The soil survey, part 2

14:23 0 Comments

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.

Deposit down!

04:14 0 Comments

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!

Preliminary soil survey results

04:14 0 Comments

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.  :)

A day out at the Brisbane Home show

02:20 0 Comments

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.  

The Modified Coral Homes Longreach 33

02:09 3 Comments

We've only gone and chosen!

We nearly went potty trying to decide between all the various house builders and their designs so thank heavens we've finally settled on Coral Homes and the acreage design called the Longreach 33.

The Coral Homes Longreach 33

We've actually modified it fairly significantly already, by extending the dining room, flipping and enlarging the master bedroom and two alfresco areas either side of the dining room. We've changed the ensuite to match the bathroom from the Stylemaster Piazza (the most WOW bathroom I've been in - go see it for yourself at the Springfield Lakes display home).


As you can see in the above image, we've also added a cornerless stacker between the kitchen and dining, another stacker to the left side of the dining room and yet another stacker for the bedroom. We like doors :)

We've chosen these changes as we like the inclusive feeling you get from the cornerless doors (as seen with the Plantation Retreat homes) and as standard the Longreach's dining / living / kitchen area was just a bit too cramped and corridor-like. We really liked the longer but still-wide houses like the Plantation Retreat or the Coral Homes Daydream 30 but the Longreach suits our plot much better since it's wider than it is long.

It's such a relief to have finally chosen our home! We can't wait to go and see Jules next weekend to put the initial deposit down and get the ball rolling.