Action at the block......apparently

Yes it all has started, with site scape on Tuesday and would you believe we haven't even been down to the block to check it all out and probably wont for another week and by that time the slab will be laid (might have to make a visit tomorrow night).

On other news I received a call from our site supervisor who we will call V. He said we will have a slab on the 4th, then Frame on the 9th. First impressions is all good and I think I will get along with V just fine which will hopefully make it a much more enjoyable building experience.

Its now our bit of dirt!

We had settlement of the land last Tuesday. All went as per plan and now we officially have a mortgage to pay(or half a one).

Now for the fun part. Received a call from PD with news of a site start for Tuesday next week. Oh yeah!

One week later they will pour the slab and I will drink one ;)
Hopefully lots of photos coming soon

Jump for Joy!

We are back in the game. We have obtained finance through another lender and the valuation has come in ALOT higher.... where do they get these figures from?!?!

Anyway i don't care anymore as our dream of building our own home is now set to become true!

Now for all the paper work... bring it on!

A much a do about nothing

A quick update to say there is no update, we are currently waiting for a new valuation to be done through another lender. Hopefully this one works out more in our favour or we may be looking to just purchase the land and wait another 12 months to save some more money and hopefully see off the uncertainty around the global economic crisis.

Shattered Dreams

Had a phone call today from my broker today and the bank has come back saying the value of the house and land is $20,000 lower than what we are paying .

Most of it is the house that is short with the land being 4k and the rest the house.

This leaves us looking for that $20,000 to get the finance which of course I don’t have.

I managed to come across the list of houses sold they compared our house to. (Don't ask how I got this cos I'm not saying)

It appears the house's they used are all 2km away ( with undeveloped land between us and them) and they have not used any house sales to the Nth of as where all sell for more than it is costing for us to build. Here is a picture of what I'm going on about:
The areas circled in red are where the Bank found houses to compare ours with.
The blue dot is where our house will be.
And the green area is where I think they should get some valuations from to to an estimate of what our house market value will be.

Also looking at the houses they cocmpared our to they are all nearly 50mSq smaller but for one double story witch is 2mSq bigger and sold 70k more than hey evaluated ours..... WTF and the land is the same size. I dont think that it being a double story so they have a little more backyard would add 70k to the value.

All in all Im not very happy at the moment as you could imagine but Im not giving up without a fight and will ask for the valuation to be redone with the facts I have and will try to get some sales data of the houses just across the road to the north of us.

Contract signed

A well over due update:

We had our tender appointment three weeks ago and luckily our site costs came in well under the 9k we had budgeted for at just over 5k. sweet

As we had saved a little on the sites costs we decided to spend the money on some more pot draws in the kitchen and a few more power points( We probably would have added these anyway but it felt good adding them in and still coming in under budget)

On Wednesday we had our contract appointment and all went very well except we had to add another $1200 to the house due to increasing the ceiling bats from R2.5 to R3.5 to meet 5 star energy requirements and we also increased the size of the kick boards for the bathroom and ensuite vanities from 703mm to 803mm. The standard height is 900mm but PD make them lower when you select the fish bowl above counter type sinks. While we think 900mm would be to high as the taps would be at chest level, a 200mm reduction was to much and would be unpractical (especially when T has a makeup and hair marathon before we go out).

At the end that cost us $74.

Today we received a phone call from our CSC and she told us that we had received developer approval on our plans and colours.

So all that needs to happen now is for a the bank to come to the party and formally approve the loan and we can sign our next 20-30years away.

I will post plans of the house soon.

Colour Selection

A sample of the colors chosen for the house, I could not get samples for everything so have included a list at the bottom of this post.
BathroomsVanities : Laminex Natural Milkwood with kickboards in Laminex Flint charcoal.
Floor tiles and wall tiles in showers : Agra Charcoal with silver white mortar.
The showers will have a Pebble Tan 10 cm vertical feature running down one wall.

External

The bricks are Boral Jarrah with an offwhite mortar that has an ironed finish.
Windows are white.
Gutters, downpipes and garage door are colourbond Ironstone.
The front rendering on portico and projection will be colorbond Surf Mist.
The roof tiles are Boral Gunmetal.

Landry
Agra Charcoal tiles to the floor. Minima Avor (light beige) tiles for the splashback.
Sink and benchtop are Formica Silver Strata, again with charcoal kickers.

Kitchen

Floor is Truloc Spotted Gum which will also feature in the entrance, living/dining and the rumpus room. The glass splashback will be Dulux Sapphire Stone. The kick boards are Laminex Natural Zinc Works (looks like stainless steel).

One of our major upgrades was to put Vinyl Wrap for the kitchen cupboards including the wrap around the front. This enabled us to have a gloss finish. We decided to go with a new colour to the Laminex range called Pearl Frost which has subtle silver sparkles through it. This should match the stainless steel oven, rangehood and dishwasher(and the fridge one day when we can afford to upgrade it). The benchtop will be Quantum Quartz New Diamond White. This has the least amount of fleck.


A closeup of the Pearl Frost Vinyl Wrap. Photo still doesn't do it justice, but trust me it looks really nice :)

Others not listed

Carpet - Godfrey Hirst Forget me not (Dark Grey)
Internal Paint - Wattle Flokati (Off white) - Used throughout the house as it is neutral and we can paint feature walls once we are finished. PD charge way to much to change a color of a room or for a feature wall.
Timber front door and sidelights - Wattyl Dark Oak Stain
Laundry door - Wattyl Dark Oak Stain with clear glass
French doors to Lounge/Courtyard - Wattyl Dark Oak Stain
Bi-Fold door to Rumpus/Alfresco - Wattyl Dark Oak Stain