Missed a call from Gena, our construction CSC last night, so I called her back this morning. Seems nice enough over the phone, I just hope she's as organised as Mendo is!
With any luck our file is in estimating right now, and if we're super lucky she'll get back in touch with us end of this week to let us know a site start date - yaaaay!
*edit* Just checked My Metricon, and while the "estimating" box isn't checked yet, we have a site supervisor named - Brian! How exciting!
Today, had a temp job in St Kilda to get to, and I think I spotted 2 Metricon homes - one was on Riversdale rd near Highfield rd, and one on Whitehorse Rd, between Union Rd and Station St. But I could be wrong, was driving past them pretty fast but they looked awfully familiar!
There's also a messaive Metricon home going up on Doncaster rd, between the greythorn shops and balwyn road - looks huuuuge! Would be worth a fortune in the Balwyn North area too, certainly well into 7 figures.
Finally, we're moving into a house in Preston tonight for 2 weeks of housesitting. We're hoping to line up more housesitting gigs while our house is being built (we've probably got a month in Vermont housesitting in August 2010). If anyone is going away in Melbourne, and would like their house (and pets!) minded by two responsible, mature professionals, please let us know!
T&T
Hi T&T
ReplyDeleteGena and Brian are our new Metricon contacts.
Both seem to be pretty good.... better than the previous contacts.
We inheried them after a massive restructure at Metricon in recent months.... maybe they inherited us? Poor them...
We are nearly finished the fixing stage... and so we very excited... and cautiously optimistic we will be in the house March 2010.
It has been a rollercoaster... and we have seen the best and worst of Metricon to date.
Advice: Get an independent inspection done (pre-plaster and finish as a minimum)....
Sounds like your plan modifications sound similar to ours.
Any queries ... holler
I just sent you a huge response via the blog but is 'fell over' in the posting.
Cheers and Merry Xmas
njlj
Ah, we have the same contact for building - hope they're good! March 2010 isn't far away (but then again when was your site start?)
ReplyDeleteCan you recommend any inspectors, as we're planning to get a few inspections done. What kind of problems have come up with metricon?
probably best to email us - "mitchamrd at hotmail dot com" as sometimes the blog commenting thing breaks down after typing a lot (just happened to me too!)
Thanks
T&T
Hi Tim and Tina,
ReplyDeleteWe have just finished building and we had Gena as our construction CSC. She was pretty good-you sometimes had to ring/e-mail a few times to get a response but she was pretty good once you got hold of her. I will be forever grateful to her as she got me a meeting with the senior staff at M to get approval for the larger kitchen feature window (our last CSC stated it was not possible and made us sign a pre-contract variation but luckily I went to the Balwyn display home and saw it was possible).
I saw the Box Hill Nolan for sale during the week-do you know if it sold? I couldn't see any result in the paper-did you go to the auction? It was nice but a few things seemed very impractical-ie the open theatre room and the white tiles which would be a nightmare to keep clean.
The Balwyn M house you saw is probably the one that is going to be a display home-our painter has just finished painting it and says it's massive.
Out of all our tradesmen our painter was the best-I would recommend requesting "Johnny" if you can (he does the balwyn, kew, blackburn area). Nothing was too much trouble and the result we got was better than the display homes. I've ended up getting a lot of extra painting done by him after handover-he's not cheap but worth every cent!
We got a pre-handover inspection done by the famous Kevin-he is good but very busy. He picked up some major issues that had to be fixed (so his fee is well worth it). Our balcony was leaking, there was exposed steel on one side of the slab, our bricks weren't cleaned sufficiently, a kitchen wall wasn't straight, the concrete in the garage with pitted etc etc. Our SS wasn't happy with Kevins report at all but he eventually fixed everything.
Hope this all helps, Deb (Jspitz)
this all sounds very scary to build a home with Metricon. We are at pre-lim stage - should we pull out now!
ReplyDelete