Site fences are up

Construction phase has commenced

As of yesterday, we are officially in the 'Construction Phase'. The proverbial reins have been handed over to the site manager and we are waiting with bated breath for the first ground to be broken!

Our soon-to-be-neighbour's residences however, are well and truly in the construction phase. Houses are popping up all around our block and progressing in leaps and bounds. Looks like we may be one of the last. At least we won't be living in a construction site once we're in.

Here's our empty block, surrounded by houses mid-construction:

And from the other side:

One of the great things about our location is the nature reserve across the road (this is where I take the distant pics of the block from). Thanks to that glorious endangered moth living there it will never be built upon.

In this pic, our house is off to the right - over the fence: --->

Another highlight for me, is the little knoll of gum trees at the top of our road. I hate the new suburbs where everything is razed to the ground and anything planted will take years to become even remotely established. I'm so glad they left this little bit of bushland in.

Final plans approved

Last week our exemption for an encroachment was approved. As the street isn't completely perpendicular to the front of the house we had to apply for an exemption where it cut in closer to the house on the garage side, since it's slightly narrower than the mandatory set-back from the road at that end.

 

This week we signed off on the Compliance Plans - the final set that are used for construction. Which means, in three weeks the build should kick off!

 

Here's our final floorplan:



Although listed as a 'single garage' its actually a double. They had to shave 20cm from one side of the house to compy with the block size limitations (1.5m on one side and 3.0m on the other) which made the garage measurements 20cm short of the standard double garage size which the plans need to reflect.

 

 

Kitchen and bathroom elevations continued

Kitchen and bathroom elevations

With the Christmas shut down period throwing a spanner in the work as far as getting the final paperwork sorted, I figured I would put up some of the final internal design plans while we're waiting. Wouldn't want to leave my avid followers, all three of them, waiting too long before an update, so here they are....

Kitchen - 3D:

 

Kitchen - elevations:

 

Bathroom and en suite - elevations:



Our land

Settlement

Well its official, at long last, we settled on the land on Wednesday last week. Ben and I are now the proud owners of six hundred and twenty-five square metres of dirt, time to go plant some crops. We are officially in debt for the rest of our lives!

Other recent revelations on the build, we have encountered a couple of unexpected 'after-we-signed-the-contract' expenses... unfortunately these weren't taken into account in our homeloan, which has already been approved so will now have to come out of our pockets, or rather, our of our wedding budget.

Both of these complications confirm the advice I've been given by several people which I will put out there to anyone about to build a house - QUESTION EVERYTHING!

Concrete piering: 

It appears the 30 lineal metres included in our contract wasn't enough. After the builders sent us an initial variation for $6000- of additional concrete piering, we consulted with my expert uncle the quantity surveyor, who confirmed our thoughts that this seemed fairly excessive. Additionally, friends who just built a two storey place in a nearby suburb didn't even need this ammount of additional peiering so surely it was too much for our little one storey house.

We left the variation unsigned while we were overseas for eight weeks then had a meeting with the builders. They explained the requirement for the additional piering, but assured us the price would be closer to $1500-$2000, much to our relief, however we still decided to wait for the surveyor's report before signing anything off.

The end result came back last week at ~$1900, still a decent chunk of money, but better than the original $6000 they told us it would be. Our house better be super stable after all that!

EER:

The next hiccup we faced was meeting the Six Star Energy Efficiency Requirements. Turns out our house met the requirements, originally. That is until we got to playing with the window sizes. Wanting a bright, open and airy house I had enlarged just about every window in the place.

And so it was, another unexpected variation arrived informing us we'd need to pay around $4000-$5000- for one of two options, both including double glazing variations and downsizing a number of windows, in order to meet the EER.

The double glazing I was ok with, after all in the long run this would save us a bundle in heating/cooling bills, but downsizing the windows was a definitive no-go. If I could have fit more windows into that place I would have, there was no way I wanted to make the ones I had any smaller.

And so, after numerous emails to the builders we were able to get the plan evaluated externally and a third option was provided to us - additional double glazing and leaving the windows all as is, and, it came in cheaper than the options of changing the window sizes!