

The beginning....

It all started in, 2006, when some friends of ours bought an established house in Coominya, QLD. (near Wivenhoe Dam). One day, when visiting them, we spotted 2 large blocks of land (10 acres each) for sale. As we had only just started looking for land, we ummed and ahhed for quite a while. Then, one day, we saw a SOLD sign on one of the blocks! That made up our mind (funny that! lol), so we put in an offer for the other block. (Which as it turns out, we think is the better block :) ... With a bit of mucking about (from the seller), we finally settled the land in March, 2007. We have since had the block slashed, stick-raked, mowed (thanks to Tim and Dad!) and generally tidied up. Pics are of the block as it is now.

Now onto the next step... deciding which house to put on it.... ( The hardest part I think!)

-Sha

Ps. Click on pictures to enlarge. :)