Contracts are coming.............

Rang Burbank to find out when we would be getting our contracts and they had lost our file! They assured me that they would get onto it ASAP, and would express post them out on Thurs.

I'm glad I rang or we could have been waiting a while for them to realise

House front and yard plans

Here are my very rough, kindergarten child like drawings of our house!


The front



The yard



The colour samples on canvases, 3 external colours and the light one is the internal wall colour. We are going to use the 3 external colours for the internal feature walls as they go together nicely

Revised tender & drawings

We recieved our revised tender and drawings today! With the 5m setback that we wanted, and the sliding door in the bedroom to outside, with our tiles, frosted glass in the front door, and less cost for the driveway because of the setback being shorter

It all looks fantastic and I can't wait til we get contracts and all the approvals out of the way

The pile of dirt and our new neighbours!

Well there was a pile of rocks and dirt on our land from the next doors driveway being dug out, we rang their builder and they were great about it and said they would move it this week for us.
Went past last night and its all clear, so thumbs up to the Dennis Family Homes guy who helped us there!

We also got to meet our new neighbours on the other side, who it turns out are friends of friends of friends, very small world! Also met one of their lovely furkids, Tyson, the golden retriever. They bought their block 1 year ago, and have photos of the land before the street was there, so they will be great to see.

Still waiting to hear back from tender presenter, to see the revised plans, but hopefully they will come some time in the next week, and we will get to contracts in the next couple of weeks

The front setback

After stressing the whole way over easter, measuring the neighbours setbacks, and stressing some more I emailed and rang the tender presenter to ask her this morning what the options were. I said we weren't happy with 6.5m and we knew we could apply with the council to have it moved to 5m, and if we had known we wouldn’t have signed off on it
She rang back and said that she looked and we aparently do have a building envelope and it is no problem to move it to 5m YAY!!!!!!!
We get our 1.5m bigger backyard heheheh, sounds like such a small space but 1.5m it makes it 24m in area, 24m that the dogs can turn into a dust bowl in summer and mud pool in winter!!! Hahaha
They will also adjust the price of our driveway as it will be smaller now

I am very happy!

Bathrooms and laundry

We get a spa bath as part of the upgrade!!! Which is very exciting

Toilet! lol What else can I say?

Basin on top of vanity

The vanity is (refined oak) for the cupboards and beige top with the same mixer as the kitchen

The shower is a pivot door with this mixer

The laundry

The taps are pretty cool as standard, same as what we have now but in chrome and the trough is steel with a colourbond cabinet which is great

We are using the same 100x200 tiles as the kitchen but with no picture row to keep it simple

Internal colours, main house and kitchen

The inside colours are the ones we changed alot, we were going to go with greys and silvers but when we saw what was on offer we have ended up going with bronwy greys which look great when all together

We are going with a sisal carpet in aged driftwood, similar to this colour but greyer, and the floor tiles are a similar shade but alot darker with a charcoal grout and the wall colour will be similar to the bottom colour on this sample, only a little lighter






The kitchen colours will be this wood grain (white plum) for the cupboards and the darker warm grey (graphite) for the bench and the stainless dishwasher which I'm not sure about, might try to keep our current dishwasher and swap this one to the old place when we leave!




I really like the pin mixer taps, they look funky, they will be in the bathrooms and kitchen



The kitchen tiles will be 100x200 white tiles stacked, witha glass mosaic picture row, which the glass is greys and browns

Tender day!

We have just done tender, and colours! it was lots if fun even though lots of it has changed from what we originally thought we would have!

The biggest thing I guess is what we thought was going to be a minimum 5m setback has turned into a 6.5m aparently because the first house in the street has been set back at that length and we have to be the same

The desing guidelines for the estate say "All buildings (dwellings, carports, garages and outbuildigns must be set back a minimum of 5m from the frontage or any greater distance as required by the responsible authority. Front setbacks may also be controlled by building envelopes where provided."

We don't have any building envelopes so I'm guessing it relates to the responsible authority aspect but I'm not sure where to look to find out this info

It seems a bit weird and it's annoying me as now our backyard will be only 4.4m long instead of 5.9m but I will go measure both houses now that there are 2 houses in the street and see what their setbacks are

The site costs weren't so bad, H class slab, and all the fence, termite protection, etc etc, and there were only a few things which went up in price, 1 extra air con duct and a bit of extra driveway (due to the setback change)

With the colours we didn't have as big a choice in the standard colours as we would have liked but we also ended up changing a few things from what we had originally thought as they just looked nicer on the day and when it was all set out together





Some external colours are our bricks, shingle roof tiles, and our front door design, which will be painted black, and we're paying extra to get the glass frosted.




The garage door and window frames will be black and the external paint colours will be the ones used in the pic of the different display house here

Broken Driveway!

Whilst down at the block on the weekend we realsied that the driveway and footpath were cracked, and had been painted to point out the cracks

Rang the council who went out to look and said that they hadn't painted the cracks and to contact the builders next door who have been using our driveway to get access to the house they are building. They were pretty nice and said they would keep an eye on the trucks using our driveway but said they didn't know who had painted the cracks and possibly to ring the developers

Rang the developers and finally found out that it was them that had painted the cracks and they are replacing the broken concrete after easter! Bit of stuffing around and I felt abit silly but everyone was really nice, just wish the developer has have let us know, so we knew what was happening