Day 59 or 60: Soil levelled at back of block

Awesome - nothing better than working in a stuffy enclosed room on a Saturday morning when it's about 300 degrees outside and 450 degrees inside. Hot.

Anyway, looks like we've organised a 3 month housesit in Balwyn for a lovely couple after meeting them this afternoon, very happy about that! We decided to take a punt housesitting for people instead of renting during our build, and so far it's paying off! Or maybe that should "saving" instead of "paying", since there's no rent money going missing while housesitting.

Went to our house after, and while at first we thought nothing was done yesterday, when we walked right to the back we found that the excess soil from the site cut & fill had been levelled.


Before starting on construction, we had to organise a section of fence between us & the neighbour to be removed, as the garage wall would be 15cm inside our boundary. I got a contractor to take down 4 sections of fence, unfortunately 2 sections were destroyed during the cut & fill process. The remaining 2 sections remain propped up against the fence there. You can also see some big rocks that were unearthed during cut & fill - not as big as some massive boulders I've seen dug out of th ground for other builds, thankfully! Anyway the mound of soil previously was about 2-3' high, so I'm glad it's been levelled, otherwise that's about an hour's worth of shovelling to get it this level. Not a huge backyard, but large enough for our little dog.

adina: hope your house (floorplan) hunting is going well! That website land.vic.gov.au is pretty useful, wish we had come across it before!

sirona: what we've found about design is that it's easy to be critical, hard to be creative! Hours and hours spent choosing external/internal colours for our house, and pretty nervous about how it'll actually look in real life - we'll see soon!

Then again, I don't think our house will be as bad as these... :)


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

Empty site; resurvey complete already!

Finally, a weekday off, the first in quite a while!

Took the opportunity to head down to the site before lunch, and found there were already a couple of surveyors there doing the resurvey of the block. You can see them as tiny specks in the photo below, if you look hard enough! Apparently they'll send through the results to M this afternoon or tomorrow, and asap after that we'll be getting a survey for the slab!


I took a shovel to have a chop through the soil, most of it was pretty clay-like from the huge dumps of rain over the weekend. Where the old driveway used to be on the left, still lots of gravel and hard clay, but no concrete left - good work demo boys!

Also managed to get a fence contractor out to meet on site after lunch, and his team will remove about 10m of fence along the left so the garage can be built alongside. He recommended just leaving the fence off rather than replacing it afterwards, so I'll have to get in touch with the landlord to get their opinion. Also need the very back corner fence replaced, as the neighbour has had 40 years worth of ivy grow through the fence and it's just ruined - if I'd known it'd need to be replaced I would have had the demolition crew chop it down and take it away as well! Oh well.

Anyway, the fence will be done tomorrow, and I can let the CSC know the prestart survey can go ahead. We also got a revised tile quote, as somewhere along the looong line of contracts and drawings there was a tiling error to the ensuite - looks like we save $1000 somewhere!

Went to the council as well, to arrange a reinspection of the site now the demolition has been completed - hopefully can get my $1000 bond back as well. Looks like the footpath has been cracked in a couple of areas, but it's up to the demolition crew to rectify this - though I'm not sure when it should be done, seeing as there will be construction for the next year or so which will probably cause further cracks in the footpath.

Fingers crossed we may get some initial work done on the site in the next 2 weeks or so!

T&T

Crane gone; now the hard work begins!

I didn't go by the site tonight, but apparently the crane has been taken away, so we should just have a clear block now!

Emailed our CSC last night, and what happens now is a re-establishment survey to check the block of land is as big as the titles office say it is. We then get a "pre planner" to survey the block for the slab, but before that's done I need to get 7m of side fence removed (where the garage is going to be 150mm from the boundary). With any luck, we may have a bit of activity in a couple of weeks or so? Not that it particularly bothers us, I can't see much productivity before xmas, anyway, then everything shuts down for a few weeks.

Anyone who has built with Metricon (or really, any other builder): any idea how long the christmas shutdown period is?

Of course, after 2 months of ringing around for a fence person to come and quote me for the work on the side fence, I could only get 1 to even give me a quote, and he didn't return my calls today.... *sigh*... so if it's not done by this weekend I'll have to do it myself. Not happy!

Anyway, I also called Tru Energy who said that they usually revisit an underground power pit after 5-6 weeks to check it's setup right, and then fix up the concrete around it. One less thing to worry about.

Also will go to the council tomorrow to organise a reinspection of the footpath, crossover etc, as they've got $1000 out of me as a bond to cover any damage. If there's damage, it's up to the demo crew to rectify/pay for repairs, but I have to make sure the inspection is done by the council, before M start building.

I thought I would also have to take out an Asset Protection Permit for M, but they're going to handle that, so one less thing to worry about, I think!

I also need to get the temporary fence removed, as M will install their own temporary fence prior to the build. So yep, having that temp fence there for a month cost about $300 (same as what it costs to have it there for 6 months!)

Whoever is planning a knockdown/rebuild, just make sure you're super organised, as there's a LOT of things you need to plan and co-ordinate prior to the build! I reckon my first piece of advice would be to get the demolition complete and over at least a month or two before you plan to build - the sooner the better! Especially as any delays after signing the contract will cost you in delay fees per week, and we all know how much paying any further $$$ hurts!

I'll get a picture of the empty block, sans crane posted up tomorrow. And to Paul & Jason - sounds like we're close enough neighbours to you at the moment :)

T&T

Edit/PS: If you're thinking about a home loan, I would think twice before looking at Heritage Building Society. We were meant to have everything fully approved by the start of October - it's now nearly the end of November and we don't have much to show for it, thanks to poor customer service, inept recordkeeping, them randomly changing our mailing address so we don't receive any communications etc. Not looking promising, so I'm seriously going to LOSE IT the next time they screw something up, and tell my broker to get our certificate of title and other documents back from them so we can get a loan from someone else. I've been recommended St George, so maybe we'll see how good they are. Fucking banks - c'mon, there can't be a single person in Australia who hasn't said that!

Aaaand.... we have a clean site!

So, the weather was awfully hot this morning (got to 38 by lunchtime I've been told!) but despite that, while I was at work, so were the demolition crew. By the time I got to the site after work, everything had been allllllllllllll doooooooooone!


Doesn't look like much land after the demolition, just enough for one big boy's toy in the centre! Many times I wish we had a wider frontage, and NO side easement, but at least those troubles have been sorted out. It's not easy finding a 100% perfect site for redevelopment in existing suburbs, so we've done reasonably well. Fairly flat - but still about 80cm of fall from front to back, and a tiny bit left to right. If you look beyond the crossover, the soil still looks a bit white where the concrete/gravel driveway used to be. I'll have to go back tomorrow when it's not soggy and wet (hopefully) to have a poke about to make sure all the concrete is gone, though I'm sure the demo guys were quite thorough.


Yep, definitely going to have to move that crane, it's sitting about where our entry hallway or sitting room will be!

Just got a comment from a reader who is building a Nolan in Bundoora (Hi Renee!) asking about additions to base prices. Basically all M display homes will have a minimum of 100k in upgrades and options over the base price. Don't forget the base price is for Traditional facade (which may or may not appeal to you), but typically the more fancy (eg bigger balconies, cladding etc) and the more "modern" looking, the more expensive the facade will be (up to$15k on top of base). And of course, don't forget render isn't included in a facade by default!

Add in other upgrade prices such as structural items, colour/fitting upgrades, electrical upgrades... well, if you add $100k to the base price, this should cover most things like site costs, facades, upgrades etc (but even then it may not be enough for floor coverings, window furnishings, driveways/crossovers etc!) See the earlier post on "Beginner's guide to building with M" for some indications on upgrade costs.

And As for our own temporary housing situation while the house is being built, we've got a housesitting gig for middle December, and also for end of January. If anyone in Melbourne needs professional, mature and responsible housesitting (we love pets!) for any duration, then please let us know!

T&T

OMG! LOOK what happened to our beautiful house!

So, turned up to do the daily driveby of the house, and amazed to see this sitting where our living room room used to be:

MUAAGAGAAASDHHAHAAA!! The house is GONE!

Can't say how excited we were to see the house reduced to rubble. Had enough of the lime green and peach walls, outdoors dunny, lime green cupboards, asbestos garage and wooden bathroom (not to mention yellow kitchen)!

And a special cheers to Anthony & his wife - what a bizarre way to meet our neighbours (through Google!) We'll catch up with you guys sometime to try and help you on your build - what an experience!


Apparently the big Tonka Toy in the pic above was delivered in the late afternoon (5:30 or so?) and had finished devouring the house in about 30 minutes! Wish we were there to see it, but I was told the other day it wouldn't start until tomorrow. Oh well - the sooner the better I say, as we're already a week overdue.



Still remaining to be done is the removal of the garage wooden skeleton, all the vegatation front and back, as well as the brick pavers at the back and the concrete "driveway" along the fenceline, so I expect more activity tomorrow and Monday. I bought Tina a new ipod nano, so maybe we'll even get some video of things happening (at very low resolution!)

As soon as the demo is fully finished, we have to get our CSC to book in the resurvey asap.

And a closing note, thanks to everyone who have left positive comments on our blog, saying how things have been helpful or informative. It takes quite a bit of effort to maintain a detailed blog, but we're glad to see it being of help to people - thanks for your feedback! If anyone would like any more specific information or details, leave a comment anywhere on the blog and if it's not an unreasonable request, we're quite happy to try and help you out.

Tim&Tina

Day 8 of demolition, and...

and... well, nothing, really. Bit dissappointing that nothing's been done for the last week, especially as our CSC had booked in the resurvey for Nov 20. I emailed the demo company and they reckon it'll be finished by Mon 23rd, so will organise the resurvey for after then.

Also, finally received our updated colour schedule (erm... 5 weeks or so after contract signing??) which we'll get onto signing tomorrow. Still no word on our tiles, which we selected a month ago!

But anyway, colours and tiles are relatively unimportant right now - we just want to get this old house pulled down!!

And one thing bugs me - when the underground power pit was installed, the tradies cut out a big square of concrete footpath for a little round powerpit cover, and backfilled it with some soil. Erm... shouldn't that be all concrete? And I won't be happy if I have to pay for it, because really they should've cut a round hole, for a round powerpit. Reminder to self: call Tru Energy and find out who's going to fix that!

T&T

Day 1 of demolition!

The demo company said they would start this week, but didn't say whether it would be Monday or Friday or any day in between. As it turns out, they did start on wrecking the house today!

From Tim & Tina's build: Metricon Nolan 41 in Melbourne

This is probably the first hint you shouldn't go beyond this fence. I did want to go in to check out what they'd done, but I'd rather live a few more years!

From Tim & Tina's build: Metricon Nolan 41 in Melbourne

And really, I think all they did today (in 34 degree heat!) was to pull down the roof and walls of the shed at the back, which is where all the asbestos was. Looks like they also pulled down a couple of downpipes and hacked away at the weatherboard around the windows too.

Anyway, I've sent an email to the demo guy to find out when they will finish, as M want to get a resurvey done prior to site start.

And I've finally managed to get a tradesman out (tomorrow, anyway) to give us a quote on pulling down a bit of the side fence, then replacing it.

Finally, called our lender this morning regarding paperwork we sent them 3 weeks ago. Apparently they requested further info in a letter we never received. After calling my broker, turns out the idiots at the bank had decided to change our postcode, meaning the letters they sent us, we never received! So settlement of the loan still hasn't occurred... and banks wonder why people don't like them much... thankfully we still have plenty of time to get the loan sorted out, but in many cases the builder will charge you a penalty for every week or day you delay site start. Could have been costly for us, and do you think the bank would reimburse any costs incurred as a result of their f#ckup? Not damn likely!

T&T

Building Permit Approved - 4 days in council, is that a record??

So things are really starting to happen now!

We received our "final" construction drawings last week, but had to correct a few things:
- ensuite had shower rail and rainfall head together, instead of at opposite ends of the double shower
- powder room door swung wrong way
- Light switch placed behind door
- some electrical items at wrong height
- added note that benchtop runs all the way to window splashback

and after 7 goes at getting it right, we finally signed off on the correct drawings yesterday!

We also received word that our building permit was approved - it only took 4 days! It helps we already did the legwork to get the building over easement approvals months ago, and that alone took 3 weeks for a rubber stamp! Our CSC says they use a private company to submit the approvals, and providing the siting and design is done in line with Rescode (which our house complies with) there is usually less than a week to approve the build.

We also received our plans in the mail yesterday with the energy assessment, and apparently we've got a 5.5 star energy rated house, which is nice to know! Didn't really design the house with energy rating in mind (even added a couple of windows on the west side, which is meant to be a no-no).

We're still waiting on our tile appointment results, about $2000 worth of feature tile upgrades. We were lucky enough to be able to use the original Metricon/Beaumont tile selection range instead of the reduced range brought in around August. We upgraded to a nice mosaic tile around the powder room mirror, the same mosaic in the ensuite shower niche, and also an aluminium stripe around the fully tiled ensuite. Will have to upload photos, but Tina has the tiles at her parent's place.

On other things related to the redevelopment:
- power pit being installed today - they say! We paid for this September 23 and was meant to be done within a month, but some delays here for whatever reason.
- Temporary fence for the demolition is being installed Friday. The annoying thing is that virtually all fencing companies will quote for a 6 month minimum, and they all want about $350 - all we need the fence for is 2 weeks or so!
- Demolition booked for week after Cup day - I hope they can start earlier, as we've got the fence up early, but it's all up to their schedule. Need to have a completion date before we can get a re-establishment survey completed.

And hopefully we'll be in the clear with a week to spare before penalty delay payments kick in!

Maybe the next time we post, it'll be with demolition pictures!

Old house being stripped - nearly done!

So, last Friday I had the evaporative cooling unit, pipes, remote control and vents all yanked out of the old house and stored in my parent's garage over the weekend. Was all installed today, so thankfully should have some relief for the upcoming summer heat!

Finished moving things out of the house yesterday too, thanks to my uncle and his delivery van! The only thing left in the house now is dust, asbestos, and a few squashed spiders!

Also made a few phone calls today to check on how everything is progressing for the pending demolition of the house.

1. Electricity has been fully disconnected - meter is gone and overhead power line cut off.
2. Gas: Called to check the service pipe has been disconnected - yep, not a problem!
3. Underground power pit: was paid for at the end of September, and the operator advised me the installation date is tomorrow, so I'm hoping to go by the house in the afternoon and see $1600 worth of electrical manhole in the pavement!
4. Beaumont Tiles - some thorough readers may remember a while ago when we first saw the M tile selection, it was HUGE, and then a month or two after, it was NOTHING (literally, from a selection of over 100 tiles, to less than 15!). I raised this point with our CSC<>

Finally, in the afternoon today Mendo sent us the revised copy of the preconstruction variations, which we'll sign off on tomorrow and email back to her.

I'm hoping that once the powerpit is installed, I'll organise some security fencing and give my demolition guy a call, and hopefully might even start on the demolition earlier than planned!

Stay tuned, for tomorrow afternoon hopefully we can post tile selection pics!

T&T

Final contracts - SIGNED! Now we're really on the way!

So we had our contract signing appointment this morning, it went quite smoothly, to be honest!

Of the big email we sent on the weekend, pretty much everything has been addressed.

• Cat 4 bricks to whole house - done (additional $1000 or so as they only quoted to sides & rear before)
• Changed to the biggest Clark double undermount sink (the Razor series, which for some reason doesn't work on their website properly) - done, and was cheaper by $100 than the ePure series sink!
  
• Chose different trilock door to internal access - done
• All the minor drafting errors - to be corrected by construction drawings
• Electrical plan - hopefully coming this week or next.

The only thing was that with our fancy cantilevered stairs, there's not much room under the stairs where I had planned to stick the TV splitter, patch panel, modem etc, so we've got rid of that idea and stuck everything up in the walk-in linen cupboard. Paid up our 5% deposit less the $4000 paid to this point.

Now all we have to do is send in our signed loan documents (we were meant to have them last week, but still nothing, so I'll have to give our broker another nudge to find out what's happening), and sort out the demolition. The evaporative cooling is being removed this Friday and hopefully installed in my parents house on Monday, and I think I can get all the remaining furniture out in one day, as there's not much left.

And as for the fine details, estimated days for completion is about 370, so we're hoping to be in by xmas 2010!

T&T

Disconnections; gas and electricity

Went to the house this morning, to meet someone about relocating the evaporative cooling unit from the old house to my parents house. Turns out he was pretty useless, a guy in a suit driving a sports car who didn't even bother to look up at the unit and quoted some ridiculous price.

Anyway, while I was there putting out the bins and moving some more junk, I had a look at the meter box - our electricity meter is gone!



However, looking at the front of the house, the main electricity line is still connected to overhead power (the right one line) and also the telstra phone line is still connected (left one). From what my demo contractor has told me, I don't need to worry about the phone line - I think they'll just unplug it and roll it back to the pole? Anyway, will probably call Telstra to double check in case they want to remove it for us. There's an underground telstra pit right in front of our house anyway, so the new house will have it underground (if we ever connect it - we haven't had a landline phone in 5 years!)



In addition, our gas meter has gone walkabout too! But if you look at the picture, there's still a pipe leading into the ground (the short straight one at the bottom of the photo) - I believe this is the "service line" connecting to the main gas line in the street, and this needs to be removed prior to demolition. But I think it's a different contractor who will do it (same with the overhead power line), so will allow a week or so before calling up the gas people to follow that up.


Called Telstra to find out what to do about their telephone line - they said that as it was already disconnected, then we can do what we like with the line during demolition... including just cutting it off and leaving it dangling! Sounds unusual to me, but hey - that's what they said! I also asked about the possibility of getting our neighbour's line moved to a different pole (as currently it stretches across the front of our property) but they said we can't request that :(

Still waiting on the underground power pit installation too, which I hope will be done in the next 1-2 weeks.

Also got an email back from our very prompt CSC regarding financing - apparently while he HIA contract states 14 days, it actually allows for 30 days to provide proof of finances, so we should be OK. All goes well, we should have the final contract emailed to us this Friday prior to signing on Tuesday!

T&T

HIA contracts vs Metricon contracts; what should we do?

Well, the time is rapidly approaching for our contract signing appointment, which is booked on Oct 13th.

There are a couple of minor issues we're dealing with tonight!

1) Finance. We've been approved for a Line of Credit to pay for half the house build; which we're still waiting on the final documents to sign. I'm wondering how long it'll take Heritage to turn around everything, as we need to provide proof of financing within 14 days of contract signing (ie by Oct 27th)? But in earlier communication, our CSC said all we had to do was provide a copy of loan preapproval at contract signing, with full approval due within 30 days of contract signing.

2) Demolition. We've booked it in for November 9-13, and the HIA contract states it needs to be done within 30 days of contract signing. I'm thinking it's cutting things a little fine here, just in case things don't go according to plan!

And in addition to all of this, M states that "the contract must be unconditional within 150 days of deposit", 150 days being November 24. What I imagine is that the HIA contract isn't unconditional until all finance is approved etc, which I imagine means we need to sign up by end of October?

Confusing! Anyone got any advice re financing, deadlines etc, please comment!

Anyway, my plan tomorrow is to;

1) Call Heritage regarding loan paperwork
2) Call Telstra regarding a telephone line that's still obviously physically connected to our house, despite an operator telling me last week that it had been disconnected
3) Call the demo contractor to check on dates (and in particular when will it be finished) and maybe try to book them in a bit earlier

And here's some pics for you, as we know pictures tell a thousand words! Here's the glass/stainless steel rangehood we changed to:

Here's a pic of the ceiling mounted rainfall showerhead that we've put in the ensuite shower, in addition to the rail showerhead. Expensive, but they're worth every penny to relax after a long day at work!


Phew!

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

Preliminary Contract & Variations Signed!

Ah, it's nice to feel that real progress is being made! We went to meet our fantastic CSC this afternoon to go through the Preliminary Contract and Variations, and now it's all signed and further deposit paid, we've settled all our structural changes.

Want to know what they were? These are the main ones...

• 2700mm ground floor ceilings, 2550 first floor ceilings and 2340 doors everywhere including a bunch of extra doors closing off the study, gallery, ensuite.
  
• Revised powder room layout: WC and vanity in one room.
  
• Revised laundry layout: big walk-in linen and moved door opening, bonus of now having a massive fridge recess for a fridge and 2 wine fridges :)
• Revised ensuite: swapped toilet & shower, now we have a huge 1650 shower! Got to remember to option in a rainfall showerhead too!
  
• Brickwork infills, 600mm eaves, fancy cantilevered staircase, horizontal feature window to wall of sitting room, window kitchen splashback, centred rumpus rear window, fridge water point, extra external taps, rear garage roller door

We've still got a lot of upgrades (I'm sure!) to spend more money on in the colour, electrical and tiles appointment, but this is going to be our dream home, so why not?

On other important issues, contacted Jemena/United Energy this morning regarding the power pit. Single phase is about $800 and triple phase $900, so we'll just go for the big bad boy up front. Plus maybe another $400 in longer cabling cost? Has anyone ever put in a power pit, as on the application form it says we need to name a Registered Electrical Contractor - I thought United Energy handled all of that?

On the demolition front, it's been about a week since our demo contractor (hopefully) put in the demo permit. Good news is we don't need a tree removal permit though. Hopefully this clears in the next 2-3 weeks.

We also submitted a "Building Over Easement" application last week, again another 2-3 weeks should see the result of that.

Looks like we'll need to start organising disconnections of gas, phone and electricity, as it's possible we may have a November start date!

And on the colours front... does Austral Hawthorn 50mm sound familiar to anyone?

I think this is from one of the Berwick display homes. The 50mm brick looks fantastic - very upmarket, and perfectly matches with flush white mortar. We'll match this to light first floor cladding and a feature render to the balcony & portico!

T&T