New Home Proposal

First and foremost I have to say a MASSIVE thank you to Jayne and Brett for helping prep Alex and I for our New Home Proposal meeting. I think I would have died of anxiety from all of the ‘unknowns’ which seem to come out in your New Home Proposal meeting. Xx

So, I may have worked myself up a little too much for this meeting and it actually wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be. It was actually great fun seeing exactly how the house was going to look inside and out and how it will be sited on our block. There were a few hidden costs and quite a few items that the Sales rep had miss-quoted but it wasn’t too killer. The main ‘unknown’ for us was finding out that our house is in a minor fire zone and so quite a few things had to be modified on the house.

Such as:

• All glass had to be strengthened
• All wood had to be a certain degree of flame retardant
• All weep holes and the whirlies on the roof had to have metal mesh added to them
• Fire safe seal around the garage door
• Fly screens had to be changed to a particular type of metal with smaller ‘holes’
• Flame retardant sarking around the wood frames (inside the walls)

All of these things are to prevent airborne ambers flying into the house and burning through and causing a fire. Luckily, we are in the lower end at about 12-12.5. Apparently this number goes all the way up to 40 so I would hate to think what you would have to do to a house in those conditions.

Rather be safe than sorry though and let’s hope we never have to deal with a bush fire.   

Appointment finished yahoo! Now long weekend with friends at the beautiful Noosa Heads

(image via Noosa YHA)

Porchlight Interiors

I always knew that when the time came to build a house I would hire the help of a designer to help select colours for the house (inside and out). Why spend all that money on a house to not invest an extra couple of hundred dollars to get it right?

Alex and I wanted a colour scheme of black, white, grey (all 50 shades) and taupe. We had general ideas on what colours we wanted where but wanted help on picking the exact shade and making it all work together, so we hired the help of Porchlight Interiors.

T from Porchlight Interiors came out to our house for a consultation to get a design brief from us. From there we had another appointment with her to go through the colours that she had selected and what we liked and didn’t like. T also came with me to help make a firm decision on tiles from Beaumont – I felt much more confident with my decisions once I had the tick of approval from a professional. 

Hiring an interior designer is not for everyone – but it’s definitely for me (and my indecisiveness) and well worth the money spent! I’ll definitely be having T come back to the house once it’s complete.

Tiles & Flooring

Another Saturday, another flooring store!

Ok so I thought I had an absolute clear idea about the kind of tiles I wanted for the wet areas of the house until I walked into Beaumont tiles! When I entered the store I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of tiles and yet none of them seemed to be exactly what I wanted and the ones that I thought were ‘ok’ were not in the standard range – we have allowed extra for tile upgrades but unfortunately you don’t find out the cost of your selections until ages after selecting them which doesnt help with the anxiety levels when trying to keep on budget. Needless to say I left the store multiple times still not having made a firm decision on what I wanted.

Same went for the Carpet at Carpetcall – some nice ones but none were exactly what we wanted. Alex and I saw carpet in a display home that wasn’t a Plantation Home. It was the first carpet that we have both agreed on and loved straight up (miracle right there!) so we had to find out what it was. We buttered up the builder of that display home and he finally gave in and found out what carpet they had used in that house. Carpetcall don’t stock it so we will have to go to a different supplier for it. The colour of the carpet will be selected after handover when we can see what works best in the space.

Alex and I started off rocky deciding on the wood flooring for the house. We both had different ideas on the colour but when we actually visited Carpetcall we both liked the same flooring! (another miracle)  Trust me there was max excitement and high 5’s happening all round! We actually agreed on the same thing haha

Carpet done. Wood flooring done. Tiles fail.

Search continues….

Happiness did start there

How fitting my screen saver was for September....

Soil Test

We received our soil test results today – which came back with flying colours! We had budgeted for a H class soil and are absolutely stoked that it came back as M class. Which means the slab laying fees are under what we had budgeted and the money can be spent on upgrades in the house.

One issue however! We have a tree in question that could cause a problem later for our slab. The tree is not on our property so we can’t have it removed – it’s situated on the vacant land adjacent to our block.  Looks like I’ve hit our first ‘bump’ in the road and will need to get in touch with the Developer to see if they will remove the tree or install a root barrier system. If not, we are up for huge costs to add piering to our slab and the installation of a root barrier system by an arborist. 

The things you find out about along the way?!

Settlement Day

Now proud land owners hoorah!

I’m going to keep it light on the boring legal side of things! Originally our block was zoned as a duplex as it’s so large (842m2) so we made the contract subject to the block being zoned back to a single dwelling lot – this way we didn’t have to pay two sets of body corporate fees (the Estate is part of a community management scheme) I mean, who wants to do that if you are only planning on building a single dwelling? Not me ha!

Minus a few hiccups with our mortgage broker everything worked-out in our favour and we happily settled (thanks to our amazing Conveyancer) today 13 September 2012.  

Tender Stage

Every weekend that Alex was home from work was filled with visits to the display centre at Rochedale where we were in the tender stage of piecing together how we wanted our Retreat Vogue to look and suit our way of living. ‘M’ from the sales centre was ever so patient and helpful with all of our changes (yes there were a few!) and relatively stupid questions as we fumbled our way through the process of building for the first time. 

We started off with the Stella façade but in the end changed it to the Horizon – which is the same as the display centre which grew on us more and more each time we visited.

These are the main structural changes that we made to the plan:

• 2.5 space garage to allow Alex workspace and room for his tools
• Relocated the laundry to near the garage (originally in between the two living areas)
• Added double hung windows to the theatre room on elevation D (see Floor Plans) to allow for breezes to come through when the timber stacker doors were closed
• Closed up the sliding door to the master bedroom on elevation F to create more privacy from the alfresco area and added a window there instead
• Added the kick out to the living area on elevation D which is standard in the Retreat Lux Q1 plan but not the Retreat Vogue
• All cupboard shelving and hanging rails were changed to a higher height to get optimum cupboard space (Ooh yeah!)
• Added a second hanging rail to the master bedroom WIR on elevation A
• Broom cupboard added to the linen cupboard in the laundry
• Tiled niche added to the ensuite shower
• Created a larger manhole in the garage so we could store (non-heavy) things in the roof like camping gear and the Christmas tree to allow for more uncluttered space in Alex’s precious man-land!
• The garage is a step-down from the house to lower the gradient of the driveway

Seriously, I don’t think I have ever had to look at so many windows, doors and different designs just to pick the correct size and fittings of things in my life. If you don’t tell the builder exactly what you want then they whack in anything they feel will work and when you see the plans it’s a little like ‘what the?! that’s not the window I had envisioned'.

Exhausting work and complete happiness at the same time!