Day 98: Scaffolding erected, auction results from the weekend.

Yesterday someone came to clean out the rubbish cage, but today I turned up around noon just in time to catch the crew who had put up the scaffolding this morning; apparently it took them about 3 hours.

Makes it a bit harder to get into the house now! Not sure if much else will be done this week, we'll see how it goes. Also went by Balwyn to pick up the keys for a 3 month housesit there, we'll move in this Good Friday.

We also had a busy weekend, following a bunch of auctions in our area that were of interest! One of Melbourne's busiest auction weekends ever with over 1000 auctions. First one was the Metricon Liberty in Mont Albert North, on Whitehorse Rd.


Not a big turnout, maybe 20 people and passed in at $1.6m, but later had a sold sign up, final price undisclosed, but probably between $1.6 to $1.7m.


Next was a neighbour's house about 7 houses up the street. This is a 40sq AV Jennings house on a big block of land built about 3 years ago. Had a nice modern floorplan, with a great double storey void over the formal rooms and massive 2nd/3rd bedrooms. We love the facade on this house, was one of the things that attracted us to this street, and also played a part in us choosing the Chateau design with weatherboard cladding on the first floor, like this house. Sold after auction for over $1.25m.

Finally, this tired old weatherboard on 750m a few streets away from us, on a busier road, facing east/west. Sold for $890,500! We'll probably see 2 - 3 townhouses there by the end of next year. Pretty glad we bought our redevelopment house when we did - if we bought it today, we'd be paying another $150-200k for it!

T&T

Day 48: Base stage paid, and frame started!

Paid the base stage invoice today - can you believe CBA wanted $28 to do an electronic transfer to ANZ? Anyway, ended up doing it through netbanking for free - stuff you, banks and your fees!

Got a call from Tina on the way home from work, and she sounded excited - for good reason too, as she was already walking around our ground floor frame, which was halfway done!


Not bad work by our tradies, suffering in 34 degree mad heat - I'll bring them a carton of beer tomorrow I think! Also spoke to our fantastic neighbours, who said the chippies started about 7, and worked through to about 3, solid effort that!

The next picture shows our sitting room.




Now that the frame is starting to go up, it's so much easier to get an idea of the size of rooms. My perceptions so far is that the sitting room and laundry seem a little smaller than I thought they would be, and the study is bigger than I thought (good!). Powder room seems about right - because we made some modifications to the floorplans, our laundry/powder room is different to standard Nolan.


In the previous picture, from bottom to top: Powder room (with one pipe for sink waste), then laundry (two pipes), then the two little areas are for walk-in-linen and walk-in-pantry. Then the kitchen (with 2 pipes for sink) and dining room, then outdoor room!

This next picture shows my room in the house - the home theatre/man cave. Tina can have pretty much every other room, but I've got big plans for this room! Though one thing we need to check with our SS tomorrow is the door heights - we have 2340mm doors everywhere, and I think the door frame to the HT is too low. It's basically the same height as the bipart doors to the rear (right) of the HT, which is only about 2000mm high. Should be an easy fix at frame stage to rectify.


The next pic is a view of family room from kitchen area. HT room is to the right, and to the left is entry hallway. We'll put our plasma TV on the left, so you can see it from the kitchen and meals area.


Finally, welcome to all the new readers to the blog - seems to be quite a few fellow metricon builders out there, some ahead of us and some just starting out. Please feel free to ask questions, and to comment about things that we should be checking (in particular, we'll have to get around to organising an inspection at preplaster in a few weeks/months?)

Ben&Dana: Hi, welcome to our blog. Jealous that you're at lockup already! We looked at a Stanton display home, somewhere in the northern suburbs I think - we like how the informal area of the house (kitchen, meals, family) takes up the entire back half of the ground floor! We did get our building permit mid October, but due to delays in demolition, we really didn't started until mid January, though the site scrape was Dec 22nd.

R&T: I think you said you had a bit of a fall on your block? Sure, a big slab will cost more $$$, but it'll stop your house sliding off onto someone else's land :) Should get nice views too! I think I've found another Nolan being built in Mitcham, will blog about it if I'm right!

wushukid: Hi! What design are you building, and what area? It's interesting to find readers of this blog are building all over Victoria, and NSW as well :)

Today's frame start has been sooo exciting - I just wish I could stand the heat to stay a bit longer - had to go home after a few minutes to change!

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

Preliminary Contract meeting results

After the last post, I was feeling kind of tired trying to keep track of all the different things that needed attention. Anyway, today was a pretty good day for tying up loose ends!

We met with our CSC at M head office from 9:30-12 today. We went through the siting, modifications for rescode (setback and window obscuring, mostly) options list (where we deleted a few options and added/modified a couple) and the results of the site survey and soil test. Apparently we had an 800mm fall over the block, not that it looks like that much at all!




Here's an interesting tidbit: You can put the garage wall right on the boundary line, 150mm from the boundary, or 1m or more away. You can't put your garage wall anywhere between 15cm and 1m from the boundary! Keep that in mind if you're planning a rebuild... again, this led to our issue of fencing - still need to organise to remove the fence (temporarily) while the garage wall is being built. Will get stuck into that sometime this week.

Anyway, we left feeling that we're almost at the complete level (which is where we should be by now), just a couple of floorplan modifications to be approved and costed. The laundry modification and ensuite shower/toilet swap shold be drawn up and costed by Friday. The redesigned powder room, where the WC and sink are all enclosed, was only $220, including 2 narrow windows to replace the normal single window.

The thing is, there's a chance we might even start building this year! If all goes smoothly, we may accept the preliminary contract in a week or so, have the final one signed by early October, (organise the demolition end October) and start as soon as November! Didn't think we'd even be able to get ready by early next year - apparently M can get the building permit within a week of final contract; depending on whether everything is unconditional by then (eg finance approved, demo permit approved, easement permission given etc).

After lunch, we went to Whitehorse council, where we had another good meeting with a building regulations officer who helped us on a few issues:

• Building (near) the easement should be fine - our issues are a slight bit of excavation over the easement side, and the eaves overhanging. Submitting a $125 bit of paper should get us approval for our needs - yay!
• Demolition - well, I got one quote back via email today for $11k, which is about what we expected. Still waiting on a few more quotes. But on this note, we have to pay for an Asset Protection Permit - but if we get it in our name, will cover the demo, build, and the extended crossover.
• Crossover - we definitely want a wider driveway, as the 50yr old entry is barely wide enough for a small car. We;ll apply for the largest possible - about 3m across. More expense, naturally - $150 application fee, $500 bond, then the price of the actual crossover itself which I've been told is north of $2500.

We then had an hour or two free to drop by Beaumont Tiles in Oakleigh, where we got a bit of a shock! When we went before, everything with a silver sticker was a standard tile, and gold tiles were an upgrade. Now it's "blue dot" tiles are standard - and there's not very many!! Maybe 6-7 wall tiles, and 7-8 floor tiles. Not happy Jan! This new policy only started 3 days ago - we're hoping they just haven't finished putting all the blue dots out, because right now there's very little to choose from in the standard range! Anyone thinking of building with M, go check it out for yourselves!

Hoping to hear back from our CSC on Friday regarding updated floorplan and revised pricing. Right now it's madness making lists of things to do (which I'm mostly doing) and picking colours (which I'm leaving to T to sort out).

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