Tie a pink ribbon round....

Whoo Hoo!!!! Land settled today and everything is now ticked off at the PD 24/7 website except the dispensation for the set back. Once we have that we can start to rock and roll.

Our re-establishment survey has been done. We have gorgeous pink ribbons at the edges of our block marking the pegs for the boundaries. So, bring it on!

Also, lawyers have confirmed $3k back off the stamp duty!!!, so I will have to mark 30 August 2009 in the diary to make sure I put the paperwork into before the 12 months are up. Will certainly come in handy when we move in.

Dare I say, the end of the paperwork???

Ok, so this is the second try to post this entry, here it goes...

We spent a fair chunk of time Friday evening and over the weekend trying to make sure that all the paperwork was right. You see we got Post Contract Variation (PCV) 2 and this one is serious. It says "The client acknowledges that no further changes or client variations will be permitted."

So, we compared the sales quote to the first tender document, to the tender document we got at contract and the first PCV that we signed at contract and looked at all of the drawings. We then looked at all the emails, letters, printouts etc and tried to make sure that we had thought of everything and that everything that we asked for was there. From reading other blogs, we knew that sometimes things magically appeared and, more importantly, disappeared, or were moved when they were not supposed to be and because they were not picked up before the build started, they just had to live with the consequences. I'd like to think we got it right, but who knows. Sometimes it all just becomes a bit much. So, we signed PCV2 for the whopping sum of $245 and "acknowledged that no further changes or client variations will be permitted".

The ironic part of me notes that it says nothing about PD variations not being permitted. Hmmm, strange that.

Now all we have to do is pay for it....

As the title says, today we signed the contract and now all we have to do

is pay for it, perhaps we need to plant a money tree?

Over three hours of pouring over documents and comparing them to our lists of requests, emails and the actual drawings. None of the things we had missed in tender and asked for immediately the next morning after the tender were in the contract nor were they in the drawings. Start Post Contract Variation 1.

A few things needed to be cleared up. Firstly, when I asked to upgrade the paint. It seems that I only asked for the paint on the walls to be upgraded, not the paint on the skirts, architraves and doors. Ummm?? Ok, Add that in.

Changing the window in the Alfresco to timber, yes they let me do it BUT the cost was the same as for the DOUBLE glass timber doors opening into the other side of the alfresco. That I just can't quite understand, but I am not going to quibble given that they let me change it.

The bigger windows in the lounge were not in the contract or the drawings and the doorway that we asked to be moved was not there either.

If you read this and have not been to contract, make sure that you check all specifications to the drawings. Whilst the written word takes precedence over the drawings, in a lot of cases the contract refers to the drawings. My DH is tall, so we asked to have the showers set higher on the walls and the benches at a minimum of 900 high everywhere. In theory, no need to state that in the contract, as it will be shown on the drawings. Kitchen was fine but the ensuite/bathroom were all left at 865. Ensuite shower was higher, but the bathroom shower was still at 1800. I realise that a lot can get changed on site if you ask for it but I would rather that it was right in the plans so that it does not have to be redone later.

We tried to get a copy of the contract documents prior to signing for our solictior to look at, and whilst PD would give us some parts including the HIA contract and extra schedules, we could not get the full set until contract presentation today. So after discussions with PD, our solictior requested that PD acknowledge that we had not had the benefit of legal advice, so we could take the contracts to him this afternoon for him to review and not loose our cooling off period. So, after we signed, we took them straight to him.

I hope that he is happy with everything because, quite frankly, it's been fun but now it's a bit been there, done that, and glad it's over. I really do not want to start again with someone else, so hopefully we get the big thumbs up. Then a start sometime in November and 242 days later, a house!

Colour my world...

Had the electrical and Hopetoun appointments today. Electrical first and managed to blow the entire budget and even then we did not get some things. Just got junction boxes for the outside lights and fairly basic outdoor lights. 11 downlights, chinamens hats everywhere else, a connection for a fan in the alfresco and speaker wire everywhere. 7.1 in the family 5.1 in the games room and 2 speaker runs in the alfresco. Wow, it adds up quickly.


Although we might (?) be able to do some ourselves during the build, we are having sound screen in almost all of the internal walls, so we had to get most of it wired during the build.


From speaking to other people, you have the luck of the draw if your SS will let you in to do it or not. Either way, it would probably happen when one of us was not in the state so we'd be stuck. One thing we did do, was upgrade almost all of the power points to 4 points instead of doubles and powertainments where the tv's are.

So, then onto the colours:

Interior walls: Wattyl Divinity - 3d Paint system

Architraves,skirts, doors - Wattyl Chalkdust -3d paint system

We will have Dulux Enchantress feature walls in the Lounge room, Rumpus room (which we are using as a formal dining room), Games Room and Master bedroom. We will also use it as the splashback colour in the kitchen to tie it into the more informal areas of the house. All other colours have been chosen to compliment this colour throughout the house. We are selecting carpet, curtains, blinds etc all to work in with this particular shade. It just makes everything so easy by having a central colour theme to highlight throughout the house.

Laundry - Cupboards - Laminex Black, Benchtop - Laminex White

Bathroom and Powder room benchtop - Very similar to the tiles for the walls and for the floors in these rooms.

Bathroom Cupboards - Peacock. We actually chose Blue Variation from the laminex book they had there. But guess what, you can only choose, flint and natural finish laminates for cupboards. So we had to choose something different, lucky I took the tile samples with us. Not what we would have chosen, but goes surprisingly well with the Enchantress.
Kitchen - Stipple Burnished Plum. It does not look the right colour on my monitor. Too purple, it is an unusual colour, it is acutally a lighter variation of the splashback below. The Benchtops will be QQ New Diamond White

This is the splashback colour - Dulux Enchantress.

I am not even sure that you will see this, it is New Antique White, which will be the overhead cupboards.

The powder room cupboards are Cyclamen, a much lighter shade/tone in the enchantress vein.



The ensuite has the Stipple Burnished Plum as the benchtop and Black Tulip (shown here) for the cupboards. I thought about stone benchtops, but I like colours. Most of the stone tops are a white base.

Not sure if all of these colours will come up "truely" on your monitors at home, so you may need to clean up some sprayed coffee off your screen at our colour choices. But we like them "in the flesh" and hey, it's our mortgage!

We actually upgraded very little as we had organised with our CSC most of the things we wanted before this appointment anyway. (See large list at the side of the blog!) That way we knew what we could afford before we went to Hopetoun. We did end up upgrading the tapware and kitchen handles, and put stain on the laundry door, but that was about it. Hopefully after the electrical bill, it won't be too much more..
Contract tomorrow and hopefully the final prices.... Hmmm... wonder how many of my children I will need to sell.....

Waiting, Waiting...

It seems like, from the moment you decide "this is it, the one I am going to build", you are forever waiting for something. Wait for a new sales quote, wait for PD to contact us, wait for the soil test results, wait for National Tiles, wait for Tender, wait for Hopetoun, wait for electricals, wait for contract. It's as frustrating as hell, till I want to yell "FFS finish something".

We are waiting for hopetoun and the electrical appointment on the 8th then contract on the 9th. We are waiting for land settlement, we are waiting for the results of the garage footing probes.
When these are done, we'll be waiting for a site cut and then a slab, frame, lockup fixings and hand over.

Half of me wants it finished yesterday, the other half says if it was finished yesterday it would be thrown together so quickly that it would come down tomorrow!! Hmmm.... maybe this is sending me schizophrenic.

In the meantime, while I have been waiting, I have been trying to make sure that I have thought of everything, so when we get to contract it will all be there and we can sign and be done. I put up a list of the things we changed/added and I left out most of the promo stuff and I am fairly sure after reading every blog I could find that I cannot think of anything else. But I am sure there will be something...
Did anyone else really want to add something later on that they wished they'd thought of before?