Tuesday 11 June 2013

Landscaping PLans

We are meant to submit a rough landscaping plan when we go to our contract appointment in 2 weeks so here is what we have put together - it is in pencil so maybe hard to make out but was fun to do.

 
 
 
We hope to have a deck path from front of porch to footpath and in front of the study window with garden bed on either side and letterbox on west of this decked path so at no point can it be run over near the driveway :P
We are going to ask brother Mark to build us beautiful wood gates like we had at the Whitsunday house. Behind which will have access to the eventual man shed in the northwest corner of the yard. Will build garden beds along the north and east fences with Bamboo to create a screen for some privacy in the back yard.
We also want to eventually deck over the concreted alfresco extending the full width of the back of the house to have a larger outdoor entertaining space.
These projects will be done in stages as we can afford but hopefully the entire yard work will be completed in 3 years from when we move in.

 
 

Tile Selection

Appointment yesterday was very straightforward as we have opted for floorboards through the main part of the house and carpet - so was only wet area we had to do :)

And due to some valuation issue with bank which we are trying to sort out we wanted to keep strictly to cat 1 tiles so I didn't bother to look too hard at the shiny ones we passed.


Not a great pic sorry - but essentialy the big black tile is the floor tile - Simplicity Nero I believe its called (400x400) the white wall tile (200x400) is exactly like we had at the Whitsunday house for our walls and its a good tile :) the green glass "Zest" mosaic is for in the 2 shower niches - the only feature tiles we will have anywhere in the house.

The balcony will be tiled in the external version of the floor tile - feels a little like sandpaper...

Grout is white for walls and gunmetal grey for floors which is nice and dark and hopefully wont show the dirt :)

All falling into place nicely at the moment and we were in and out of the appointment in just over an hour not bad considering the couple building their first house next to us were fighting over choices as we left and their house was only half the size admittedly I wanted the same tiles and colours throughout the house...

Saturday 8 June 2013

Tender..

We had our Tender appointment on Monday just gone - I had heard awful awful things about these kind of meetings so had tried to mentally prepare myself for the worst - and had been practising my composed face for when were heard back regarding what site costs were.

Well like everything else so far everything fell into place nicely despite my worrying :)

The site costs was well within our extra allocation of funds so was our council oh+s costs too.
When doing our original sales quote with our SC from Porter Davis (who was lovely by the way) we had scored ourselves a sweet voucher to spend at Hopetoun Interiors which is where you pick all your house fittings and colours.

I had spent a fair few hours reading others blogs and getting an idea on upgrade costs for certain things we wanted upgraded so that we could prioritise what we could afford to do with the voucher we had be given. But a lot of upgrades are house dependant so I asked our BC (building co-ordinator) for quotes for certain upgrades - she advised she would have these costs at the tender appointment for us and credit to her every single one had been remembered and included so we could pick and choose which we wanted to include.

Great news of the day? we could do every one of our upgrades from Hopetoun with the voucher with a bit to spare which was great as I forgot to upgrade all cabinet handles to cat 2 ones which we can still do :)

The whole meeting took less than 2 hours...and they didn't even mind that we made them wait an extra few days till we paid them as the old house hadn't settled yet.

So our main voucher upgrades are.

  1.  Cat 3 essastone to kitchen benchtops instead of cat 1 in promo pack (so glad as the colours we liked didn't start till cat 3) 
  2. Kitchen glass splashback instead of tiled
  3. Basic upgrade to front door including ricepaper glazing to door and sidelights and upgraded lever entry set.
  4. Sectional Garage door with remotes instead of standard roller door.
  5. Upgraded all basins, toilets and changed taps in showers and bath to mixer style
  6. Carpet underlay
  7. Pot drawers to either side of oven
am sure I have forgotten a few.

We also have promotions packs we opted for when we did our original sales quote
they are
  1. Flooring pack - bolero timber laminate to main entry and living area and carpet to rest of house.
  2. Kitchen upgrade - cat 1 essastone, overhead cupboards, bigger oven, dishwasher and a few other bits and pieces.
  3. Function Fancy - flyscreens, window locks, extended laundry benches internal access door, shower rail to ensuite etc.
  4. Hebel Promotion - house is built out of hebel panels (airrated concrete) and then the entire house is rendered.
The structural choices we made are
  1. Provide eaves to entire second story not just façade.
  2. Upgrade to Dalgety façade
  3. Provide rear Alfresco.
and a few other minor changes - the house was pretty spot on so not much needed doing.


 
this is the Dalgety façade on the 42 ours is a bit different no windows on the left hand side and ours will be all render no brick and stone but we will have the white cladding top which I really quite like now :)
 
 

the story so far

We moved to Melbourne 7 years ago into a lovely home with our 2 children + 2 dogs - 3 children and a lizard later we realized the poor house was not going to make the long term.
Prompting us to make a grand change we bought land further out and decided to build (neither of which I had ever wanted to do!) but 5 kids and running a business from home meant we had very specific needs we just couldn't find in any houses in our area in our budget :/

Our land is 16mx35m which makes it only a little bigger than what we had before but we are able to build a big double story on it - which means the kids should have roughly the same sized yard we had before...the area is nice enough a new school is opening 2015 in time for our 4th to start prep which is great and its maybe 200m away - typical new estate flaws but hopefully we luck out with great neighbours who will be house proud like we are :)

Now for the fun part - the big house!
We are building the Marina 41 through Porter Davis - we looked at quite a few but were turned of some things (like a lot of new designs have the laundry through the WIP - who wants to carry spewed on bedding past their food, and we all know that happens from time to time)
We wanted a master bedroom on the ground floor away from the kids room and though the baby wont even be 2 when we move in and may still mean midnight trips upstairs in the long run this will lessen and I will very much appreciate having a downstairs sanctuary.

http://www.porterdavis.com.au/~/media/Homes/Marina/Marina%2041/PDF/Marina_Floorplan_41.pdf

Above is a link to a pdf version of the basic house we are building - we have opted for the rear alfresco - have changed a door and the sink location in the laundry - have also moved the sink in the kitchen but the rest of the house layout was pretty much spot on what we were looking for.

The downstairs rumpus will be my home PT studio for clients and the upstairs games room for the kids is huge!!!
Feeling very lucky but know full well we will both be working very hard for the rest of our lives to pay off such a house... and the marina is part of their lifestyle range (not top of the line or anything!)

Will try learn more about making the blog look pretty with pictures etc but site start is not till July so  I have some time up my sleeve to learn.