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!

Which Builder?

In the beginning we had planned to build with GJ Gardiner but we were making SO many alterations to the house plan to make it essentially look like a plan we loved with Plantation Homes. In the end we decided it was a better idea to stick with the plan we loved (and had for a year or two) and switch over to Plantation Homes. Plantation Homes really do have some great designs with nice open plan living and innovative spaces.  The Retreat Vogue Q1 is absolutely perfect for us and it has everything that we want in a home. I still have to pinch myself that we are actually building it as our first home!

Our land

You can see why we fell in love with the land - beautiful bushland (conservation park) across the road with a kids playground and no adjoining neighbour to the righthandside. We have a footpath to the righthandside of the house so the neighbour will be 12 meters or more away. That, along with no neighbour to the front giving us even more privacy was a high selling point for us. We are only 3km from the beach so it's walkable and only a minutes drive - winning!

 

Dreamin & Schemin

Deciding where to live definitely took us a long time to figure out. We had first made the decision to buy and renovate an old Queenslander home or unit within a 5-6km radius of the CBD. After moving up from Gold Coast and living close to the City with City views we decided that we wanted a similar location and setting for ourselves and starting searching for properties with these qualities. We thought we could use the Brisbane

property as a stepping stone to get us on our way to the Sunshine Coast – which was always the end goal. Well, as the year went by (and many realestate.com searching expeditions later) property prices started to go down the plug hole, as a result we decided that this plan may not work after all so we skipped a few steps and decided to start searching for properties on the Sunshine Coast.
A few factors that we were looking for:

§   Proximity to the beach

§   Proximity to the highway to get to the airport

§   Proximity to shops and cafés

§   As much privacy as we could get in a residential setting

Alex and I jumped in the car and drove to the Sunshine Coast and started to check out areas that we liked around Mooloolaba and Alexandra Headland – I’m not sure how we ended up north of the Maroochy River but as soon as we drove into the Estate we instantly liked what we saw and proceeded to drive around and check it out. Next thing you know we were talking to the Sales rep and he was chauffeuring us around to all of the vacant blocks. It was almost dusk at the time; we used the rep’s iPhone to light up the paper work with the vacant land details on it! 

We were dreamin and schemin about the block the whole way home and decided that we didn’t want to pay more than a particular amount for the block (which was a lot less than its advertised price) so we’d make a cheeky offer and if they accepted it, we’d go for it but if not than we would keep dreamin and search for something else!

To say the least we were blown away when they accepted our offer, and now we are building our first home. We couldn’t be more excited!