Some photos... finally!!

Hi everyone...

I've finally gotten off my bottom and uploaded the photos to the computer from the past 2 months of exciting house building progress...

Here they are - eat your heart out!! (for anyone who is actually interested!!)

Slab setout and completed (30/01/09 - 3/02/09)

Frame stage (9/02/09 - 19/02/09)

Master bedroom (above)

View from entry (above)

Rear family/meals area (above)

Kitchen/Meals area (above)

Front living area (above)

Study (above)

Front of house

Lock up Stage

Thats it for now kiddies!!

R.I.P Mum.

its been just over a month now since my last blog entry...

Mainly due to my beautiful mum passing away 27th January.. almost 2 and a half weeks ago now. May you rest in peace Mum. A beautiful flower whose spirit never dies, you will live on in our hearts forever blooming. Love you always.

It is hard to move on with news of the house build as everything seems to have little importance right now, without my mum here. Slab got completed around 4th Feb (i think).. Frames began last Monday 9th February and as of last night they were half way through putting on the roof trusses and all the windows/external doors had been put on.. I have photos on my phone but not sure when I'll get onto uploading them.. no idea where the camera is at the moment.. =/

Thats all for now.. Until next time..

Site Start!!!!

I've been soo slack and havent given an update now for about 2 months.. but here we go!

Signed the building contract etc in november (i think! feels like so long ago) yada yada yada.. skip to the exciting stuff.. just got a call from our csr yesterday to let us know that they officially started on site monday!! w00t w00t.. :)

Went past there last night and look what i found:

There was a TOILET and they had completed the site scrape and site set out.. apparently all the underground work (plumbing, electricity etc) will be done before the end of this week and next week the concreters are starting!! Went past there again tonight after work and they had done the power and sewerage connections.. although no water tap there as yet!! which seems strange as on every other house in the street so far we have noticed the water tap there first about 1 month before anything else happens.. hope it comes soon!

After what feels like it has taken sooooooo long to get here, i cant beleive its actually all happening now.. i know its only the beginning but i feel like the hardest part is over and hopefully it will be smooth sailing from here on in?? (probably too optimistic but thats how it feels at the moment anyway!)

I'm sure i'll be reporting here every week with new photos and news with whats going on, as most of us building new houses we get excited over the smallest of things, and the people closest to me will assure you that im definately no different. :) until next time..

A Little Good Luck Comes My Way!

Well about time... i was wondering when abouts our luck would turn around and everything would start going right!!

We finally completed tender/colour selection appointment yesterday, (the second time around!) and THANK GOD finally we are able to start moving forward again!

Many new home buyers received some pretty exciting news on Tuesday with the government deciding to triple (yes TRIPLE!) the federal first home owners grant from 7,000 to 21,000! Put this together with the state first home owner grant and it comes to a whopping $26,000. Yes, as you can imagine this news made me have alot of trouble whipping the smile off my face tuesday night.

Also on tuesday (the night before tender) we found out our fixed site costs and were quite relieved to find out after a month of stressing, it came within our new budget and we were happy to move forward.

I also realised that if it weren't for the problem with the site costs on our first tender we would have had our contract signing last week (before the first home owner's grant tripled) and we would have no longer been eligible! So i guess as the saying goes - everything happens for a reason! :)

As for colour selections:

Here are a some snaps of a few things we are getting in our new home:

Above: Basin & tapware we chose for the main bathroom

Above: Basin we are having for our vanity in the ensuite (tapware we have chosen is the same as the first two photos)

Above: Our removable shower head thingy we chose for the bathroom and ensuite :) (Too bad we aren't getting the same tiling too, it looks pretty funky.. )




Above: External colour selections.. feeling quite happy and confident with these selections, everything seem to match and blend together pretty well :) Love the stone cladding and render colours!

Above: Ensuite & bathroom colours.. once again quite confident & happy with these selections.. love the colour of the floor/wall tiles mixed with vanity cupboards and benchtop..

Above: Kitchen colours - ok so now this is a selection im a LITTLE nervous about.. love the underbench cupboard colour, stone benchtop colour, and splashback colour.. NOT so sure about the overhead cupboard colour.. it looks quite light in the photo but in reality it is maybe a little darker than what we originally planned.. We were trying to aim for this sort of look:

Well thats it for now!! Until next time..

Things Finally Starting To Look Up

No one has probably noticed but it has been quite a while now since my last post! Mainly due to things being very ahh... challenging might be the best word for it.

It all started at tender on 18th Sept... a few hours had past and everything seemed to be going great.. that was until we heard news of our 'extremely deep sewer' which was 5.5 metres deep and since we are looking at building only 1.5m from the sewerage easement our site costs were going to go up by an extra $8,000 just because of the depth of the pipe!!

Obviously we were devastated by this news and didn't continue on to our scheduled colour selection appointment in the afternoon...

Since then, we have been working to obtain fixed site costs for the pipe (should know this by early next week) and have been working to try and get a 4m setback instead of the usual 5m setback which is required in our estate... Yesterday we scheduled in our tender and colour selection appointment in AGAIN for Wednesday 15th Oct... hopefully they go much better the second time around!

Just found out today, after 2 weeks of waiting that YES we may have a 4m setback so this will help improve our site costs although are likely to still be quite horrendous..

So things are starting to look up again a little bit... at least for now :)

Block Update - Site Start On Both Sides!!

So we went for a quick drive past the block over the weekend.. wasn't really expecting anything but to our pleasent suprise not only has one neighber started to build but both had!!

This is very good news only a few weeks after settlement.. since we are starting to build soon we really didnt want to be the first house up and have empty blocks on either side of us! :)

On one side they have started to scrape the slab out and on the other side they have put the temporary fencing up. (ok so they havent technically started yet but close enough!!)

See incredibly exciting picture of dirt below:

Pondering External Colour Selections

Ok now, i know this graphics looks like i must have a heck of alot of time on my hands but i swear it didnt take me all that long!! :/ i swear!!.. lol

after 3 visits at cosham interiors and having no clue what-so-ever what we were going for externally we have decided to go with something that resembles the following: (ok even though spending 'not very long' making the image it still looks a little rough around the edges!)

We are almost certain we have decided to go with ironstone bricks (white mortar), charcoal coloured roof tiles, black windows and gutters, possibly jasper facshia?? ooo and don't forget most importantly stack stone (as you can see on the right hand side of the pic) and render in 'Earth Kiss' colour. :)

Door and panel lift garage door in wood grain stain...

It's not too brown is it??!?

One thing is certain - im looking forward to seeing how close this looks to the real deal - only time will tell :) STAY TUNED!!