The money value of time

There's been a few ads for knock down & rebuild in our local paper - here's a couple that we saved because (of course) it features a Nolan!


Can you spot the difference - December 2010 on the left, and February 2011 on the right?

Anyway, the basic difference comes down to the money value of time, or as most people know it - "time is money", and this is a great example of that in real life.

Would you rather have $100 today, or $100 in 10 years? Here's a hint - take it today. Inflation alone means $100 in 10 years won't buy you as much as $100 today, ignoring any other benefit from investing or growing the original $100 over 10 years.

Same thing applies to building a house. As time goes by, labour and material costs increase, let alone other associated costs to operating a business. One largely overlooked factor in leaving your initial $1000 deposit is that although it locks in the base price for your house, it only does so providing you start building within 150 days (or however many specified days according to your builder).

To be fair, it would be unreasonable to expect your $1000 deposit to hold the price of your house for 6, 12, 18, 24 months into the future, for all the reasons mentioned beforehand. How would you like it if your boss decided to commit to paying you your exact salary for the next 5 years?

If you're building, make sure the builder isn't dragging their heels in organising appointments for precontract, contract, colour appointments, tile appointments etc. Similarly, make sure you're as organised as possible - do your homework in picking colours and selections, know exactly how and where to make modifications and upgrades if you want, demolish any old house asap if you're rebuilding, know your block of land inside out and get to know people at council if you have to regarding building permits.

A special warning for those building in new estates, land developers are notoriously optimistic in having your land titled - delays of 6-12 months and beyond in titling is not uncommon, and you're the one who will have to foot the bill for delaying the builder - you can bet the developers have a good legal team writing their contracts to make sure they're not responsible for delay costs!

Anyway, getting back to that picture of the ads, in 2 months the price has changed $11,000. This doesn't mean that every 2 months the base price will keep increasing by that amount, typically prices hold for 4-6 months before increasing again. Factor in price increases when building - base prices change, upgrade prices change, upgrade categories change and so on.

More food for thought - let's say that extra $11,000 is paid back over 25 years at 6.45%. The extra interest alone on $11,000 is about $11,165 - so now instead of paying $11,000 more, it's cost you $22,165 more.

Unlike flat screen TVs and computers, building a house doesn't get cheaper year on year, exactly the opposite!

Hmm... I should really start writing a book about building new houses - any readers out there work for a publishing firm?

T&T

Nolan "On Display" video

Found this while surfing through random videos of people playing with their Jack Russells on youtube - the Nolan display home (I think it was in Point Cook?) featured on "On Display". We never got to see this house in the flesh as it closed down before we even throught about building a house, so it's interesting to check out the video. Some of the pics from this house are also used on the website.

However, we've got to say - normally the metricon display homes are beautifully decorated - however this one has some truly shocking colour schemes. Anyway, watch for yourself and make up your own mind!




Also had a lovely afternoon at a neighbour's house who invited a few of the residents on the street over for a Christmas afternoon tea. Was really good to meet some of our neighbours who we've not met before, and all of them have said what a good street it is - couldn't agree more!

T&T

Day 230: Late meetup with SS

Was on the way home when our SS called asking if we could catch up tonight - we ended up meeting at 6:30 - I guess site supervisors gotta work around the clock! Anyway, it was just to check whether we wanted some extra glass splashback in the kitchen - the standard design doesn't put any glass into the window reveal - despite the fact that all Metricon display homes with a window splashback and glass, have glass that go into the window reveal.



So here's a pic - taken on my new iPhone4 (without the useless LED flash going off, which makes everything look blue). The big glass piece on the side with the powerpoint hanging off it is standard, then there's another small glass piece which goes next to it (but only as high as the window reveal), and then there's "normally" plaster at the window reveal. Our SS thought it'd look better with the extra glass piece in both reveals for about $150.

Sounds reasonable, and we said so at the time - but now I recall then when we signed up with Metricon there was a promotion on for a glass splashback - we paid extra for the kitchen window, about $800 or so, we didn't get any credit back for the reduction in glass splashback (now taken up by the window) and now we pay a bit more, to get that little bit of glass back.... *sigh* ultimately it's not a huge amount of money, but given that we paid for the window, it would've been nice to have been given the glass that goes into the reveal.

Anyway, this certainly isn't a reflection on our SS - we've been quite lucky to have had a couple of very good site supervisors, who seem to be organised, efficient and proactive. Not long to go guys, keep it up!

We also had a quick look around the house - shelves are in, wardrobe fitout in the master bed is in (another item thrown in with the promotion, but it's actually quite a good size fitout with lots of shelves and drawers - happy!). Door handles are on, though the master bed door is meant to have a privacy lock which was put on the ensuite toilet instead - an easy fix, just swap the handles around. Errm.... mirror robe doors are on and look good too! Caulker has been through the house sealing up all the gaps. Still waiting on the rainfall showerhead in the ensuite shower and toilets - they'll both be put in sometime soon. The laundry splashback which is a little short will have another row of tiles added... happy about that too. Cement sheeting has been installed in the garage & portico, so they just need to be prepped and painted, then the garage door can go on. The house has also had a bit of a clean, and looks a million times better than when it's filthy!

Had a little talk about the light position in the sitting room and upstairs leisure - as a reminder, here's the sitting room lights and where they should be...


and the upstairs room lights, and where they should be too.


The thing about the electrical plan, is that it doesn't specify to the millimeter exactly where things should go. Now that allows for variability in the house construction process - for example, presence of studs or trusses etc, however I don't really think that's an excuse to stick a couple of lights obviously off-centre in the sitting room, or to put them a meter from the expected position upstairs. We did adjust the upstairs light position with our previous SS, and as to be expected not all changes or agreements are communicated to the following SS.

Still... all we want are our lights to be centred! Doesn't seem to be too much to ask. The electricians managed to do it everywhere else, but had a bit of a brainfreeze when doing the sitting room and upstairs.

And coming back to completion date, we had originally pencilled in Friday 20th August for a completion inspection, but might have to put it back to Tuesday 24th. It's very difficult for me to arrange a day off work, so let's hope this is the last adjustment of date. That said, we're not in a huge rush to get in our house - provided it's of a high quality finish (and YES that includes putting the lights in the centre of the room, not 40cm from a wall!!) we don't mind waiting another week, fortnight or month for the completion inspection. However it seems that head office is pushing for a completion this month, and providing quality doesn't suffer, we'll certainly be happy to have our house done!

Also need to organise carpeting - got a quote from Fowles flooring in Clayton for 40.5 lineal meters of carpet - enough for all upstairs and the home theatre room - for a dark grey carpet, so I'll head down there tomorrow to confirm everything and leave a deposit. Not sure if we'll have the carpet done before handover, but it won't be long after anyway, apparently there's a few days to have the carpet in stock, and about 2 weeks to book an installation day.

Finally for today, reminder to self: check the final invoice thoroughly! It'll be for the remaining 10% of contract value, plus our electrical upgrades, plus tile upgrades, minus an amount for an underground powerpit which we organised and paid for ourselves, and minus an unknown amount for "cranage provision". Also a credit amount for changing to a different toilet than originally selected, and a little more for that glass splashback extension.

Phew, gets complicated! Will also need to have a thorough re-read through the contract and see if there's any other provisional items we may be entitled to.

If anyone has had handover on their house, please comment and let us know what to look for, tips and tricks are most welcome!

T&T

Day 227: Toilet troubles... and completion inspection?

Got a call from our SS about lunchtime today - turns out the upgraded toilet we chose (a Caroma something-or-other) at Studio M back in Septebmer 2009 isn't available for months, and rather than using the portable toilet in our front yard, it would be better if we could choose an alternate toilet suite for the house.

Since I was working, I got Tina to do the hard work of picking a new toilet - she's picked the Raymor Espace wall-faced toilet suite. It should look something like this;


The other thing is that we now have a date for a completion inspection - Friday August 20th, exactly 2 weeks from today! Since we haven't been inside the house for a while it's hard to know what's been done - in a way, I'd be happy to not go back to the house until the completion inspection. That way, the next time we see it, it should look pretty magnificent and finished! Hope that date is locked in, I've already organised to take that day off work, which is quite a complicated thing to arrange. With any luck, any defects we may detect at that appointment will be minor, and won't be long after that we'll have the keys!

We also had a carpet measurer go through the house today, waiting on a quote for a carpet. Here's the thing with carpet - for example, Godfrey Hirst manufactures a range of carpet, but sells them to different retailers under different names, even though they're exactly the same. This prevents you from comparing prices across different retailers - a rather neat way to sidestep anticompetitive price fixing rules. Wonder if anyone from ACCC reads this blog? Anyway, hoping to hear back in the next few days about the carpet quote, we may be able to get it done before handover, if not, then very soon after.

We're wanting a dark grey carpet - found another blog which had exactly the right look in the first two pictures - though teamed with much whiter walls, to avoid the rather "closed-in" feel of too much darkness.


MyMetricon has had a very rare update recently - it's about as useful as a chocolate teapot most of the time, and the Certificate of Occupancy is due to be ordered next Friday... the 13th. Hope that's not a bad omen!

And non building related, going snowboarding tomorrow - normally we go for a week, but being so close to completion, a day trip will have to do. So if you're planning to go to Mt Buller tomorrow, stay at home instead - I hate queueing for ski lifts!

Not long to go until our house is done! Fingers crossed the final product is as perfect as we imagine it should be!

T&T

Day 221: Hooray - things are being fixed!

Tina was at the house yesterday and some more stuff was being done - of primary interest to me was hearing that the problems in the walk-in-linen data fitoff was getting fixed up already!


So, examining the picture above, the starserve enclosure has been moved nice & high to the right - excellent! Looking inside the enclosure, the incorrect unit has been removed, so I presume the correct one is being ordered in. Also the data returns now come through near the powerpoint, ready for termination.

Very happy to see how our SS has responded to our concerns so far & so fast - top marks to John & Metricon for that! Of course there's a few holes & gaps in the plaster to be patched up later on, but that's all part of normal completion anyway.

Other developments, the robe fitoffs should happen this coming week, as the shelving, chrome hanging rails & supports, and sliding doors have been delivered to all bedrooms.


We chose to upgrade to framed mirror doors in taller size (2340mm to match the doors), and deliberately stayed away from the frameless mirror doors - the frameless ones are just about impossible to slide open or close, since there's nothing to grab onto except for a little "handle" that's a few mm tall! Try before you buy, people. Plus having the mirrored doors look nice, they make the room appear much bigger & brighter, and are a relatively cheap upgrade per room to do. Another thing - if you get tall ceilings, get tall doors/robe doors too, to take advantage of the increase in ceiling height. We also raised the height of the shelves in the robes to 2000mm, so we can put in an additional clothes hanging rail later if we want to.

In the master bed, for the promotion we got two robe fitouts, which is basically some open shelves and a few drawers.


Not keen on the bow handles (actually I don't like anything curved or rounded!), will probably change them over to square handles later. In the future, may even take out all the robe fitout in the master bed and do one of those cool "designer" style robe fitouts, like you see in Howard's Storage World or Ikea :)

And our big cavity slider door has finally been installed. We added this in to separate the rear open plan area (kitchen, family, dining) from the front area, it's 1020x2340mm.

Been sitting in the family room for weeks, and it looks good - except for a little scar in the top right corner of the door which will need repairing later. Also there are gaps above all the cavity doors in the house, so we'll have to mention we want them closed up later on.

And today (Day 221) there were some fixing carpenters at the house most of the day, and they put in some beading around the outdoor room, and installed extra noggins/framing in the garage and portico, so that the plaster can be installed in both.



We've also got a site meeting with our SS and the construction manager on Tuesday morning, probably just to get an update on progress and to see how things are going for the final few stages of the build. Things are sooooo close to finishing, we can almost touch it! The house is looking better and better as all these little fitoffs are getting done. As we were leaving, my aunt and cousin drove past so we invited them in for a sneak peek - and they were very impressed with how everything looks so far too!

T&T

Weekend update

Balcony render was painted on Friday - it's Dulux Rameau. Of course, when we were at Studio M picking all these colours, you get a massive bit of cardboard about 5x7cm in order to estimate paint colours, and of course it looks kind of different in real life, painted over a whole balcony. We though it should be a lot darker than what it appears, but we'll see how it looks for a few months. Worst case scenario, if it's too light, we can paint over it later.


Finally, the laundry saga is finished. Had the correct 100mm chrome waste placed at the washing machine location and tiling complete around it.

Plus we also got a few carpet samples from our local carpet place - we asked for samples in greys, but one or two turned out a bit brown. And of course the photo doesn't represent anything like that the colours are in real life too. I'd like a darker grey, but Tina thinks it'd make the smaller bedrooms look even smaller... so no choice made yet. Went to a few other carpet places today too, but they seem to have 800 choices of brown/cream/tan/beige etc etc, and very few modern grey neutral colours. Back to the drawing board for this week.


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 76: The "Once In A Lifetime" hailstorm takes vengeance!

So the plan this long weekend was to first enjoy a game of golf yesterday at Tahatuan (Rowville). Of course, I can't even fit my golf clubs and cart into my car (which I'm trying to sell) so I borrow Mum's old Mitsubishi 4WD to get to golf.

Nice hot morning, but after lunch and by the 17th hole, the sky suddenly turned black - getting out my umbrella, hailstones the size of the golf balls we had been hitting all morning started pounding down - felt like I was being shot with paintball pellets!

So within minutes, the golf course had flooded, and a blanket of hailstones started piling up. What a disaster! Plus... only found out on the Sunday that Mum's car didn't fair well, with about 100 dints from hailstones on the bonnet and roof. Sorry mum! And with hundreds of cars/houses damaged, it'll take forever to get the repairs done... at least I didn't drive my car to golf; I think the dents would make it even harder to sell!

Anyway, our house was (of course) flooded on the ground floor, seeing as we didn't really have any walls or roof to speak of. Might go in tomorrow and use a broom to push out the water if it's still there. No pics worth putting up here.

stefan: yup, we were worried the tiles would be cracked, or that the piles of tiles on the roof would fall off! From ground level all seems OK, but will have to check closer once the weather makes it safe to get up on the first floor.

The one big score for the weekend was when Tina remembered there was a new "estate" just around the corner from my parents. I remember thinking it was a bit pricey when I checked out the first release about 4 years ago, I think asking $500k+ for the the smallest 500m blocks? Anyway. when we drove past there on the weekend, about 60% of the blocks had buildings on them, most still in construction but a few completed ones, and a great variety of styles. And... at least half a dozen Metricons going up! Here's one of them.

This one has almost the same facade we're getting (ours will also have the balcony rendered). Tina's figured out this particular house is a Riva with home theatre extension at the rear. Looking at the side of the house. you can see a narrow vertical window where the stairs are, plus on the ground floor a horizontal kitchen window splashback. This house also has standard eaves, about 450mm projection at the facade, but a few metres back on the side the eaves stop altogether. There's timber windows to the facade (and also strangely enough, the rear of the house), two-tone gutter & fascia, with downpipes matched to the gutter.This house must be close to completion, as there's an aerial on the roof and hot water system installed.

There's also a pretty big slope on this bit of land, with a 1m retaining wall on the left, and the garage is setdown at least a meter from the house slab - plus you can see three steps leading up to the portico. I'd imagine site costs would be a fair bit on this particular house - but then again, there's no flat blocks at all in this estate (we saw one house with a front door about 3m off the ground - I'd imagine a massive set of stairs would have to go up to that!). The bricks are similar to the Austral Hawthorn we've chosen, but not exactly the same. The light cladding is similar to the "Surfmist" matching colour we've got on our cladding.

Some of the other builders in this estate are Porter Davis, National Builders Group, Simonds and a few others that I can't remember. Will post up with other Metricon houses from this estate in later posts, if there's no work on our house being done! Should be quite a prestigious estate when it's completed, as the cheapest blocks were $500k and the house build costs at least $350k - not many single storey houses in this estate.

The weather outlook is pretty bleak for the next few days. MyMetricon has been updated and we're meant to be wrapped this week, and have the roof tiling completed tomorrow - both things that won't happen if the storms continue. sarahv: we've also seen some houses with roofs first, and other with bricks. I think it doesn't make much difference, as long as both are completed before plaster goes in!


T&T

Day 70: Scaffolding to roof, more trusses, roof tiles delivered

Turned up this morning around 10am, and a truck pulled up to deliver some more roof trusses for the rear of the house. No carpenters were onsite this morning, which was surprising to the roof truss delivery driver, who was told the carpenters would be onsite waiting for his delivery. Anyway, soon after another truck came along with some blokes to install protective scaffolding to the roof.


Came back in the afternoon, and was surprised to see a whole bunch of roof tiles had been delivered already!


Bristile Charcoal Grey in "Shake" profile - almost flat, with cool lines running through them. Can't really see much as they're all tied up on pallets, but the colour is great - a good match for the Woodland Grey gutters. But before these can be installed, still need extra truss things across the roof for the tiles to lay on. We're hoping a bit of tiling might even start before the weekend, though the forecast is for some rain on Friday. The sooner these tiles are on, the sooner the first floor is protected from rain, dust, and bird crap! These tiles are also "colour through", instead of just having colour on the surface. The great thing about these tiles is that they won't need repainting, as when the surface wears down, they'll still be the same colour!

Finally, received an unexpected call from our colour consultant this morning - we optioned in a bank of 3 narrow drawers to the ensuite vanity, and we also chose a wide square handle for all wet area cabinets; but they're too wide for the drawers. Just need to give our OK to switch to a narrower handle, and that should be fine. Apparently the cabinets are being made already (!!!) even though we're not even finished frame stage yet. A good sign, I think!

We've also been tracking a Laguna being built in Blackburn - they started a week before us, but we've overtaken them now as they were only getting their roof installed today -woohoo! Just in time too, as the RBA has increased the cash rate 25 basis points to 4% today, meaning everyone's mortgages go up a notch...

T&T

Day 44: Termite protection (?) installed, and delivery of wood

Today, the skies finally parted to allow a bit of rain to wash away yesterday's humidity. Apparently a bit of rain is good for the slab, so we're glad to see it today! We didn't expect much to be done for a few days, but arriving at the site after work, seems like people had already been at it today!


The sight that greeted us first was a few big piles of wood. Probably not enough for the ground floor frame, but certainly enough to get started! A couple of sheets of yellowtongue for the first floor as well.



Also, our slab now has a nice blue skirt on. Tina dug a bit of paper out of the bin, and apparently it's a delivery slip for termite guard protection, we think... the rain kind of ruined the paper. It runs the perimeter of the main slab, but not around the portico of outer garage wall (no timber there, just brick piers).

So far, we're quite happy at how things are progressing - lots of work has been done since the xmas/new years shutdown period! Certainly didn't expect anything done today - the problem is, now we might get disappointed if we turn up at the site and nothing has been done! MyMetricon was also updated today - a huge "Completed" bar across the slab stage of construction!

Of course that means Metricon will send me a big invoice for 20%, but who said you could get a house built for free?

R&T: Hope your selection process is going along well too... I'm still hunting on Domain for Metricon houses for sale/inspection, as we still like to stickybeak at other builder's houses. Especially looking at "real people's" houses, not just the over-the-top display home. We saw a Porter Davis house in Bundoora for sale, just off Grimshaw St, and it was done pretty nicely! Also; have a drive all along Shannon St, as you'll see another Nolan being built with Hawthorn bricks, in case you haven't seen it already!

JT: Welcome to the blog! Donvale is a beautiful area, we had a house in Mitcham that we sold to buy our redevelopment site. You'd probably drive past it a bit, it's next to United Petrol on Mitcham Rd, and the new owners are converting it to an osteopath clinic - here's a photo we took of it the other day.



It's kind of a pity that they're converting it as it was a great house to live in (except only 2 windows in the house could open because the previous owner to us had painted them shut!).

I wouldn't worry too much about the "420 days" in your contract - from what we've seen of Metricon in our area they generally get the double storeys done in 7-8 months, and single storey in about 4. Also, we don't have Gena anymore, it's Joanne now :) We liked the Hampton plan, but because it wasn't on display we went with the Nolan :) I think you're right, in that the Sycamore has replaced the Hampton, but to be honest I think the Hampton is better, mainly because of the shared bathroom between Bed 2/3 - I think that's more practical than an ensuite to all bedrooms!

As for the kitchen, I just had a look at our onstruction drawings - there's definitely a cupboard door to the island bench (I think about $150 or so?) and the pot drawers appear to have a smaller top drawer and bigger bottom 2 drawers (I think we paid $880 to get a dozen pot drawers), though there are no specific dimensions to reflect that. Unfortunately I think it depends on the salesperson/consultant you get on the day as to what kind of options you can choose to get.

One thing about building - I think it makes my working days go faster, as I can't wait to be out the door and go to our land to see what's been done!

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!!

Facades, and prewiring a new house

No work on the site today - we got a call from our old CSC Mendo yesterday saying the work won't recommence until end of next week at earliest, but hoping to have a slab down by end of January.

We've managed to spy a few Metricon designs in the inner suburbs while driving around, but of course you're much more likely to see builder's homes in the estates. While we were at Keysborough, spotted two double storey Metricon houses with the Manor facade. So... let's talk facades and street appeal for a moment!


This one has a kind of red/orange brick, perhaps something like Austral Cotham? Note that with Manor/Traditional style facades, you typically don't get much (or anything) in the way of eaves - mainly because these style of houses are better without eaves. For example, Georgian style houses look the best with flat roofs or very low pitch setback rooflines.

Also note the facade window treatments for this facade, square-ish mouldings in a contrasting colour to the brickwork. Columns to the portico - well, it's a matter of taste whether you like them or not - I think they suit the facade quite well. The minimal balcony is probably sufficient - we've got a much larger balcony at the front of the house that I doubt we'll ever use - I mean, I don't really want to be lounging out there in full view of every passerby!

I like the mailbox - some kind of stone treatment; though it looks a bit modern compared to the house.

We elected to have 600mm eaves for our Chateau facade, as it looks much better with eaves, and also provides better shading in summer. Of course, any options will cost you, and the big eaves were around $3000.

Another Manor facade, looks like the same kind of floorplan going by the facade windows. Take a look at this mailbox too - not as modern as the other one, blends in much better with the house I think. Now this house is sited on a corner block - some people like corner blocks, others don't. Personally, I'm not keen on corners, because the side of the house is too exposed - people walking/driving by can see into the house, unless you keep the blinds/curtains closed all the time, which is a bit of a pity. However, if there's a good view to be had from this side of the house, maybe a tradeoff worth making. From an investment perspective - undeveloped corner blocks are good potential targets for subdivision and redevelopment to dual occupancy.

As with most builders, Metricon offer a variety of facades. Cheapest ones are usually Traditional and/or Manor, with the most expensive being the Vogue/Contemporary (and I'm not sure whether the facade options include render or not - make sure to make your own enquiries about that!). Also, be aware that different facades will also change the size of your house! Our Nolan 41 is 41 squares (inc garage) with the traditional facade, but once we changed to the Chateau facade, it becomes around 43sq because the master bedroom has an extended retreat area and wider balcony. I guess this goes some way to justifying the increased price of the facade (something like $8-10k more than standard?)

In addition, our facade has a feature cladding to the first floor master bedroom (instead of brickwork). We love the look of this, but be aware that it will require more maintenance than brick - something like repainting every 10 years or so, which isn't a big deal to us. Also, we've heard reports that the cladding doesn't insulate quite as well as brick (no real surprise there) so potentially cooler in winter, warmer in summer. Of course, this area will still have R2 wall insulation all around.

And finally, this will (probably) be the last post for about 10 days as we're off to NZ tomorrow morning, to try and take a little holiday before the building starts. sarahV: hope they finish your house soon, and Renee&Tom, good luck with your selections! Go in with an open mind and open chequebook :)

T&T

Hurry up and wait, rinse, repeat.

Here's a story that anyone who's built a home with a project builder will be familiar with.

1) Make a choice on an item... for example, choose what brick you want.
2) Builder will then write up a contract item, getting the item wrong, wrong price, wrong size, wrong location etc etc. This may take a day, or a month.
3) Buyer emails builder telling them in plain english the exact steps needed to fix the problem.
4) Builder fixes issue described in item #2 above (if you're lucky) and then manages to screw up at least one other thing. Again, this may take a day, or a month.
5) Go to step 3.

And if you're lucky, you get to the point where maybe 80% of things are right, and you're so sick of fixing up things that you let a few little things slide because it's simply not worth your time anymore to try and get it corrected.

And then you get to where we are now - we made a certain selection on roof tiles back at our colour appointment (12th September!) and now that virtually everything is signed off, locked in and approved, we get told that someone forgot to price in the "upgraded" roof tiles (yup, they're an upgrade, now...) and we're asked to approve another few thousand $$$ into the contract. But of course, the variation emailed to us is... wrong.... *sigh*... and so of course there is zero progress on the site, still.

Delay on colour selections.. too many things to list = builder's error sooo many times over.
Delay on tile selections... contract drawn wrong = builder's error.
Delay on site start (builder meant to be on site within 30 days of building permit approval, which was November 27)...

Doubt anything will get done this year. Having seen how fast other builders are getting homes done (check out all the build blogs on homeone forums) I'd have to say M are the sloooowest by far. No fault of our wonderful CSC or the fast drafting department, but a pretty miserable performance by the colour team.

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

Studio M Colour Selections done today! Ooops, added another $20k of options....

This morning was the long awaited (long dreaded?) colour appointment at Studio M. For those who haven't built a house, this is one of the appointments you should prepare for THOROUGHLY prior! We've probably put in about 6 weeks of constant evenings and weekends looking through building blogs, driving to visit brick and tile suppliers, driving through suburbs and display villages trying to pick out colours that we like.

Externally, you pick everything from roof tiles, bricks, mortar, cladding render, front doors etc. inside, from the colour of your ceiling to the kickboards in the kitchen - and let's not forget door handles, taps, edges of cabinets etc etc.

Fortunately, I think because of the preparation, we were at our appointment for "only" 4 hours! Anyway, I've spent a bit of time trying to summarise all our selections so that we have a record of what we picked - as we won't see the finished result until the end of 2010!

There are still a few unfinished items that we're awaiting quotes on, including our kitchen cabinetry redesign, a custom 2340x1020 door, prices on upgrading a few other things not in the system.

The final outcome of today? About another $18-20,000 added onto the bottom line of our house...

Anyway, please enjoy the following images, and if you have any questions please post a comment and we'll try and answer as best as possible!

T&T

A weekend of colour preparation!

Yesterday we went to Austral bricks display centre in Lynbrook - much nicer by miles than the Boral brick display in scoresby (which we saw last weekend)! Firstly it was all indoors, with a great setup of all the bricks. Extremely helpful salespeople, and a guy wandering around who took us out to the brick displays, gave us a couple of example bricks to take home, and they gave a list of where we could see pretty much every brick on a house job. Highly recommended to visit!

I fell in love with the Zinc brick - a semi glazed brick, which looks absolutely stunning when the light hits it! It's a Category 8 brick, about the top range of brick options, so it'll probably be hellishly expensive for the whole house - we'll have to wait & see! Here's a pic of it used in the display centre entrance!



And a pic of a house in Mt Waverly built with the Zinc brick - this house looked amazing with the northerly light hitting the bricks just right! Hopefully we can use this house as a bit of inspiration - zinc bricks, lighter cladding and garage door, and maybe some kind of feature render.



This morning we went back to Studio M for our second preparation visit, gathering up as many colour selection samples as we could. We picked up a few!

We're thinking very broadly right now; but maybe...

Outside: Austral Zinc bricks (depending on co$$$$$t!), light cladding/garage door, dark roof tiles, guttering, fascia and downpipes.

Kitchen: White lower cupboards (Polar White?) with Osprey ceasarstone, and darker grey overhead cupboards.

Ensuite/Bath/powder room: large grey square floor tiles, white (whitish?) wall tiles, and undecided on vanities.

We also stopped by the Imperial Balwyn display home today - I'd like to see whether we can get two banks of pot drawers either side of the oven like in their display kitchen, but not holding my breath! Here it is;

The option we have so far is an 800mm bank of 3 pot drawers either side of the oven with a 400mm cupboard. This looks like a double bank of 3 pot drawers, 600mm width each. Maybe possible, maybe not.

Anyway, I'm trying to render my sketchup model with our choices to see what it'll look like, and hopefully by our colour appointment in mid September we can just walk in, hand over a completed list, and have relatively little stressful on-the-spot decision making to do!

Cheers to our "partner-in-crime" Michelle who's just done her colour appointment - we're planning to discuss our structural changes at prelim and hoping to get all the changes we want; including the shower/toilet ensuite swap etc ec :)

T & T

Update: Received quote on house with options!

Well, I'm rather surprised at Ainslee's efficiency so far - Ainslee is the sales rep from Lyndhurst we spoke to the other day.

As promised, she emailed up a 6 page PDF file with the major options and changes that we've requested from Sunday - not bad after seeing her just 1 day ago!

Most of the options listed are relatively easy to interpret and understand. The quote was quite comprehensive and also included tiles to downstairs ($8500), carpets to upstairs ($8500), evaporative cooling ($5000) and a few other things which we will probably do after completion. In summary, from a base price of $284k, the estimate quote is about $350k. Again, this is just for the house, no site costs or external things like driveways or decking.

Other options we're unsure of - the $600 wine rack above the fridge, the $5500 modification to ensuite, and $2500 "KDHW" upgrade to the stairs. We'll take a day or two to review things and get back to Ainslee about that. Tina isn't sure of the larger ceilings downstairs and upstairs, but I'm 100% insistent on getting them - high ceilings win bigtime! The cost to add about 15cm to the ground and first floor is about $3000, and for taller doors another $2000 or so. Still, this is definitely one thing you must do during construction - pretty difficult to add higher ceilings after completion!

I did decide to eliminate the $1300 riser for the home theatre room though - I think I can knock it up myself with about $100 of particleboard and some tools which Tina's dad has. The plan is to further customise the HT room after handover, with suede effect paint, sparkly lighty things and floor lights, motorised curtain and .... well, I can dream, right? :)

One big thing I have an issue with is with the large island bench. The standard layout is an "L-shape" bench, with a promo upgrade to stone tops. How can the large island be $8500 more?? Sure, it's a little larger, but not all that much larger...

Anyway, today at lunch, went to the bank to draw up a couple of bank cheques - one huge one and one small one. Tina's job tomorrow is to drop them off at the lawyers in the morning and settlement is due to occur at 1:30. I've booked off 2-3pm so I can go to the agents to pick up the keys - how exciting!

Will try to update tomorrow with post-settlement pics of the ol' house, though it'll be dark and electricity isn't due to be connected until Wednesday.

Tim