Frame almost complete

So with a good few days of sunny weather we have an almost complete frame!

Second Story...

A day and a bit of sunlight later and we have the second floor frame almost complete and the windows on site ready for installation...

Frame progress and moving well

So its been a busy week for the builders, even though I thought they would be delayed due to the fact it has poured with rain on and off all week they've actually made some good progress, without the rain they'd probably be close to finishing!

Anyway some shots from the week and some close-ups taken today to follow, only one are of concern to us at the moment but we will wait until next weekend before raising it with the site supervisor if required.

This was taken on 02 Nov.

By the afternoon of 03 Nov this was what had been acheived.

As of today this is what the site looks like, from the inside!

Anyway we are hoping the second story will be in place by the end of next week weather permitting and maybe some of the roof trusses as well, finally we have something that looks like a house!

Storm Water complete

So more progress this week, the builders have been on site and have dug the storm water pipes, the sewer connection nad put in the detention pit.  We've also seen some steel delivered so hopefully the rest of the frame will be on site next week and we can start to see the house take shape!

Pano from the rear of the house, big drop from left to right!

Connections for the kitchen water in the foreground, the laundry up the back.  Also shown the split in the middle section of the house, 4ish steps from memory.

Not easy to see but this is the cover for the storm water detention pit, nicely covered to stop all the soil falling in.

Steel for the frame.

Progress at long last

So it's felt like an eon since we commenced building our first home, and at last we've had some progress.

After the weather cleared the builder appear to have had what you could call a rocket up their bums, not sure why but they have been very busy this past week and a bit.

We've gone from this.
 

To this.

 

And at the end of today this is what we looked like!

Thats right, we've been slabbed!! and its a boy! The height of the slab at points is a little scary, but hopefully it will all come together nicely.

20 Day's till commencement

So after what seemed to drag on Masterton have taken over the site pretty quickly, they have 20 days but it only took 5, so thats a good sign I guess.

We're looking at the piers to be in place next week and were told the concrete is scheduled for pouring soon so this first bit should fly.

Looking forward to documenting our build over the next 36 weeks.

And then the house was no more.....

So after what seems like an age we have cleared the site.

The demolition company were due to start on Monday the 3rd of September, but they obviously got bored as some time on the proceeding Friday the roof off the house mysteriously disappeared......

After the weekend they really hit their straps and come Wednesday afternoon most of the site was cleared.

The site looks so bare without the house and the jungle come backyard, but its now clear and awaiting the final peg out and construction to start at last, home ownership here we come!!!

Once upon a Mortgage.....


In a suburb very very far from many places, but not so far from Sydney CBD, there lived a family of Nathan, Vivien and the little prince Christopher.

Chapter 2

It has been a dark dark time for the family, the evil council has provided a great many headaches and delays as a result of their tyrannical grasp on power in the local area, but alas the side of good is prevailing.....
 
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So after a long long wait, between Colour Selections, Electrics Selections, issues with the storm water run-off and all manner of requestes from the council we have come to a milestone in our build (the second time around) and it appears that the council has finally approved the building for our new home! I should be excited I know but its a bit of an anti-climax really, we've worked so hard to get to this point but it feels slightly hollow given it wasn't our first choice of house and that the land we've had on the market still hasn't sold after the one real buyer we thought we had turned out to be a dud.
 
But in the end all we need to do now is pull down the old house, hopefully soon, and cash ourselves up as we have done everything that needs to be done and are basically waiting on the final cost from Masterton prior to starting the build, which means everything going well this 2.5 year process may actually result in us moving into our new home by mid 2011!! wow
 
So as an idea for what we are building here are some shots of the plans we have.
 

This is the site plans showing where the house will sit on the site
 

Front and Side Elevation
 

Rear and Side Elevation
 

Ground Floor plan
 

First Floor plan
 
Added to these plans are our electrics and 'colour selections'.  The downstairs will be Blackbutt Hardwood, sanded and polished with the exception of the front living space and the office, these like the upstairs will be carpeted.  As for the other important bits we chose well the house will be pre-wired for foxtel but we arent having data points going with a wireless network inside the house in lieu of hardwiring, an intercom (colour image) will be installed for the front door and a schmic alarm system with remotes for the cars is being installed as well.  The upstairs living and alfresco are all going to be wired with speakers for entertainment purposes, the kid(s) will have a ball with the surround sound in their rumpus in the long term.
 
So thats all there is really for the moment, hopefully the real action will commence soon and we can see some tangable results of all this money and time we have invested, bring on occupation date I say......

Preparation Plans Completed

So it's taken a few weeks, well around 6 I think, but we went to Warwick Farm on Saturday and went through our plans at last with our CSC.  She was pretty well organised and there weren't many problems with the plans to be honest we were both pretty happy with how the morning went.

One small problem was with our Complying Development (CD), turns out that the house was 78mm too tall to be considered a CD and that unless we authorised a slight amendment in a small amount of additional cut to bring the house down that we would need to go through a council DA.  Well hmm we thought that one over for about 6 seconds, and then said make the changes, CA through a certifier that takes all of a week or so, or a minimum of 3 months in council, no decision needed really.

Anyway so the plans are back with the drafters to amend the few small issues, and a few questions, and then we'll be on our way to the next phase (dependant on the sale of another property that is) so its all moving pretty well, couldn't be happier with it all.  :)

So once we have the final plans I'll put them up for the world to see.

Colour Selection

Due to Basix (thats the buidling and sustainability index for those outside of NSW) requirements, and on direction from our CSC at Masterton, we have been running around while I have some time off trying to determine all of our external colours.  I know its funny that we only started to design the house last week and we already have to chose what colour the house will be, but o well we can only follow the directions given.

So after some late nights discussing things and some running around today to a couple of different paint places because one store cant stock all the different paint suppliers for some reason, we have decided on the following:

Roof - Monier Traditional profile tile in Barramundi

Gutters - Colorbond Iron Stone

Downpipes and Fascia - Colorbond Evening Haze

Window frames - Ultra Silver Gloss

Garage door - Panel Glide in Colorbond Shale Grey

External paint -
Two colours, one for the main body of the house and the other for the feature areas (as highlights in the Savoy Facade picture below somewhere (pillars, around door and garage)):

Main - Taupe Stone

Feature - Gravel

I would have posted sample, however none of the sites (Taubmans, Colorbond) would play nice and I couldn't get access to them.

So thats one thing off our list of many many things to do over the coming weeks, but it feels pretty good to make some level of progress!

The proposal, and the acceptance

So we went out and met with our CSC at the Warwick Farm office this afternoon and progressed some towards are new home goal.  The CSC was pretty good, we went over the site first and she explained the issues with our site, that being a drop from the front right corner of the agrage to the back left corner of the house of around 1.6m.  What this actually means to us, well and increase in the site costs (about double) and a step down between the laundry and kitchen of around 2-3 steps.

Apparently we're getting 12 drop edge beams out the back, which I understand means we build up the back of the slab to around 12 times the standard thickness, or something like that.  We also end up with a patio from the laundry and one from the back of the house, which we will probably remove and add our own timber deck to later.  The Alfresco out the side will look good I think measuring around 3500 x 7500 or there abouts.

The positives to this is that we'll have normal height ceilings in the front, and high ceilings out the back, which will look pretty good.  The house is going to be set back around 7.5 metres giving us enough room at the front for a turn in and a bigger backyard than we thought, at around 15.5m wide and 20m deep we're pretty happy with it.

So we paid our initial design fee and signed the authority to prepare plans and specifications today and now have around 1 month to determine the outside colours and confirm either timber or tiles for the downstair flooring.  We got a small break in the cost with a free upgrade to double power points throughout, carpets in the bedrooms, 2 TV points and 2 Phone points as well as a $6000 discount on the Ducted A/C, I know it doesn't sound much but every little bit helps in the end I guess.

The only thing that is unknown at the moment, do we need a full DA or have we made it through as a complying development, or please let it be a complying development....

The purchase.

So after some time looking at established homes we found that not only is the market completely over-priced around the shire, but that we couldn't find that one house that we could see ourselves living in for the next 20 years.

After some suggestions from my father-in-law we went and looked at an old property on 697sqm of land.  What did we find you may ask, well a very old fibro house that had been lovingly looked after for many years, but better than that, we found potential and for the first time in weeks we were excited about the possibilities.  As things go within the world of real estate we signed a contract of purchase within 24 hours of viewing the house, and bam we were off and racing.

This is the frontage from the road

Some shots of the backyard as it current stands...

The little man standing in the drive about where the new garage will start

So were off to Masterton tomorrow to meet with the consultant regarding the new home proposal they have put together for us, some extra site costs involved apparently as there is a fall of about 1.7m across the site where the house will be positioned.  But were happy, we chose the Masterton Villina design with the Savoy Facade (changed the front windows to look like the Contemporary windows though) and we wont be going with the fake rock on the pillars.  Aside from those and the addition of an alfresco out the back we wont be changing the outward appearance of the house all that much.

This is the house at the display village at Warwick Farm

We're both really looking forward to getting on with it so we can be in late next year, hopefully Christmas 2010 will be in the comfort of our new home, fingers crossed, and I'm pretty sure that Chris can't wait for all that open space to run around and get dirty in...

It begins....

Once upon a Mortgage.....

In a suburb very very far from many places, but not so far from Sydney CBD, there lived a family of Nathan, Vivien and the little prince Christopher.

Chapter 1

The family having outgrown their small two bedroom apartment ventured out into the world of real estate not knowing what dangers lay ahead.

On navigating the fiercely competitive Sutherland Shire real estate market for many weeks (well not that many weeks) they came to realise that no new home could meet their needs, and they were downtrodden.

To them came the old (not too old) and wise father of the Vivien who pointed them towards the horizon of Masterton homes.

Here you can find what you seek, look into the distance towards Warwick farm; there you shall discover what wonders await you.

And so they have begun on the road to home ownership, with land behind them and the perilous waters of contract negotiation, fixture selection and building ahead of them they have stepped into the twilight, and move ever forwards towards the brightness of completing the build.........

Couldn't resist the Space Balls parody to a degree.

Anyway this is our blog, a record of the ups and downs of building our first home with Masterton Homes.

Only time will tell how things go but we're hopeful that it will all fall into place, eventually...