Landscaping Appointment

Straight after our colour selection appointment, we met with Wisdom Landscapes to put together a landscaping plan to submit to the Developer.

To be completely honest - we had no idea what to expect, and no idea what we wanted. We were the exact opposite of the colour appointment where we already knew everything we wanted, and going into landscaping just had no idea!

Regardless, we weren't expecting things to be so bad - it turns out we need a retaining wall that is almost the entire length of house. 

You can see in the picture above that because they had to cut so much to comply with the driveway gradient regulations for council, we need a retaining wall to fill it. The Wisdom rep said that it would be around 0.8m high. I'm still a little confused about it at the moment, actually.

He also suggested (and we went with it) that we could fill where the laundry steps are, so that we could eliminate the steps and just walk out onto flat ground, which seems like a good idea, although it still seems expensive to do.

I also reshaped the driveway - there were a lot of corners and edges in the original design, so we kept tweaking it until we got smoother edges around. 

For our driveway we went with

Colour: Bluestone

Fill: Plain (no pattern)

Border: Large Tile

In the plan we also asked for gardens beds across the front, pebbles and pavers on the laundry side (blindside) of the house, letter box (per Macquarie Links specs) and a fold away clothesline.

We are worried about how much this is all going to come to - I found another fellow blogger who went with Wisdom Landscapes, and their plan looks a LOT less complex than ours, and they had come back with a $36,000 price which is not at all within the budget we had allocated to landscaping :(

Anyway, we should receive a copy of the plan next week, and apparently we'll get the estimates and costing in around 3 weeks time. It would have been nice to get it all done in the one hit, but it looks like it may not be possible and we'll just have to do the basics: driveway, retaining wall, letterbox and clothesline.

Cx

Colour Selection

We completed our colour appointment and landscaping appointment yesterday at Wisdom Homes in Narellan. The Wisdom rep we had was great, very helpful and I thought really understood us. The whole process was really easy and straight forward which was really nice.

Colour Appointment
For this colour appointment we were extremely well prepared. The only problem we had was selecting a main colour for the house paint, a colour for the balcony hand rail (we thought it was stainless steel) and a colour for the balcony door frame (we thought it was a clear timber finish as standard).

Anyway, these were our selections!

Main bricks
Boral Escura Velour Pearl Grey
Ironed
Off-white mortar
Edit: We have now chosen Escura Smooth

Front portico piers
Boral Escura Velour Brown
Ironed
Off-white mortar
Edit: We have now chosen Escura Smooth

Roof tiles
Bristile Prestige Concrete Roof Tiles in Tungsten
Smooth Profile

Colourbond
Gutter: Monument
Fascia/Watertank/Meterbox/Downpipes: Paperbark

Garage
Panelift Timbertone in Classic Cedar
Contemporary Profile

Windows
Trend Aluminium in Pearl White Gloss

Kitchen
Splashback: Decoglass Antique White
Benchtops: Caesarstone in White Shimmer

Cupboards/Kickboard/WIP Doors: Laminex Avignon Walnut in Natural Finish

Laundry/Bathroom/Ensuite
Benchtops: Caesarstone in White Shimmer
Cabinets: Laminex Smokey Sapelle

Paint
Woodwork: Taubmans Crisp White Gloss
Walls: Bristol Satellite
Eaves: Paperbark
Balcony Rail: Monument (thinking about upgrading to the silver powder coat pending price), and I also think I prefer white railings instead of the dark grey....so this may change!

Doors
Entrance door: Hume Savoy XS24

Internal doors: Hume Ascot

So... On the day we upgraded only the following (not including what we have already upgraded in our tender):
Internal doors -> Ascot 2340 (downstairs) and 2040 (upstairs)
Balcony Door -> Clear timber finish
Woodwork -> Crisp White Gloss (only one colour paint is standard)
Front portico piers -> Different colour brick to main

Cx

The Next Chapter

I'm pretty excited about the state of progress at the moment. We got a call from our new Customer Service Officer yesterday and we've confirmed Colour and Landscaping appointments for this Thursday. This is required for Developer Approval before it goes to council.

We are hoping to book in our Carpet/Tiling, Kitchen and Electrical appointments as well.

We've been advised that the timeline from here is something like the following:

• Developer Requirements
1. Landscaping Appointment -> Sign off on plans -> 5 working days to complete
2. Colour Appointment -> External Colour Palette Sign off
3. Then lodged to Developer for approval -> up to 10 working days for approval
• Council Requirements
1. Colour & Landscaping Appointments -> Sign off
2. DA Pack ordered -> 10 working days to complete
3. DA Lodgement to Council -> 4-8 weeks for approval (if no amendments required)
4. Waterboard Approval requested
5. Engineering drawings requested
6. Kitchen, Electrical, Tile/Carpet Appointments completed (in parallel to council lodgement)
7. DA Approval received -> Construction Certificate Lodged -> 2 weeks to receive
8. Pre-Tender Requested -> 5 working days to complete
9. Construction Plans Drawn -> 5 working days to complete
10. Construction Certificate received, Bank Documents received
11. File signed off to construction

That's a lot of steps now that I type all that up! Our CSO said that she would be in contact with us at least once a week to update us on the progress of our file, in particular she said that when our application is with Council she will call to check up on it weekly and then let us know how it's going, whether by a call or email. It will be nice to know we won't have to do any chasing around because they will keep us in the loop and not make us wait around during periods of inactivity.

So looking at those steps, we are looking at a time line no less than 2 months. It would be great to see a slab in November, I think that's my target. I'm not actually sure if that's achievable, but I will try to remain optimistic. As long as we don't delay the appointments and we choose everything we need to and sign off as soon as we can, then it's out of our hands and we just have to wait!

I'll try to get back on here next week and tell you how the colours went and what we've chosen!

Can you wish us luck again?!

Cx

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Sorry I haven't updated for a while - but GOOD NEWS!

CELEBRATE!

We met with our solicitor on Friday and went through the contract, and met back with Wisdom to sign our building contract!

They have also already contacted us to make our colours and landscaping appointment which should be this Thursday - the sooner we get them done the sooner we can start applying for Developer and Council approvals! 

We're both obviously very exciting as this is a huge point in the process, it's taken us longer than expected to get here but Wisdom came through in the end and we're pretty happy with our house and tender right now.

And really, a huge huge thank you to our solicitor Helmuth Carrasco from Allison Clark Conveyancing - he has been fantastic through the land settlement and even going through our building contract and talking us through it all. He has been a blessing for us throughout the past months, so thank you!

Cx

Contract Building Plans Completed

We received our first set of building plans since all the mess with the balcony. We also had a list eleven amendments long that needed to be fixed as well since the first building plan meeting we had at Wisdom.

So...

We're happy! They've got everything done.

The only thing was the water tank, we asked for them to move it to the side of the leisure, but they moved it near the front next to the office instead. Looks like an easy enough fix though, so I'm a happy little vegemite (although I hate vegemite)
Edit: Just received revised plans and they've moved the water tank in the correct position now - that was quick.

Looking forward to getting my hands on the building contract on Friday! After the solicitor goes through it, we will have it signed off and deposit down by the end of next week.

Cx

Our Majestic 35 with Nova Terrace Facade

Tender Revised

We got an email from Wisdom this morning with our revised tender - the addition of one line item for the upgraded doors - 1.5 weeks

Also confirmed where we want our fireplace - I sent them this to make sure they put it in the right place and I wouldn't have to ask for another revision.

We have pencilled in an appointment to review the Building Contract and Building Plans for next Friday. Finally! That's something a bit more positive and I'm looking forward to taking the next step with this.

Cx

Lego House

This past weekend we spent looking at bricks again, this time having done a little more research, and with a fresher outlook on the colours.

Previously I really wanted an off white / cream coloured home, but after having a look at houses using those bricks we could see how dirty the bricks and the mortar get after a few years - so it was back to the drawing board.

After reading a few blogs on the Austral Whitsunday collection, which I really really liked and was in our inclusive range, it was disheartening to see others that had built with this brick had problems with easy chipping. The bricks in this selection are painted bricks, and so when they are chipped a horrible orange brick comes through underneath! Apparently the builders paint over the chips.

So we were looking for only bricks that were all through colour, and ideally we wanted a smooth brick - which is not in the inclusive ranges at all!

The difficult part about choosing the bricks, is that you try sticking to your inclusive ranges but at the end of the day there's really nothing you want! And at that point when you are looking at the bricks, you have no idea how much the cost is to upgrade - we have to request estimates for each brick we want. Even though we have selection sheets that state a number of bricks in each Category e.g. Cat A, B, C they still estimate it depending on the brick and not the category?

What makes it a little more difficult, is we can't make a decision unless we know the prices. Anyway that's my rant!

For now these are our upgrade choices - we are not liking any of the inclusive bricks, so I'm hoping they won't be too expensive to upgrade to one of the following:

Austral
[Symmetry] Portland

Boral
[Escura Velour] Pearl Grey, Brown
[Escura Smooth Face] Pearl Grey, Cinnamon, Brown

PGH
[Modern Living] Basswood Mottle

We're waiting for Wisdom to call us back today so we can ask for an estimate without pushing the timeline of our tender/building plan progression.

Fingers crossed!

Cx