piering, plumbing and preparing for slab!

It all seems to be happening at the moment. Between working 2 jobs, planning a wedding and building a home - it all seems to be consuming my life with little time in between, so I am apologising in advance for the late posts.

18th November 2014

After all the excitement of having our land scrapped we were eagerly awaiting piering so we could get our slab! We were originally told that piering would be done Tuesday the 18th and to meet onsite at 1pm to do our measurements. My partner and I got their only to wait about 30 minutes to have no one show up. We called head office which was no real help. We left to go back to work to receive a call around 2:30 to say that they didn't have time because the other land in the street took longer than expected at piering and it would be happening tomorrow morning and to meet onsite at 12pm. 

Wednesday came and again it led to disappointment in saying they couldn't get the right machinery as the ones used yesterday wasn't suitable for our land. Piering would now be pushed back till the following Monday or Tuesday!!!! GREAT! 

24th November 2014

Monday 24th came and we had piering happening! Finally some other movement to our land! We were lucky to have come a little under for piering which meant some money back! Woohoo - downside was that they did hit some rock to the back of our land so a slight cost would arise from that. Overall not too bad. 

27th November 2014

We were advised that our site supervisor would try and get our slab poured Friday but at worst it would be Monday for us. Plumbing was completed on the block today - it is now starting to look like something!

Front of our block looking at the garage 

Backyard looking towards our terraza 

Back of our block

Looking towards our patio 

28th November 2014 

We are lucky enough to escape to Nelson's Bay for the weekend but before we snuck off we drove past the land to find they had formed it all up for the slab! Now we are talking! It was exciting to see the general size of our house. It looks so small but so big at the same time! Slab on Monday - you could say we are a tad excited! 

Our huge front patio! 

Standing to the back of our block looking at our Terraza 

And again

Standing at back looking at the largest side of the house

IT'S STARTED!

Not much has been going on since I last posed. It's really just been a waiting game and to fill in our weekends we have been busy shopping for the house which of course means spending money :)

It has been 15 business days and 3 full weeks since our countdown began. And to my excitement when I drove past the land today I seen them cutting our land and fences going up! 

Hopefully the next 20 odd weeks go extremely quick and before we know it we will be moving in! (I can only hope)

and.... WE'RE OFF!

So finally after the long excruciating wait with the bank and trying to get the extra funds from our bank from the price increase and colour selections, we now have conditional approval and our commencement letter in our hands.

Our 28 day countdown has begun and already we have noticed that our land has been pegged out and signed and sent back our final plans :)

Let's get this show on the road and start construction!

Stay tuned!.. hopefully you start to see lots of posts coming your way.

Colour Selections and contract signing!!!

After 8 months of patiently (or not patiently) waiting the day had finally come to do our colour selections and sign our contract. 

We arrived at the Beresfield head office on Monday 22nd September to do all the fun stuff! Once we arrived we were told sorry you guys will be unable to sign your contract today - you guys didn't go to council to pay a fee for the section 305... 

WHAAAAA? Not only did I not have any idea what he was talking about as it seemed like a whole bunch of gibberish, I cannot understand why we not been informed of this earlier? If this was all they were missing in order to have the construction certificate why wouldn't they call us? 
After that whole debacle I was less than impressed - it only meant more delays! 

So we moved onto colours! NOW the fun stuff begins. 

We had already been called on Friday to say that our brick had been discontinued so we needed to pick another one of similar colouring.

Externals: 

•  Bricks - Austral Silver
• Moroka to front piers -  miss molly 
• Roof - Colorbond Monument 
• Guttering, Fascia & downpipes - Colorbond Monument 
• 1200 front door with omni trilock 

Brick

Colorbond Monument

Our door Handle

Internals: 

• Walls - Taubmans Stonebridge 
• Ceiling - Taubmans white 
• Doors & architraves - Gloss white 

our paint colour 

Kitchen: 

• Caesarstone Bench top "Snow" 
• Polytec Createc gloss "Graphite" to lower cabinets - all handle-less 
• Polytec Createc gloss "Ultra White" to upper cabinets - all handle-less 
• 900mm freestanding oven with glass canopy range hood 

kitchen cupboard colour 

Splash back tile 

Our oven and range hood 

Our bench top 

Floors: 

• Carpet - Godfrey Hirst Ash Grey 
• Timber laminate floors - Clix Authentic Oak light grey 

After we did all the colour selections I suddenly realised that the price had gone up - A lot! It was at this stage that we found out that they issued us a price increase of $4090 due to us going over the 180 day tender HOWEVER they conveniently "forgot" to tell us about the increase and send out the paperwork (I seen our copies of the tenders sitting in their file) They reluctantly admitted that they had made a mistake and they honestly thought that they had sent it out..

At this stage to which I am sure you all could imagine we were extremely angry and frustrated! After some negotiating back and fourth, we had come to an arrangement however still not happy although we finished up and left. We called our sales consultant to tell her about all this and asked is she had any idea about the price increase of the delay in being able to sign the contract to which she had no idea.  She fought for us and was able to get us a little bit more of a discount, they had also agreed to make up the time to which we have lost  - which will be about 2 and half weeks at least. 

They had also arranged for us to go into the Woongarrah office to be able to sign our contract when it was ready (which was last Sunday) instead of sending the post which would of meant more delay. We signed our contract and didn't receive our signed copy for the bank till Wednesday. We are now impatiently waiting for the bank to do their thing and provide us with the commencement letter which will mean our 28 day countdown starts!!! 

This process started off painful and very stressful however I can't thank my sales consultant enough - she has been absolutely AMAZING and is a HUGE asset to their team. 

BRING ON THIS BUILD!!!

Quick update

The most exciting thing to happen in the last couple of weeks is that we were in and out of council with 2 weeks to the day!! I was so happy that we got through so quickly! (I may have been a little sneaky and used my connections to get us through quicker)

The next exciting thing is we are booked for our colour selection appointment on Monday the 22nd woohoo! Now the fun stuff starts to happen :)  We couldn't be more excited to pick out all our colours and get moving with this build!!

Until next time...

Tile selections!

This week has to be the best week of this whole process so far!

We have gone from settling on the block of land on Monday, going to Wyong Council for DA approval Wednesday and tile selections today. It has been one exciting week!

We decided to go with Tiles Direct at Charmhaven for our tiles selections and I have to say I was very happy with the whole process. They are lovely and so helpful, it is always nice when you have some one else's opinion to help make the choices a little easier. We were in and out in just over 2 hours.

We have always known we have expensive taste and today confirmed it! Going into today we had a rough idea of what we wanted and the look we were going for. We knew we wanted white wall tiles, dark grey floor tiles which was to carry up one wall and 300x600 tiles for both floor and wall.

After looking at the standard and upgraded samples of wall and floor tiles we instantly turned to each other and agreed that we did not like any of them as they were just too stock standard for our liking.

We ended up decided on a dark grey plain tile (it has no pattern at all) and a plain white tile to the walls, we carried the grey tiles to the wall behind the freestanding bath and shower (the wall of the niche) in the ensuite we did exactly the same except the grey tile went to the wall of the shower and window. We went with a white stacker feature tile in the niches.

This is the standard range 

Some upgrades tiles to pick from 

This is our bathrooms and laundry tiles

And another angle to try and get the colouring right

Our feature tile (top one)

This will be our floor tile which will be done after handover 

Again the lighting is difficult to show the tiles true colour

Our bathroom and laundry tiles with our main floor tile our main floor tile will be 600x600

WE HAVE SETTLED!!!

Just like our title suggests we have no settled on our land.

I can not contain my excitement to think that after a very long, tiring 7 months we can finally say we are land owners.

Even this morning I was starting to freak out that it wasn't going to happen after getting an email saying we needed to pay MORE money, to which I raced down to the bank to deposit straight into the account, to then getting a call saying settlement had to be delayed as the cheques weren't ready.

All I kept thing was OH MY GOD! Not again. We had already had to push back settlement from Wednesday as Darkinjung Land Council had not done their final sign off after registration occurred.

We can now move forward and go to council with our plans.

We need to keep our fingers, toes, legs and arms crossed we get through Wyong Council quickly. This girl is getting impatient!