DIY: Sensor floodlights installation

So this is something I was going to do as soon as we moved in (over a year ago!) but of course I kept forgetting to do it, and only happened to remember while at our local hardware store. We had a standard bayonet mount light fitting outside our front door, and I'd always forget to turn on this light when expecting visitors.



So this is what you call a standard builder's light fitting, the most basic thing imaginable that does the job. The good news is, with this light fitting (also called a batten mount) there are many direct DIY replacements available that you don't need an electrician for. This takes maybe 10-15 minutes to do and is very simple.

I chose this twin floodlight sensor DIY fitting - you can also get oysters with sensors, but I wanted a lot of light in the front. About $30 for the sensor unit and $7 for a twin pack of floodlights. They're pretty high powered at 150W each, but this light will only be on when someone triggers it at night, so I'm not too concerned about their power consumption.



So the next thing you need to do is get up on your ladder and remove the light globe, the threaded screw collar, and the plastic dome thing around the bayonet mount until it looks like this. You probably want to make sure the light is off too.



Open up your DIY sensor light. Make sure you've got the DIY version - there's also a non DIY version in case you have no bayonet mount - for that one you'll need an electrician to legally install it. I've removed the centre cap on the light - you can see a little plug right in the middle - this screws into where your original lightbulb was.



Place the unit over the original bayonet mount, rotate it so the sensor is facing the direction you want, then replace the original screw collar to hold the sensor unit in. If you want, you can also add 3 screws around the outside of the unit to stop it moving, but I've put a few of these in other houses and they stay pretty firm without additional screws.




Screw in your floodlights, adjust the angles of the lights and sensor and make them firm using the wingnuts provided.



Finally, test to make sure your lights work!



I only want these on when someone walks into the sensor range at night, so I'll wait until tonight to make the final adjustments. There are two adjustments you can make - sensitivity of the sensor, and duration of light, just turn a couple of dials on the back of the sensor. The beauty of it is, you can leave the light switch inside turned "on" all the time, but these floodlights will only come on when someone triggers them.

The next lighting-related project is to replace more of the internal plain bayonet lights with nicer ones - we've got a fancy light for the entrance that we'll need an electrician to install, but there were quite a few nice DIY fittings that I might get, once they're Tina-approved! Any electricians reading this in Melbourne and want to help us install some lights in return for some blatant promotion on our blog? Contact us! :)

T&T

Day 86: Doors in, and brickies started early! Plus: Cooling discussion

We were a bit rushed tonight as there was a dinner seminar to get to - but getting to our house, we were a bit surprised to see.... heaps had been done!

Let's start with the chippies - they were a little busy today! Front doorframe & temp front door, internal access doorframe, rear birpart frame was all installed. Also many issues detected at Tuesday's frame inspection were fixed up today: missing noggin from study, home theater door height corrected, bed 4 to bathroom door relocated, master bed doorframe secured. Well done boys!


This pic shows our front door - love the sidelights! The temporary front door is hanging open, the final door is 2340mm high, 1020mm wide - plenty big! But now more and more of the house is coming together, I'm realising there's a few things that I might have changed - though we put in hours and hours into planning this house, you can't always get everything in! One thing might have been to get a quote on upsizing the front door to 2340x1200mm - the front door would be 18cm wider, but then each sidelight would get 9cm narrower. Anyway, can't change it now, and the current door is already massive! Another thing might have been to upsize the internal access door - it's a standard 820mm door, but making it a little bigger might be useful as I tend to go in & out with big things a lot to the garage.



Here's a pic of the rear bipart door - this was part of the promotional package, upgraded from the standard aluminium bipart door. This one is a standard door height, 2140mm I think (so is the laundry sliding door), whereas every other door is 2340mm high. Not sure this timber bipart comes in a taller door size; pretty sure we checked this with our CSC at preliminary contract, otherwise we would have got the taller one. The two sliding doors haven't been installed yet.

Now here's a question for everyone out there - if you look at the bottom of the bipart, the aluminium rails for the sliding doors are on the outside - should it be this way? It just looks like it should be inside as there's a line of black felt you can just see in the photo, but so far the chippies seem to know what they're doing :)

The other big surprise was that quite a lot of bricking had been done - one one side of the house only 1-2 layers of bricks had been put down, but on the other side quite a bit more of the wall had been done already.



This shows the home theatre room from the backyard, and looking up towards the front of the house you can see quite a bit of bricking has been done today. This was a real treat, as Monique mentioned they'd start next Monday, or maybe Friday (tomorrow) if they could! When we inspected closer, all the mortar widths were pretty consistent, and the flush finish seem to be quite even all the way around. We picked off-white mortar, which looks quite dark now because it's still fresh, but as it dries out, we should see it lighten considerably!

We're very happy to see bricking start ahead of schedule, and to see the minor issues seen in the frame to be fixed up so quickly, testament to our SS paying attention to our concerns and passing on words to the tradies to get them fixed promptly - top marks there! Let's hope the good run continues!

Finally, to respond to Glenn who asked about cooling, in our prelim contract M won't put evaporative cooling ducts to downstairs in the build (but I've heard that in NSW they will?). If you add in refrigerated cooling however, then that would include ducting to downstairs. Our plan is to install a big evaporative cooler upstairs (we added "evaporative cooling provision" to our contract which gives reinforced roof trusses, powerpoint and water point for cooling), and later add a split system AC to the downstairs open area. My parents have this setup in their 2 storey house, and it works very well - especially being able to leave the evaporative cooling on low overnight during the hot humid nights, makes it a "breeze" to stay cool! We decided to add the evaporative cooling after handover, as you'll get a more powerful, capable system with more ducts for the same price.

T&T

Day 51: Wild weather, but trusses about 80% complete!

Woke up this morning and happy to see clear skies and warm weather. This all changed by about 4pm, when the skies turned black and solid sheets of water fell from the skies - cutting out power to my office block, so I left early to check on the site.

And happily it appears the chippies were able to get a heap of work done in the morning prior to the storm - lots of trusses installed, maybe 80% complete? Just trusses over the sitting room and entry gallery to be completed.



Only had time to take a couple of photos on my iphone before the rain went mad again - here's a pretty wonky photo standing in the hallway ;looking towards the back of the house - study is to left, laundry to right. Void in trusses for the future staircase. Having the trusses in lets us get an idea of how large the rooms will really be. I'd highly recommend to anyone building a house to upgrade to higher ceilings if your budget permits - you definitely can't add this later on, and it gives a much more spacious feel to the house! I've heard of huge variations in how much builders charge for higher ceilings. I think ours were great value, only about $2000 more for 2.7m ceilings to the ground and I can't remember how much (less than $2k) for 2.55m ceilings to first floor (Metricon apparently don't offer higher ceilings than this for ground & first). One builder on H1 wanted $10k for 2.7m ceilings to a single storey house - wow!


The pic above shows floor trusses in open plan rear area - the kitchen area is covered by trusses, the open area to the left is the dining area (no first floor above here). You can see two pipes for the kitchen sink, but for some reason there's a big pipe near the frame and we can't work out what it's for - there's no plumbing void marked on the plans, so we'll ask our SS next week about that.

Hoping the weather will hold off tomorrow morning so the remaining trusses can be installed, and maybe the start of first floor trusses, though maybe scaffolding will be needing.

And for anonymous who wanted to know what the payment breakdown is, it's like this:

• $1000 initial deposit; covers site survey and soil test (well, it did for us anyway)
• $3000 at preliminary contract acceptance to cover cost of custom plans
• 5% (less the previously paid $4000) at contract signing
• Base: 20%
• Frame: 20%
• Lockup: 25%
• Fixing 20%
• Completion 10%

Now that we've started along the journey, it's plain to see the payments are clearly biased to having most of the money upfront -ie by the time you get to lockup you've already stumped up 70% Perhaps that's why (for most builders not just Metricon) the first 3 stages go by quickly, then things tend to slow down at fixing & completion. Would be interesting to hear if anyone has successfully negotiated different payment percentages? Of course, ultimately you end up paying 100%. Also, note that things like postcontract variations are added/subtracted on you completion payment - we'll have to pay about $15k more for various additions, less $1000 for power pole, plus $x for retaining wall and whatever other little things turn up.

Anyway, we're pretty happy about progress on the site - at the start of last week we had a few plumbing pipes in the ground, now we're starting on the first floor frame! Providing the weather holds off, we're fairly confident our SS's predictions of frame completion by end of February will work out - and of course, another bill for 20% of the build in our letterbox!

T&T

Day 45: Base invoice received

First of all, let's go on a minirant here about HP/Compaq and their shitty quality products. You'd think a multinational brand like HP would be able to build a laptop that doesn't break their hinges after a few months, randomly freezes, loses sleep/hibernation modes and have a battery life longer than 50 minutes, but apparently not. And let's not talk about the fact that HP have decided that a 2 year old laptop (that was top of the line when new) is simply waaaaay too obsolete to be worthwhile supporting under Windows 7. End result, don't trust, buy, or recommend HP/Compaq. Meh! My old Acer laptop is still used by my sister with 100% reliability; and I bought that one in 2002 - far superior.

Aaaaaanyway....got an express post envelope from Metricon today, with just a few pages, but a big bill to pay - 20% of contract! It's interesting to note though, that the progress payments are based on the contract price that you sign off on, at the final contract meeting. We had about $15k of postcontract variations (mainly electrical, roof tiles, tile upgrades), but they will be added to the final invoice, along with any other changes that may come up along the way.

No work done on site today - weather in the low 20s and constant light rain. Again, good for concrete curing, but not so good for deliveries or getting work done. Maybe some framing to start next week?

sarahv: yeah, the old house was a nice house to live in - unfortunately it was on a very busy road, right next door to a petrol station, opposite a big bunch of units. Not a great location for a residential property, but not too bad for a medical clinic! Would have liked to have the house and land (about 700m) in a different location, but alas not to be. Fond memories, but can't wait for our dream house to be finished!

Miscellaneous Metricon developments

There's a massive Metricon house going up on Doncaster Rd, between Greythorn Rd & Balwyn Rd - you can hardly miss it as there's a big banner advertising "Metricon Building in your Neighbourhood" across the whole block. Looks like bricking is nearly completed.

From what we can tell, they're using Austral 50mm Hawthorn to the facade and 76mm Hawthorn to the rest of the house (what we were going to do to our Nolan as well). Double plus a single garage (damn I envy a wide block!), timber windows. Not sure what house design this is, but someone with more time than me can check all the facades on the website - I think the three sets of timber doors to the first floor is probably the giveaway. I suspect this will be a Metricon display home for a while, as it's on a good exposure location.

Now, we also had a look at the other Metricon house being started near us in Blackburn the other day - this pic below shows one thing they have, that we don't have (or need) - a temporary power pole. Here's a handy hint for all you other people considering redeveloping your site - organise an underground powerpit yourself, and do it as soon as you can!



The reason you should organise your own powerpit is all about money. If you don't organise it yourself, Metricon will organise it for you (at extra cost) and you'll probably have to get a temporary powerpole anyway (for about $1000) as the powerpit takes quite a few weeks to be done. If you get the powerpit organised and installed well before site start, you'll save a few thousand dollars, which is always nice! We also elected for a three phase powerpit, even though we don't need it now, three phase is only about $100 more than two phase power. Maybe in future we'll all be using electric cars that charge quicker/better on 3 phase, or you might want a massive AC unit that requires 3 phase.


Finally, we saw this sign in front of an old house on Balwyn Rd. The picture is of the Metricon Imperial display home on Belmore road. The idea here, is that a potential purchaser buys the finished product - ie the Imperial or similar design, but only pays stamp duty on the existing house/land value. I was trying to work out in my head how it would go down - I'm thinking one standard contract of sale for house & land - let's say for $650k, with government stamp duty calculated on that amount - plus an additional seperate contract for $x, which would cover the final house. The nice thing about this deal for the developer is that you have a guaranteed buyer at the completion of the house, plus depending on how the deal is structured, financing the build is entirely covered - no interest to the bank, plus a handy profit. Redevelopment project are going on all over this area of Balwyn - the difficulty is finding suitable redevelopment sites at a financially viable price, while funding is a secondary problem (yet not as difficult as finding the site!). Anyway, we'd love to get into development, but I think we'll wait until the house is a little more completed!

Had a big night out with the boys playing poker last night, so today we'll go past our site to see if anything was done yesterday (doubtful). Checking on MyMetricon - our slab commencement date has been postponed again to Feb 3rd; most likely because of the short week due to Australia Day. I checked out the leaked result of JJJ Hottest 100, and the top song sucks!

sloke: thanks for advice re water meter; but I'm not sure why I'd even get my meter taken away? Wouldn't M be using it for the duration of the build?

caroline: the neighbours opposite us built a lovely custom house 2 years ago, as their old house burned to the ground after a kitchen fault! yep, insurance is a must!

T&T

Still in New Zealand!

Yeah, we're not back in Australia yet, but enjoying the wonderful scenery and activities in NZ. We boated around the Bay of Islands with heaps of dolphins, did some parasailing above Paihia, smelt the smelly stuff in Rotorua etc etc.

Right now in Taupo with a bit of downtime, sitting in a very slow internet place next to Lake Taupo with a view of Mt Ruapehu in the background - fantastic! Checked MyMetricon and apparently our "Base Commenced" item is due on 28.1.2010. Not sure what this means - is this the start of plumbing etc for the base, or the day of the actual base pour? I think the tradies are meant to be on site next week, so we'll find out then.

Also, for those who keep a check on the Metricon website, looks like there's a new promotion out - the "Allure" for $4950. It's a pretty good deal, as one of the inclusions is a 4 panel timber bifold worth a fortune (we got a timber bipart in our promo) and big door handle to the entry door (which cost us $450 or so). Other things which are different to our promo is a small carpet allowance, ceasarstone to laundry and all the other wet area benches, tiles bases to all showers. Basically, what I've found is that this is the third different promo package since we signed up to Metricon - there's ALWAYS a promo package available, and they seem to get a tiny bit more expensive each time (about $500 more every 6 months) but they do include some pretty good things, definitely worth more than the small price increase. You'd be mad not to get one of these promo packages if you're signing up now with M!


Of course there's a catch, you can only get this promo if you leave your deposit after 9.1.2010. I would have loved to have had this promo at the time we signed up to our house, but that's life!

We're back in Australia this Saturday night, and housesitting an almost-new mansion in
Camberwell from Sunday - ahhh, that's the life!

Renee&Tom; had a look at your blog - we (I mean - I) wanted Zinc bricks too, but they do cost $$$! If you get the brick list from Austral, there should be a few in Glen Waverly, and there was one by Hometec with zinc bricks, looks fantastic! Also the Hometec display in Lyndhurst also use Zinc to very good effect. I'm jealous... but then again, love our Hawthorn bricks!

And finally, no pictures of house, but here's a pic of me coming down to earth after jumping out of a plane at 15000ft over Lake Taupo. highly recommended!!

Day 13: Back to work on the house; toilet and cage delivered

No doubt people who decide to build a house are perhaps the craziest people of all - especially those who decide to blog, or join homeone forums, or whatever. Because who else would drive up to a bare block of land (except for the weeds and miscellaneous rubbish) and find their heart racing at the sight of a temporary toilet and wire cage for rubbish?



I don't think this really signifies the restart of building works for 2010 though, as it's a separate subcontractor's job to deliver the toilet & rubbish cage. In a way, I don't want too much done before Jan 18, as we're off on a short trip to NZ this week, and I don't want to miss any further exciting developments - such as a fabulous trench for plumbing, or a once-in-a-lifetime meter box erection.

Ha, I wrote erection in a blog, and (almost) didn't laugh [cue Peter Griffin "heh heh heh heh...]


Hope everyone is all worked up about the restart of building activities for 2010 though - this should be a great year!

And for a final bonus pic, yesterday we went to the Metricon Keysborough display centre to check out the new double storey design the Sycamore. 45sq, all bedroom have ensuites, about $330,000 with Contemporary facade finish. Didn't appeal to us (too many ensuites and not enough home theatres - ie no home theatre!) but I thought the Fairhaven 33 display home had a great floorplan for a single storey house.

This pic is of the living area of the Lindrum 58 - a truly massive house, with a massive pricetag on upgrades on everything! Beautiful clean and modern lines - a monochrome colour pallete gives an ultramodern look to this living area. Great for a display home, but as a house for living, probably needs a bit more color :)


Thanks for everyone who left a comment on the last blog entry, always appreciated :) Sarah V - I wish Metricon Vic worked as fast as in Sydney - but I thin because they build a whole lot more houses in Melb, I doubt we'd have our house in 5 months! Apparently Metricon did about 1800 houses in 2008, not sure how many in 2009, but Australia's largest volume builder anyway. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing - probably a little of both!

T&T

Can you believe some people are working between xmas and new years?

Well, it's been a lazy kind of time since xmas - I've been avoiding shopping centres at all costs, concentrating on playing video games, reading comic books and having yum cha (my kind of holiday!). Moved back home on the weekend as well, after babysitting a big dog and small cat. Cats are OK - they don't need much attention :)

Drove past our block of land today, and was surprised to see some fresh concrete around the underground powerpit that we had put in at the start of November - about time! Looks very neat and tidy now.



However, we also got a letter from the council saying the demolition crew had wrecked a couple of footpath "squares" - I don't know a better word for them - and it'd cost us $600 to have it all fixed. Now, my understanding of the "asset protection permit" was that it would protect us from paying rectification costs, but apparently that's not the case... another $600 going into this build :(

And while we're talking about powerpits and demolition additional costs, we had a comment from B&T (another Nolan builder - I should start up a little club!) asking about the demolition process. Here's a summary:

• Obtain asset protection permit from your council & pay any required bond amount (ours was $160 for the permit, $1000 bond)
  
• Choose a demolition contractor after getting some quotes
  
• Arrange telephone line disconnection through Telstra (allow 1-2 weeks), They won't physically disconnect the line - once the phone number has been "inactivated" your demo crew can just cut the lead-in phone line and take it to the telephone pole.
  
• Arrange electricity and gas disconnections through your electricity/gas providers (allow 2-4 weeks) and the house must be vacant before they'll remove the electricity and gas meters.
• If you're redeveloping your block, make sure you leave the water meter and front tap, and get your demo crew to remove everything but these two items.
  

As for underground powerpit, strictly this has nothing to do with the demolition, but should be done well prior to starting construction (allow 4 weeks from time of ordering powerpit). I'd order the powerpit at the same time as arranging electricity disconnection. For this, call your electricity provider and ask them who provides underground powerpits in your area. Our one was about $1600 (had to get power from the powerpole across the street so a little more than the basic quoted cost of around $900). Good luck B&T! For more details click on the "demolition" tag on the sidebar of this blog.

Finally, here's a screen capture of MyMetricon, the online tool for tracking your house build. Apparently Porter Davis has a similar customer tool, but I've not seen what it looks like.



This screen shows our "preconstruction" chart with everything completed (finally!). This includes such items as deposit, sales process, colour, electrical selections etc, contracts, planning and ordering, right up to the site start date.


This pic shows us the "construction" screen - and clearly nothing's been started yet (the site scrape doesn't get a mention on this screen). Hopefully this empty screen will rocket along to having a whole bunch of yellow bars soon!

Also got an email from Gena yesterday (didn't think she'd be doing emails on her break!) just letting us know we won't be getting any bills while we're overseas in January, which is nice.

I think we'll head to the beach for a day or two tomorrow as it'll be over 30 until Thursday afternoon. Not much accommodation about, but will find a little motel or something near the beach (hopefully) online.

T&T

Final contract received - post contract variations?

Our CSC called me this afternoon to let me know the final contract was going to be emailed out soon (we had it by 5pm), the only issue is that our electrical plan isn't done. This is because we only did the electrical appointment 10 days ago, and they're taking their time getting the drawings done - but she said we can just add it on as a variation after the contract is signed - how does this sound to everyone?

Otherwise, the contract and drawings were done pretty well with only a couple of issues to address, such as;

• We want Cat4 bricks to the whole house - in the contract, we've only got Cat4 bricks to sides & rear. Wonder what can be put on the facade, if not bricks?
• 2365 framed mirror doors on plans are marked down as only 2065mm high

And for a few very minor issues, the glass splashback is smaller than we thought (200mm high instead of full height) - since we have a big window splashback it's not a big deal, but we'll ask about it. Also, we added in at late notice a trilock handle to the internal access foor from the garage, but it's a knob instead of lever, and it might be better as a lever to match the other door handles.

One nice thing is that we asked for an additional rainfall showerhead to the ensuite, and we ended up with 2 rail showers and a rainfall showerhead - it looks excellent on the plans, can't wait to get using it... in 15 months or so, or however long it'll take to build!

I guess the main thing on this final contract, provided our CSC says our electrical plan goes through as a normal post-contract variation (with no further penalty fees to pay, since it's not our fault they haven't got the electrical plans drawn up properly) then we're pretty much set to go for contract signing on Tuesday.

Just got to prepare payment of 5% less the $4000 already paid (I wish they took amex, all them credit card points would be worth something)! So, bring my chequebook, copies of bank statements as proof of funds for half the build, call my demo guy to get a copy of demo permit for M, and a big fat pen to sign a thousand pages. We were meant to receive our finance approval today, but it hasn't come through yet - if it doesn't come on Monday, I'll call our broker again to get a hurry up!

And drove by the old house a few days ago, the overhead power line has been cut, so just the gas service line to be removed, and evaporative cooling to be relocated.

If anyone has any comments on how to approach final contract signing please let us know!!

T&T

Electrical appointment done! And more easement problems!

Spent a couple of hours at M headquarters yesterday going through our electrical plan - we had it pretty much all laid out beforehand though, which is highly recommended if you don't want to spend days buried in floorplans at the appointment!

Of course, some things change at the appointment; I wanted a facade light on the garage, but there's a downpipe right where the light would go, not a big deal. I wanted M to quote on conduit in the home theatre room to run my own cables, but they don't offer that. I pulled out of the projector provision ($313) and just got a junction box to the roof space (to power my projector and screen) linked to a switch on the wall ($56). I'm planning to change over to Saturn dimmer LED switches in the rumpus - oooo, that's a nice light switch!

Anyway, some other results of the electrical appointment;

• 4 star gas heating with one zone, $1200 upgrade
• Antenna $360
• 20 downlights
• 4 dimmers ($82ea)
  
• 3 steplights on stairs
• 3 external junction boxes for future floodlights ($56 ea)
  
• Upgraded all light switches, powerpoints, data, TV points to Clipsal Slimline - a very modern looking design! ($13 ea)
  
• 3 external double powerpoints ($102 ea)
  
• 2 fluoro lights to garage
• 26 more double power points
  
• 9 Cat6 data cable runs ($146ea!)
  
• 7 TV points with amplifier
• Provision for futre evaporative cooling

All up, about $10,000.... how easy is it to spend money building a house! We sent through a revised plan just maing a few minor changes, and hopefully will sign off on the changes this afternoon.

And just when things were going well - we received approval from both council and Yarra Valley Water to build eaves over the easement - M now want us to prove there's no pipes in the easement, or we're going to pay bigtime for a huge slab upgrade. Got plans of YVW and council (stormwater) pipes and emailed them to our CSC, so hopefully that gets us in the clear!

T&T

Paperwork getting sorted - and evaporative cooling for sale cheap!

Well, been an interesting week with some paperwork finally getting through the system!

Whitehorse council have sent back our "Building over Easement" application - approved! Took just under 3 weeks, which isn't too bad I reckon! We just now have to get Yarra Valley Water's written approval for the siting, which shouldn't be a problem (touch wood!) as the side easement has no pipes or anything in it. The only YVW asset is the sewer pipe along the rear easement, but we're not building anywhere near that.

Also received a receipt for our triple phase underground power pit from Jemena which should be installed "within 20 working days", $1600.

And finally, a short letter from Heritage saying our Line of Credit application has been pre-approved, and we should be getting the full loan documents soon - maybe next week?

The only holdup so far is waiting on Fiona from Studio M to get back to us on a few corrections to the quotation and colour decisions made at our colour appointment nearly 2 weeks ago. A little disappointing that we're still waiting on just a few points to be clarified and pricing, given that Mendo usually gets back to us within the day, if now within a few hours of emails, but we'll wait until early next week before we try to get in touch with Fiona again. Actually, next Tuesday is our electrical appointment, so since we'll be back at Studio M that day, we'll make a point of getting things sorted out that day.

We're also moving out of this old house by next weekend - and I'll need to get back in touch with the electricity and gas people to confirm the disconnections for the demolition which is booked in for second week of November!

*edit* Oh, and with the evaporative cooling that was for sale - I'm installing it in my parent's house as a christmas present to them now :)




T&T

Prelim contract ready to sign off - and TILES problem solved!

We've just about reached finalising our preliminary contract - we hope to have it signed off next Tuesday afternoon!

We've removed some items, added others, and most importantly have our structural changes approved and costed up. Frankly I'm quite surprised at how reasonable the costings are compared to the price of some other upgrades (eg soft closing kitchen drawers, $1300!)

Powder room changes: Putting the sink and WC all in one room, with two narrow windows, about $500.
Laundry changes: relocating the door, and creating a huge walk-in linen cupboard about $750.
Ensuite changes: swapping the WC and shower, and thus gaining a bigger 1650mm shower, about $500. The ensuite wall had to be pushed out about 200mm, meaning the master is 200mm shorter, but it was huge to start with, so we're quite happy with this tradeoff.

Now, a few posts ago I mentioned that M's new standard range of tiles wasn't very extensive. We sent an email to our csc last night to finalise the variations and to point out that we placed our deposit having viewed the tile selection prior, and thus M should honour the tile selection available at time of deposit. Our CSC replied this afternoon, saying that management had agreed to honour the original tile selection available, and that Beaumont would be informed prior to our tile appointment! Well done Mendo - we're so glad you're our CSC as your service has been consistently excellent!

We were looking through our photos from the fist visit to Beaumont and we would probably use 95% of the standard silver range at the time, so we'll hopefully get away with a (relatively) small bil for any super extra tiles we might choose to use.

Jen also asked us about the soft closing drawer things - at the homeshow, I found them at stratakitchens.com.au - however, after doing the obvious (an eBay search) I found a seller in Sydney who sells a pack of 5 soft-closing drawer additions for $12! Just put "soft closing" into the ebay search box and it should come up. Also went to a kitchen/bathroom place in Niddrie today off Keilor road, and they also had the same kitchen soft-closing addons, but the lady who knew about them (and how much they were) had gone home early. We've removed M's $1300 soft closing option from our kitchen list now!

We've got our colours appointment on Sept 12, so my partner is madly pouring through magazines, newspapers and of course the 'net to find her perfect colour combinations! We've also engaged a demolition company who is applying for our demo permit. Fingers crossed for an October demolition and November start!!

And of course, a couple of pictures: Here is a display house in Keysborough (not a M house, but can't remember the builder), with what looks like Austral Zinc bricks to the facade and a brown brick to the rear: something we may choose depending on price. Zinc bricks are AMAZING when the light hits them just right!

And this pic I think was taken while driving around in Mernda? Definitely a Plantation facade but can't tell what house lies behind it. We may choose a brown brick for the ground floor, but would go for a lighter colour cladding up top. The light garage door is a winner though!

Also still undecided regarding roof: Colorbond, concrete tiles, or terracotta? Gotta decide in a couple of weeks!

T&T

Preliminary Contract received by email yesterday - a LONG post!

Well, our preliminary contract meeting is for Tuesday Aug 18th - we received a copy of it by email yesterday.

It contained details on the floorplan, facade, overlooking, overshadowing etc, plus a more formal documentation of all the upgrades and promo items, and of course - site costs!

We were informed of approx $30k in site costs, and it's a few hundred bucks more than that in total. Includes such charges as;

• Cut & Fill 3k
• Slab upgrade from M to P $7k
• Redevelop costs $7k - additional survey, site cleans, temp fencing, traffic management, protection to adjoining houses etc
• Reconnection to sewer $750
• Cranes $3k
• Double handling $2500
• Termite protection $1500
• Underground power pit $5k - we might arrange this ourselves, apparently the true cost is about $2k if we organise it!
• Temp power pole $1k

However, there are a few things which we weren't particularly aware we had to do - perils of building for the first time I guess! Including;

1) "Owner to apply for "Report & Consent" from relevant authorities for building over easement. "Report & Consent" to be applied for prior to building permit application. Customer to be aware that this item does not constitute approval, therefore siting is conditional on approval. Owner to apply to local authority to obtain neighbours names and addresses prior to M homes making application".

We have a 1.83m easement along the back which isn't a problem, but also a 1.83m easement along the side, and currently our siting puts the house approx 2.055m from the boundary. So I have a few uncertainties here;

a) Do I have to get all the approvals from Yarra Valley Water and local council? If so, do I have to do this prior to signing the preliminary contract, or can I do it before signing final contracts?
b) Is there any risk that this will be denied (and then throwing off the whole building process?) We don't mind so much if there's a little extra cost in piers or whatever else is structurally required so much.

We did post this question on Homeone and here's a reply we received - what a source of knowledge that forum is!

"Hi sklnv,

Which suburb are you building in? How many pipes do you have in your side easement?

We have a plot of land in SE suburb within Monash City. Our land has a 3m wide drainage easement running along the side boundary. Easement has 2 pipes, one belonging to council and one to Yarra Valley Water. We had faced a similar situation (except that we weren't going to build over the easement but near to the easment) and had a previous knockback with council's engineering with a previous design which saw the house sited 50cm from the easement and the builder having to dig into the easement to take some land from there to fill other parts of the site. Engineering disallowed this cos' the council's pipe was rather shallow in the ground and old too. Luckily, we were only at the pre-contract stage (Tender) and could walk away unscathed. With this knowledge (council not approving siting near to the easement), we knew that we had to be at least 1m away from the easement for the next design we could find for our land.

Now, we have signed with another volume builder to build our house. We applied for consent to Yarra Valley Water to build close to the easement (our siting of the house is 1 m away from the easment and their pipe lies 90 cm from the side boundary). We did this before signing. We were given approval by Yarra Valley and this only took a few days (even though they said it could take up to 2 weeks for processing). You would need to supply Yarra Valley with a copy of your prelim site plans when making your application and a small fee is payable. Since Monash city owned the storm water pipe (the second pipe in our easement), we spoke with the council's engineering dept - brought in all documents (i.e site plan and engineering computations). The engineer gave me the all clear and said I didn't need to make any applications for consent.
You can always start making your enquiries now with Yarra Valley and your city council since it can take time for processing of the applications. With council, they would need to advertise your report and consent application to your neighbours - 14 days advertising period and than some days to make a decision (ours took 2.5 weeks only in total). Even if council indicated to you that there wouldn't be a problem for you to build over the easement, it only takes one neighbour to raise a valid objection for you not to get consent! You could appeal against a rejection of your consent application but this is with another division. (In our case, we were lucky that we got consent for a reduced front setback despite one neighbour objecting. The assistant building inspector said that my neighbour's objection wasn't valid to our application. Neighbour said she was concerned about loss of sunlight to her verandah. For us, the drainage easement and an angled frontage worked to our advantage in order for us to have a reduced front setback! phew)

The other thing you would need to find out is the depth of the pipe(s) in your easement. If they are not very deep, you may get an objection from either the Yarra Valley or the council. The best really is to contact Yarra Valley (for depth and location of their pipe in the easement) and your city council for advice. Yarra Valley in our experience has always given us a prompt reply. They emailed to us the location and invert depth of their water pipe to us. Yarra Valley would also probably tell you to submit an application for consent to them.I can't remember whether we had to pay for this info though. You would probably be able to get all your questions answered by your city council on the day that you pop into their office to speak with someone from Ton & Planning (and engineering if there is a city pipe in your easement too). The one thing that Town & Planning will say to you is that they can't commit to an answer. You just need to persist (gently) with your line of questioning....in order for you get as much information as possible.

Hope this helps."

What a useful bit of info! We're planning to go straight to the council and Yarra Valley Water after the prelim contract meeting to get this sorted out. This is one item I wish M had informed us of weeks ago!

Anyway, there are a couple of other items we have to organise

2) Ask neighbour's consent to knock down the bit of fence where our garage wall will be, as it's closer than 150mm to the fence/boundary. Will have to ask the neighbours (who are renting) the details of their landlord.

3) Organise demolition approval - which needs to be approved prior to M submitting the council building approval. Again, we could have been told of this a month ago?

so a bit of a downer to the start of the weekend with the realisation there's a lot of work we have to do fairly quickly. In order to avoid delay fees of about $1800 per month, we have to have the final contract unconditional by November 24 - which means we have to sign & pay the 5% deposit on final contract a month before that ie October 24.

Worst case scenario; should building over the easement not be approved, or the neighbour disallows the fence to be knocked down, or demolition approval not given - we might just have to walk away from the current contract with M and start again with another M house design, or simply restart again at a later date. Let's hope it doesn't come to that!

Anyway, to finish with I know we all like to see pictures, so here's a model I did of the house from the back view, with dark brown bricks (and watertank & side fence!). Thanks to Michelle for posting brick upgrade prices!!


Also as promised, Jo recommended we draw up any kitchen redesign plans. Here's one showing our preferred layout for pot drawers (heaps of them!) to the side kitchen bench, and an additional door to the island bench.


Anyway, if any reader has advice regarding demolition companies, applying for building over easements, and dealing with neighbours and fences, please leave a comment as everything helps!

T&T

Redraw fees for modifying house plan - any comments?

Just got a letter from our CSC today after confirming our colour selection appointment for mid September. One or two things not quite right; mainly the base price of the house is $3000 more than when we left our deposit - the house prices all went up about $3000 2-3 days after we left our deposit, so I'll be sure to correct her on that point. Naturally the general content of the letter was to confirm the dates of the next 2 appointments, and the outline where yet more out of pocket fees would come from - for example

• underground power pits
• stormwater connection
• double handling
• redraw fees
• building /council approval

In particular, the item regarding redraw fees got our attention - here's a scan of that page in case anyone wants to check it out;
In fairness, I guess we are planning to make a few structural changes that I don't think are standard options; including:

• Altered laundry layout (as suggested by one reader of the blog - many thanks!)
• Revised powder room with WC and sink all together in one room
• Swap toilet/shower position in ensuite
• Extra doors - cavity doors to ensuite & sitting room, door to rear open plan area, double doors to rumpus/home theatre

I've already done a big sketchup 3D model of the house, but for floorplan customisation I decided to use Visio to replicate the floorplan as it's much better for a 2D design. Here's our current version of the house with some notes; as usual click for a fullsize plan.

So while the $1000 redraw fee for redrawing the floorplan isn't really surprising, it's another thing I wish our sales consultant had mentioned to us when we first spoke to her.

If anyone has any suggestions regarding our floorplan on how to improve things, please add a comment on this blog and we'll be sure to read it!

Tim & Tina

Welcome to the first post!

Welcome to Tim and Tina's Project Home blog!

This blog is to document the process of redeveloping our property in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, Victoria Australia. To cut a long story short, we had a property in Mitcham between August 2005 to May 2009. A lovely house about 40 years old, but quite compact (small!) and located on a very busy road, next to a petrol station.

After receiving an offer from medical professionals wanting to redevelop the property, we had to decide whether to buy an established property - and then renovate it, or redevelop with a new house on the old site. Alternatively, whether to buy a block of land (probably further out, as there's very few reasonably priced vacant land lots in the eastern suburbs) and build there.

We decided not to build in a new estate, primarily due to distance from work, friends and family. While buying in the eastern suburbs certainly isn't a cheap excercise, given that we would be unlikely to move from this house for the forseeable future, it would be an investment in our lifestyle to live in the area we want to live in.

After looking through a few of our favoured areas (from Bulleen and Balwyn North to Doncaster East and everywhere in-between) we did make one offer on a house in Lower Templestowe, but the house had sold just prior the same day.

Finally, my partner (Tina) had decided that the Whitehorse region was her preferred area, and I had to agree. Much cheaper to buy into than Mont Albert North and Balwyn North, and closer in to the city (slightly) than Doncaster East/Mitcham. Balwyn North had an attraction for me, as it had the well regarded Balwyn High School in the area - however, was the school well regarded for its good teachers, or for the naturally gifted students who are attracted to the school with a good reputation? Chicken and egg... we don't have any kids yet, but certainly a factor to consider.

After checking out pretty much every property between Station St and Springvale Road, we
bought our property at auction on May 16, with settlement to occur on June 16 (hey - only two days away!). It's in a fantastic location, close to many shops, primary and secondary schools, a few minutes drive to the Eastern Freeway, Box Hill Central and Doncaster Shoppingtown. On a quiet street, with several very new prestigious properties as our neighbours.



I'm fairly sure we bought just about the worst house on the street (we're the third owners since it was built around 50 years ago). It's a weather 3 bedroom house, with what used to be an outdoors toilet - someone put up more weatherboard to box it in, so it's technically indoors now! Big double garage/shed, full of asbestos. Approximately 600 square metres with about 15.5m frontage and 39m depth - some potential issue with a 1.8m (6') drainage easement along the west border.

Anyway, after we settle on the 16th we're planning to move some basic necessities in the following weekend - just bed, fridge and some clothes - while we try to lock in what house to build on the block. After about 3 months of looking at new home designs, it looks likely at this stage we'll be building the Metricon Nolan 41, which will hopefully just squeeze onto the land size available! Just today we talked to a sales consultant in Lyndhurst who will hopefully be a bit more communicative than the first agent we spoke to, who promised to get in touch with us (but never did...)