Hi all, sorry for the lack of updates. Things have been quite busy lately but there has been a fair amount of progress.
We're almost at the start of the building process now. We've had all our main appointments: Tiles, Electrical and Colours & selections. All three went really well, the people who helped us make our choices were all fantastic, we couldn't have asked for more.
Beaumont Tiles for tiles. We have gone for a fairly basic set of tiles, with 60cm x 60cm white porcelain rectified tiles for the main living areas and a brown theme in the bathrooms. Our ensuite should look nice as the vanity is brown too and should go nicely with the feature tiles that run up under the bath and up the wall.
The electrical appointment at Clipsal went well, I think we were done in around an hour and a half and was mostly stress-free. We ended up upgrading light switches to their sapphire Zen range and some motion sensors etc. so in the end we went $2k over our initial budget but still we were quite happy. We only have to provide the kitchen island pendants.
The Colours selection at Coral Homes went well too, done in around two hours. We were actually under budget, woohoo! We've gone for wood-effect garage door, off-white mortar to go with light coloured double-height bricks, lots of brown paint in lots of rooms (to keep the theme going) and a nice dark grey carpet for the bedrooms.
We only have one issue at the moment - Coral are trying to charge us nearly $3k for the wood piers to the alfresco. Utterly barmy. I'm doing my best to fight it though and feel confident that they'll see sense in the end... here's hoping. Hopefully once sorted and everything is signed we'll get a date for when the build will actually commence!
The soil survey came back as an M! Woohoo! Very happy and relieved campers all round. The report was very, very similar to the QM soil survey and has made me question very much either Plantation's integrity or competency - or maybe both. So glad we moved away from them now.
Anyway, below is a rough plan of what the house will be like. Main changes are the heavily modified ensuite (as per the Style Master Piazza bathroom), even larger alfresco, wider bifolding doors and portico entrance.
Here's how it should look on the plot:
Oh and yesterday we went to the bank and signed all the paper work for the land part of the loan. Things are ticking along nicely.
So PH refused to allow for an independent soil survey. Well, their exact words were 'we don't accept independent soil surveys but we are happy to review them'... i.e. go do one.
So we have. It was a strange co-incidence but we got a message back from Coral Homes and they offered us a good deal. Another quote on the Daydream 30 (with some fairly cool mods that I'll go into in a later post) and went over and paid our deposit today. :) We're saving around $40k by going with Coral and sticking with a standard design rather than an acreage style house. With any luck we'll be at the council stage in six weeks or so.
I'll have to let PH know tomorrow that we're not going to progress with them any further and I feel sorry for the salesman as it wasn't his fault at all. Shame.
With any luck Coral's site report will come back with a lower classification!
Our QM salesman sent us through the old soil report and indeed it was classed as M. I've forwarded this at QM's permission to Plantation and they have agreed to query the report with the engineer. It'll be interesting to see what they respond with.
They appear to use their own engineers to do the survey so I am starting to wonder if they artificially inflate the soil rating to make more profit (30% of 10k is more than 30% of 3k, for instance). The Plantation Homes salesman has confirmed that it'll cost us 7k more if it's H2 rather than M.
I've contacted an independent soil surveyor who charges $400. It may be worth it if it saves us $400. We'll wait and see what PH come back with before deciding.
Edit - this is out of sequence for some reason. This was originally posted 8th March.
Well, we've only gone and put a deposit down on the fanastic Longreach home by Coral Homes. Oh, wait, no we haven't. After a last minute change of mind we've plumped for a Colorado Q2 by Plantation Homes. Total shocker, it came out of absolutely nowhere with a killer hook and landed us.
Friday night I was just sat at home thinking that I couldn't remember what acreage homes Plantation offered. So I got out one of the many many brochures of theirs that we have (!) and had a look. I flipped to the Colorado and wait just a minute, that's exactly what we want - a wide design with an L-shaped dining/lounge area! Just flip the master room area over and bam! Pretty much perfect. The only other change was to change the stacker doors to tall bi-folds (for that open feel) and change the window in the master to a stacker door (which actually gave us cash back).
I contacted the Plantation Homes salesman and asked to go see him. Luckily enough he could see me yesterday (Saturday 7th March 2015) and we got a good quote sorted out - it was actually 20k cheaper than the Retreat Vogue because it already has a porch and doesn't need render. Fantastic! There was an option for the Q1, a good 50 square metres bigger for just $20k but in the end, after comparing the sizes of the rooms in the smaller Q2 we decided that the Q2 was all we needed.
Today (Sunday 8th March) we went back to see Troy and put down our deposit. Very exciting. We even got a folder to put our documents in - Telle said it was the most expensive folder she's ever bought :).
So, we're now at tender stage! We might jump to the contract stage but let's wait and see.
Oh, and the craziest thing is that Troy, our Plantation Homes Sales Consultant is actually the brother of Jules, the Coral Homes Sales Consultant! Mad! So we went from one sibling to the other. Talk about keeping it in the family. Hopefully she isn't too upset.
Very exciting times, if we're lucky we'll be in just before Christmas. Let's hope that Santa is kind this year!
So today I received the results of the preliminary soil survey. H2. Which means Highly Reactive and is bad news in that it will cost more than we thought for the foundations and slab.
What made it a bit of a shock was that the land sales rep had told us that a previous soil test had been done and it had come back as a M - Mildly Reactive. H2 is two grades worse. Can it really have changed that much in two years when all there is is grass on it?
I'm going to hopefully send Plantation Homes the old survey and query how they could be so different. We've yet to find out what the cost difference will be but I think it'll be quite significant. Not a good day for the house dream.
I've also been looking into window fittings and holy hell they are expensive down under. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars per window. Thousands if you want plantation style shutters. Bonkers. Totally bonkers. Luckily IKEA will partly save the day as they have some roller blinds that will fit some of the less important windows (like the walk in wardrobes and spare bedrooms). $54 rather than $154 per blind is quite some saving. I am actually quite flabbergasted at how expensive they are. Ah well, add it to the list of expenses. It'll all be worth it. :)
Today we celebrated choose our builder / house design by going to the Brisbane Home show, just to do something totally unconnected ;) We got there nice and early and manged to get around the show and have a good few very informative conversations with pool, solar power, building regs, building inspections, decking, concrete, carpets and tile companies. We collected so many flyers, business cards and brochures!
We also managed to get a base ball cap, an umbrella, a measuring tape and lots and lots of sweets (or lollies as they're called over here) - not a bad haul! We also entered every contest going so who knows! Wouldn't mind winning a pool.
So now we get a week to chill out and try and do some non-house-building stuff for a well earned break.
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