Site works

Of course this stuff happens when we are away, not sure what day it started. Thanks to our awesome neighbour for the pics! Land is now scrapped! It was so unexpected (exciting but unexpected) we thought site works would start after christmas. I may have freaked slightly, all I could think about was wanting to get photos and having missed half of the site works! But of course I was way ahead of myself and freaking for no reason the block had only been cut and filled and no plumbing or slab work had been done yet which meant that I hadn't missed any important photo opportunities hehe.

So, BWH has cut and filled the block and advised that a slab should be down this week. Hope this rain doesn't ruin the plans.  

It's the final countdown!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am very excited to share that our file has been transferred to the Construction team. Our 28 day countdown began on the 14 Nov!!

We also signed off on our final plans yesterday and this morning received a call from the lovely LH at BWH to say that everything has been ordered! Really happy with how the plans have turned out after all our changes. Fingers crossed it all translates once it's up!

The actual commencement date will depend on the weather and our individual site conditions.  Heavy rain or an extended period of rain and any subsequent retention of water in the soil may postpone the site works. 

Plans

Elevations

Color Selections

Ahh the biggest and most time consuming selection appointment!  We started our appointment at 10.00am and finished just before 4pm!

Our Colour Consultant was amazing, I have to do a shout out to her, she made the day as fun and exciting as she could!

We upgraded ALOT but very happy with everything! We finished off our colours and electrical, deciding to put down lights throughout and power points in the contract so we don't have to pay South West Electrical separately.

We couldn't get the contract today as we made some changes to the overhead cupboards to make them all flush line and we couldn't get a price from the kitchen company to go into the contract so hopefully can get it by tomorrow to give to Westpac Monday.


Check out the Colour Selection tab to view our selections!

CDC Approval!!

Got home today and waiting for us was a big thick package from Beechwood!!!

Inside was a lovely letter saying we have CDC approval! So happy, I'm not sure when they are planning to call me to book in colours so I'm just going to call them tomorrow, time to get this show on the road!

Come on CDC approval!

Day 8 of CDC and we are eagerly awaiting confirmation that we are approved and we can move on to colours!

We have spent those CDC days double checking the house internals making sure that everything is even and we haven't forgotten anything. Some thing that has been bothering me is the kitchen breakfast bar, on the current plans it sticks out 400mm past the fridge wall. I originally thought it was a great idea, upon thinking realistically I realise it is probably taking up way too much living/dining space :/

So with that in mind we set out to work out how we could get more living space and decided to decrease the WIL/WIP 400mm. If you see on the plans below we will still get an OK size WIP at around 875mm x 2000. The Living/Dining becomes 5165mm instead of 4765mm :)

With the WIL I think it would be better to swap the door and have it open outwards. I know it's considerably smaller than the previous one but we would much rather the living/dining space.

Any feedback would be appreciated! We have made over 45 variations to the Lexia to make it our own plan and the worst thing is not knowing how it's all going to look or if an area is too small. I think in the long run we would regret not making the Living/Dining room bigger if we could.

CDC

On Wednesday we received a text message from BWH that our plans have been lodged to CDC!

This will take 10 days, not sure if it's days or business days so we will see.

Once we have approval from CDC we will be able to make an appointment with headoffice for colours and contract signing then the 28 days countdown to site start begins!

While we wait for contract signing we need to confirm our colours, we thought we had everything set until we (I) hehe started watching this season of The Block.

We love everything Chris and Jenna and Max and Karstan have produced. The kitchen and bathrooms are to die for! We have already chosen the same bathroom tiles but in Matte finish and for the kitchen we have black benchtops and a mirror splashback already selected but we had chosen Cavia Lini for the cabinets. Thinking now to change to the same cabinet colour 'Sepia Oak" - will just need to confirm upgrade price :/

Karstan and Max's bathroo

Karstan and Max's bathroom have produced so far, there kitchen and bathrooms are to die for!The funny thing is we must have the same taste as we had chosen the exact bathroom tiles but in Matte finish and we also have black benchtops and mirror splashback for the kitchens.

FINAL PLANS + Stockland

After some poking and prodding we finally received our final plans siting on our land contours :)

Very happy that they missed none of our gazilion changes and managed to get all the windows nice and even!

We have signed off on the plans and BH advised they are sending to Stockland today!

Tile Selections

Tile Selections

Settlement Approaching!

While we wait for settlement, I have been busy organising the Planning Certificate S149(2) for BW. They need it to lodge the final plans to CDC. It was received today from Wollongong Council!

The certificate contains information on how a property may be used and the restrictions on development. The best thing about receiving our certificate is that it indicates we are not in a bush fire zone. When we originally bought the land it had a Bal 12.5 which we had to pay $3200 for the privilege of having, so happy we should now get a credit!

REGISTRATION!

WE HAVE REGISTERED as at 10.25am this morning! So happy and relieved that it is out of Stocklands hands and they can no longer F@#k it up!

So where to from here?

Well we have notified Beechwood and Westpac and settlement will occur in 14 days and then we are official mortgagees!

Plan Changes

Variations we made to plans:

- Flip entrance door
- Centre all windows

Facade
- Provide moroka finish to front of master suite and patio (including brick pier) returning 1000mm approx down side of Master Suite $324
- Provide 2 x AAA1912 windows to master suite front wall in lieu of standard $902
- Provide a 4.89 (max) wide sectional panel door in lieu of two standard including engineer's designed steel beam $1784
- Provide Hume 820mm XS28 entrance door in lieu of standard $0
- Provide a Gainsborough Trilock Omni 8905 double cylinder in lieu of standard $611
- Provide colourgrain timber look alike doors (steel) to garage sectional panel door $372

Kitchen/Laundry
- Decrease WIP + WIL depth to 875mm to allow breakfast bar to align with fridge cavity end wall
- Relocate fridge cavity to laundry wall adjacent to laundry door 990mm x 850mm $$
- Decrease breakfast bar 15cm to 2730mm to increase space between fridge and breakfast bar to 950mm 
- Decrease rear kitchen bench to 2730mm
- Increase WIP door to 720mm
- Decrease Laundry door to 720mm
- Widen WIL and WIP 10cm to compensate for 620mm door; reducing space between bench and breakfast bar to 1050mm $

Living/Dining
- Provide 2 x ATD2009 (850mm) Double Hung windows (windows to sit on floor adjacent to Alcove) to Meals area in lieu of previously requested ATD1907 (724mm) $
- Provide under eave alcove $
- Provide stacker door 3195mm in lieu of standard $

Bathroom
- Provide AS1416 bathroom window in lieu of standard $
- Move the Bathroom window down the wall to sit 100mm above the bath frame
- Flip the bathroom
- Increase bathroom 210mm into Bed 3 to incorporate 1670 bath

Bedrooms
- WIR 820mm door change to 720mm door
- Relocate WIR door 100mm towards garage
- Increase WIR by 60mm in width (new size 1580mm x 2250mm) making Ensuite 1800mm x 2250mm
- Decrease sq set entrance to Ensuite from 900mm to 800mm - set 50mm from from back of WIR. 
- Cavity door to WIR (720mm) $
- Provide AS0616 window to Bed 4 in lieu of stanard
- Provide stacker door 3195mm in lieu of standard $

Still waiting...

So here we are mid June and we are still waiting for registration. Stockland have told us they will be lodging to LPI by the end of the week - at this point we will believe it when we see it!  Once it's lodged to LPI it will be around 4 weeks until registration!

Also, we are still waiting on the final plans back from BW. We sent the plans back on the 2/6 as Bed 3 & 4 windows were off center. I hope there are no more mistakes as BW admin processes are way to long.

In the meantime we decided to change the external colours, we just felt that the outside didn't reflect the inside and we wanted it to all be similar colours.

Hopefully I will have some good news at the end of the week!

I also used floorplanner.com to do a mock up of the internals.

FINAL House Plans!!!

Yes we have plans and FINAL plans!

We are really happy but will sit on it until Monday before we sign off on it to make sure there is nothing we've missed as once we sign off it's $250 to change!

Things we need to check:

- Location of shower heads and mixer

- Location of laundry taps

- Location of manhole
- Size of M/W cavity
- Size of bin cupboard

Update

Thanks to a fellow Stage 10'er who took it upon themselves to contact council and Endeavour Energy we now have an update on our Stage! 

Endeavour Energy has approved the electrical certificate and Council have approved the sub division certificate so Stockland now has everything they need to lodge with LPI next week!

·         Endeavour Energy electrical approval – anticipated mid/late April - COMPLETE

·         FINAL Stage 10 Wollongong Council approval - COMPLETE

·         Stockland lodge boundary adjustment with LPI for registration

·         Stockland lodge Stage 10 subdivision plan with LPI for registration

·         Registration achieved – anticipated for late May 

I have emailed Stockland for an update on when they plan to lodge with LPI and to see what our DP number is so we can track the progress.

Facade.....

I got a phone call yesterday from BH that we can't have our beautiful facade :(
Apparently we are at our maximum size limit and having the facade will mean the house is too long! Very disappointing :(

So we spent most of last night trying to decide between our options, which was either the Seaview or one of the Classic facades. Given the price of the Seaview we have decided on the Classic 3 facade with a few changes.  I'm a visual person so had to do a mock up of what it would look like.

We added Moroka around the windows/pillar and Seville 2 windows in lieu of the standard. We also upgraded to a double door garage in lieu of the 2 single garages.
The Classic 3 facade is a free facade but I am estimating around $3000 in upgrades to the facade.

So email sent to BH and fingers crossed we can do the window upgrades! If not I'm sure my DH is going to go bonkers!

Waiting 2.0

Well here we are 2 weeks out from registration and still no word from Stockland.

Things that still need to happen with stockland before the 31 May registration are:

·         Endeavour Energy electrical approval – anticipated mid/late April

·         FINAL Stage 10 Wollongong Council approval

·         Stockland lodge boundary adjustment with LPI for registration

·         Stockland lodge Stage 10 subdivision plan with LPI for registration

·         Registration achieved – anticipated for late May

We should also have updated plans from BH this week, hopefully they are correct so we can sign of on them and get them to Stockland for approval.

Floor Plan!!

As the title suggests we now have floor plans!!!!
We weren't exited with the lead up to Saturday seeing as we had done this all with MJH before which was a huge drama so we were expecting the worst.

The plans look better then expected and we're very happy!  It's not the biggest house but it is just myself and DH for the foreseeable future so it's huge for us. It also means that spending less on a smaller house means we can spend a bit more on upgrades!

We also did our external colour selections and signed a bunch of paperwork whilst we were there and after 3.5 hours with the sales team we were knackered but glad we knocked it out in one go.
We have based our plan off the McDonald Jones Santorini, we love this plan so when we found the BH Lexia we were stocked it was so close to what we wanted.

Waiting, waiting and waiting

It is has been close to 8 weeks since we paid our deposit to Beechwood and we still have no plans.
With Easter being this weekend I can only assume we won't be getting plans until after.
Unfortunately the longer we wait for our plans the more changes we want to make!

New beginnings...

After much deliberation we have decided to change builders. We didn't feel we were getting what we wanted with McDonald Jones or good value for money and after viewing a Sierra that was under construction we realised it was to small for our needs.

After months of issues with MJH we started toying with the idea around January after seeing the house plan 'Lexia' with Beechwood which ticked all the boxes.

Beechwood have been fantastic, they are very flexible, we almost feel like we are building with a custom builder in terms of plans and upgrades.  We walked through the selection center before we signed to make sure we liked the selections (should have done this with MJH). We have changed the plan considerably from the original and added in a lot of upgrades and as a bonus we are still under budget. We don't really want to do things after handover so our own trades being able to go in and get stuff done before handover will be handy.

I am sure there is going to be up and downs with BH but hopefully not what we experienced with MJH before even commencing construction. It feels a great relief to have changed. 

So we have now officially signed with Beechwood Homes and paid our deposit.

We also just received notification from Stockland that Stage 10 in Brooks Reach has been delayed until May due to boundary issues. It's a bit disappointing but we will need around 10 weeks anyway to get plans ready and finalised which need to go to Stockland for approval so we should be ready to go once the land registers.