What is that??

Saturday night, we had our weekly visit to the block.

We saw 4 of these objects... Does anybody know what they are??

CDC and work in advance :-)

Hi everyone, the news of this week was that we finally got our plans approved by CDC, together with the approval, WH sent us all the documentation required to get the Construction Loan Application (stamped plans, builder insurance, builder licenses, among others). So, last Friday we sent everything to our mortgage broker, now we move again to wait status. In the meantime we are trying to do some work in advance like growing our hedgings :-) hahaha. Well we have at least 8 months before move so we opted to buy small hedges and start looking how they develop. If it is too slow we will buy more grown ones. We bought these in Masters, they were $2 each (approx), we are planning to have edgings in the path towards the entry of the house and maybe around the house to delimit the boundaries.

In March we bought a lime dwarf tree, which for now is in a pot, we expect it to be in one corner in our backyard.

Those are all the news we have for now. Our neighbours have already locked out their home and their neighbour has already his slab drying. There is also lot of things going on in Heartwood, some of the DHA houses look already finished and some of them are getting their driveway and fences done. If everything is still the same with our process we may start when someone is already living there :-)

Electrical Appointment

More than one month ago we had our Electrical appointment. To be more precise, it was on the 19th March. That was a really long day. Having first our Aircon appointment at 9:30, then DiLorenzo (for tiles and carpet) at 11am and finally Clipsal at 2pm.


A little context:

Well before we requested the tender, we started drawing our  first electrical layout. We had a clear idea of what we want for our house. We are not really fussy about electricals, but we wanted to have at least the basics so we can install later the rest. Some decisions we made after give it a lot of thinking were:

1. We are not installing any LED for now. We will request only provision and install LEDs, pendant lights, and others after handover.
2. We are not going to make any special installation for the Home Theatre, we will rather put a big TV instead of a projector.
3. We will put the minimum number of data points, we decided to trust that WI-FI will improve even more in the  in the coming years. However, at the end during the meeting,  the consultant mentioned that we can return the included phone points and use that credit for Data points instead. We were happy to change them. So at the end we ended up with 5 data points.    

At tender stage we made a 3K allowance for electricals. I think, it is not too much, but by no means too little (at least not for me).

When we arrived to Clipsal, we met with our consultant Leah, she is such a nice girl!!

We sat for 1.5 hours with her, I can't imagine going to this appointment under-prepared, specially if you are not a sparky nor want to spend more money once you are in your new place. Even with all of this, we missed one light! luckily it wasn't an important one ( it was a light for a future artwork)

There was a clear difference with all other WH's providers in comparison with Clipsal. Previous to our appointment they called us to confirm the meeting time and give some details on how to arrive to their office. Then a couple of days after that we received (by mail) an envelope containing a booklet with all the products that Clipsal provides for homes, a complete price list and some maps and instructions on how to reach Clipsal and where to find the customer's parking. Additionally there was a copy of our home layout so we can start playing around with the distribution of lights, power points and others. They really do their homework.

I think that with the WH inclusions you will have a lot, but in the modern lazy world you are going to want more!!.

We basically added:

1.  A extra power point to all the rooms.
2.  Provision for LED to all the living areas.
3.  Change 2 power points to Saturn Horizon Silver (In the splashback in the Kitchen)
4.  5 Data point(only included one).
5.  We deleted 2 telephone points and got the credit, so we added more data points.
6.  8 Extra external lights. We have, as we called it, backyard and side yard.
7.  4 Square footer light for our staircase.
8.  2 Extra TV points (included 2)

At the end we exceeded our allowance. The total was $ 3717. This could have been less, at least for $ 210 (price of the 2 Saturn power points). But we are happy with that.

During the meeting we decided to change the orientation of our living room, thanks to Leah who made us realised our mistake. She was really good in pointing out improvements in location of lights and switches, safety and recommendations about the layout in general. However, you have to go prepared with clear ideas in mind about what do you want.

We left Clipsal extremely tired, but happy to finish with all the meetings (before the wrap up meeting). It was a very intense day.

Now, we need to start budgeting the inclusions we are planning to do after moving in. These are mainly LEDs, pendant lights, external lights and any other stuff we will need for replacing the basic bayonets/provisions that we requested in our electrical appointment. Ah.. and the most important a sparky to help us with the installations.

See you next time :)

Update of the proposed dwelling

There was an update on our plans a couple of months ago. After our BAL was reduced to 19 (from 40) we got the chance to apply through CDC, so our plans were changed accordingly.

That was very positive for us, after these changes we realised a mistake done by WH. At the beginning of the process WH reduced the length of our house by 30cm to comply with the APZ in the front of the house (that was really frustrating for us), however it wasn't necessary. After the changes done to apply to CDC, we realised they have added eaves to the balcony... I guess it was a bad copy paste.. 

Anyway, that was modified and now our house has the same dimensions than the brochure. 

Our Appointments - External Colours

We signed our contract the last week of February, one week later our CSO called us and all started.

Our appointments were booked for the 14th and 19th of March. We really wanted our appointments as soon as possible, but it seems there is a big queue, still We think that showing our flexibility help us as, we got the appointment for the next week.

We were well prepared for the appointments. We knew what we wanted and also knowing our budget made things easy as we weren't asking for many thinks.

The External Appointments is really a mix because you choose external colours but you have to choose as well some internal elements of the new house.

We had a lovely consultant that help us to not over utilise colours in our building but she was also accepting our decisions very well. This was important for me, as I have been reading so much about people following trends but at the end I want a house where I can feel comfortable.

As I said before, we prepared a lot. As part of my (our) preparation, I printed out my facade and started to paste the colours (real colours). Hubby didn't like it as he said colour variation from printed paper wasn't really helping us. However, this gave us some ideas and it is better than nothing.
I really think that nobody can really know how the house will be until it is ready.
You can research, pick up samples, print stuff, but at the end, the real look will be a 'surprise'.

Well, too much writing and no colours.

Our selections:

Roof tiles: Bristile Prestige Palladium

Bricks: PGH Mocha

Mortar: Off White – Raked joints

Fascia: Surfmist

Gutter: Surfmist

Downpipes: Dune

Water Tank: Dune

Meterbox: Dune

Windows frames: Pearl White

Driveway: Gunmetal / Regal tile stencil with brick header border

Render to balcony: Sublime 

Render to corbel base&top of piers: Sublime

Garage Door: Surfmist – Profile Flatline Woodgrain

Cladding: Arctic Cotton

Feature Corbel Brickwork(balcony): Arctic Cotton

HOB Handrail - Balcony: Surfmist

Entry door: Clear timber finish

I just realised that writing this post is very useful. Right now, I am thinking about our garage. The brochure doesn't mention our selection. So, in our internal appointment I will try to take a picture, and re confirm the name, just in case.

Also,  i hope the internal (and last appointment) is very soon as we don't like to have pending stuff.

This image is only to give an vague idea. This is from Metricon software, our facade has some similarities to this and also our colour selections.

Next post, it will be about Kitchen.

See you then :)

Colour Selection ....

Don't get too excited...We haven't had our colour selection but we went to DiLorenzo yesterday. 

We were happy enough with the range in the Prestige range so we started to pick our colours...

it was relatively simple... especially after seeing other couples with different colour samples. We only went with our iPhones and all the info that we could get on the phone.

Our preliminary colour selections are:

Main Bathroom and Powder:

Wall:

This colour is more whitey than in this pic...This is our original picture:

Floor:

Feature: (ACC055)

Again, the picture is a little bit deceptive as they are little glasses.

Ensuite:

Wall:

Feature:(NAX060)

Floor:

Main Floor:

Well, these are our preliminary selections. PLEASE feel free to comment or suggest anything.

cheers

House plans received

Hi, there. Last week we received our house plans for review. It was quite exciting as we can start seen how things are taking shape. Almost everything was fine, just an small detail in the main bedroom that we want it to be different. In other news... we requested an independent valuation of our BAL level, as we mentioned in previous post our BAL was 40 in some sections.  Well the new BAL is 19, which is great news for us.. this news means a saving of up to $ 9K, and that also means that may be able to apply through CDC (which was not possible with BAL 40). So, yeah so far a good start of the year :-).   

This is how our house would look like: