Contract signed with colors finalised

Its done..
Contract is signed.
Thankfully for us, there were no surprises, and all come in under our budget.

The colours we have chosen are

Facade:

Brick - Blackwood
Render - Light leather and Powdered Rock
Roof Tiles- Barramundi
Garage Door- Dune
Windows and frames - Monument
Front Doors - Ash Brown

This is a mock-up on how it will look.

Interior

Walls and Trims - Dhimba

Kitchen-
Bench top - essastone Crystal Chalk
Overheads - Silk Milano Walnut
Base cabinets - Silk Paperbark

This is the colour scheme below

Bathrooms
Milano walnut cabinets with essastone bench tops

Flooring
600x600 Porcelain - Majestic 2 Limestone for all wet areas and all of downstairs bar the theater room and office.
We will do our own carpet for upstairs post hand over.

Feature Pillar will be Fixed!

We have had another win....

When Australand sent contractors down to lay the footpath in front of our block, they hit our feature pillar with the excavator.
When i went to check on my block, i noticed damage to the pillar. A stone was missing and due to the hit, the mortor had cracked and come loose.

Well, i mentioned this to Australand and they said they would get someone out to fix it.

They "repaired" it (i say that loosely). It was done to a poor standard, and the cracks were not even touched. I later found out that they used a different contractor than the ones that installed the pillar in the first place, Apparently they used a gardening firm?. This is what they did.

As you can see, it stands out like dogs b*lls. Wrong color mortar, and it was not flush with the other stones (it was sunken). 

I called Australand and raised my concerns. I was now dealing with a different person as the last one had retired.....I was informed that she would go and personally view the damage.

She called me back Tuesday afternoon to inform me that she assessed it with the original contractors. They both agreed that it has been repaired to a poor standard, and infact, should not have been repaired in the first place. It needs to be knocked down and rebuilt as structurally, it is not safe.

This should be done by Xmas. 

In the, a good result for me......

Upgrades and Colour appointment

Well, today we had our Upgrade appointment at World of Style.

Unfortunately, none of our consultants had our latest working drawings supplied by head office, which made for a stress-full day.

These are the ones that we were meant to have, but got near the end of the day

Our first consultation was with electrical. I must say, even with out the updated drawings, this went very smoothly. Meagan, was informative and gave good suggestions.
Even though these plans do not show the structural changes, our electricals are in the right spots.

Next was the tiles. This was another smooth consultation. Went very quickly. Again like Meagan, Plandsky was informative and gave good suggestions.


Next, it went down hill.................We had our appointment with our Exterior and Interior colour consultant. I'm still disappointed at how it went. Firstly her laptop was not working (30 mins lost from a 90 min consultation). Then it felt like we were rushed through the whole section of exterior and interior options. We could not get a rough guide on how much the render would cost. We did not have information on pricing on entry door handles, or the kitchen sink, and i still feel that things may have been missed. Things like the evap cooling was left as Beige, when we have a dark grey roof.
Colours that we wanted not being picked up by the computer program.
All in all, we left that consultation feeling that we did not get all we wanted out of it..Little amount of help apart from wall colour.

Next was the kitchen and bathroom cabinets. Even though he did not have the updated drawings until halfway through the consultation, it went well. We did not feel rushed at all and he gave suggestions, unlike the previous appt.

We now have a rough idea on what we are up for, but we need to contact our BC to confirm prices of some items.

Well he had our Tender appointment on Monday, and i was very happy with the process.

The main changes changes we have made are:

• 2 meter widening of garage with 2.4 meter clearance
• 2590 high ceilings
• 2340 high entry doors
• Put a wall in lounge/dining to make it into a study
• Feng Shui staircase
• Finishing touches Promotional pack
• Flooring promo pack
• Alfresco
• extended shower to ensuite
• Kitchen reveal window
• 2340 high Stacker doors to alfresco
• 2700 x 1800 picture window in dining room to look out to future pool
• zoned heating and cooling
• put in the  discontinued FULLERTON style kitchen (L shape island bench)

These are the preliminary drawings for downstairs.

So, Rachel and I have decided to buy a block in Heritage Hill at Berwick Waters, and build the Porter Davis Forsyth 38.

          Our first victory was getting our $8500 bush fire levy removed. The bush Fire zone only comes into our land by approx half a meter along one boundary as viewed on http://services.land.vic.gov.au/maps/bushfire.jsp. After thinking about it for a couple of weeks, i thought i should at least try and get it removed as we are not building on that boundary. After speaking with the Victorian Builders Authority, they informed me that we should not be required to build to the bush fire requirements that PD wanted to do. I mentioned this to my BC, and she said that she would mention it to the surveyor. Then within 24hrs, my BC called me with the good news. She told us that we are no longer in the firezone.

Another issue we had was the crossover. Unfortunately it is pushed to the left hand boundary. The plans for our house is to have it pushed to the right. This was to maximize the size of the back/side yard. We have an 18 meter frontage, which meant our garage finished 4 meters from the left hand boundary.
As you can see with the photo, moving the crossover is not an option because of the drain. That drain is in exactly the place we would need it.  The only option we have now, is to extend the garage by 2 meters. So the money we save on the bush fire levy will now pay for this

 Things we are looking at doing apart from extending the garage, is giving it a higher clearance of 2.4 meters. We will also put a wall in the lounge /dining room to make a study. We believe that lounge will not really be used anyway. This also keeps the WIP and laundry the original size. If we went the "study option"upgrade, they would have taken space from the WIR and the laundry to fit it in between the two. This will give it a similar ground floor plan to the Porter Davis Sandarah.

             Forsyth                                                                      Sandarah

We are off for another visit to World of Style tomorrow to try and settle our colour scheme for the facade (belmont).

Then Tender is on the 17th...