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

xmas roundup - hope everyone's xmas day was great!

First of all, thanks to everyone who left comments on the previous site start post - it's grea to get feedback every now and then! Sarah V - your Newhaven looks brilliant! Somehow it looks like it's 2.5 storeys high? Renee: your block of land has a fantastic view; love it! Sirona; keep up the massive photofest on your blog, I'm checking it every time it's updated - will leave you a comment about your meter box soon too. And Anonymous - keep checking this blog, will try to keep it as updated and informative as possible.

Basically, there won't be much stuff going on for anyone's build for 2-3 weeks, so I'll go through a whole bunch of photos and random things of interest relevant/irrelevant to house building and post them on this blog. If anyone has any questions of items they want to know more about, now is an ideal time to submit them as we'll have some free time to blog about it!

So, yesterday (xmas) was the usual massive foodfest - huge lunch with my family, and huge dinner with Tina's family. We had lunch at my uncle's place - he's a custom builder, and I wanted him to build our house. Unfortuantely he only operates at the very expensive end of house building - it would have been at least double Metricon's price for one of his houses! Anyway, this particular house he's living in now was built for a diplomat who pulled out at a very late stage, so he's moved in himself. It's a fully rendered neoclassical masterpiece in the prestigious heart of Camberwell, formal sitting/dining/(ballroom?) 4 car underground garage (with some kind of stone treatment on the garage floor costing $50,000!) with butlers/maid quarters, 65+sq of living, fully tiled Travertine marble wet areas, 10' ceilings, Emporite doors, all the bells and whistles you could imagine, and my favourite room - a state of the art home theatre, which fully fitted out costs about as much as our house base price! Only took a couple of pics. This house is for private sale by expressions of interest around $5m.


Living room; parquetry floors, gas fire, Clipsal C-bus, built in audio, timber bifolds, 15' raised ceiling with feature windows.


Outdoor area. Home theatre room in a separate wing to the right of photo.

Today, Ill drop Tina off at Doncaster Shoppo for a spot of post-xmas purchasing insanity, while I'll go to our land - I gave our neighbour our bins to use while we're building, but I think he's left one out for too long, and we'll get fined if the council spots it - so it needs to be moved.

Not much planned for the coming week: beach if the weather is good, upgrade my laptop to Windows 7 if the weather's not good, go see Avatar 3D in melb Imax sometime, and research home theatre things. I've ordered a bunch of parts from the USA for the home theatre wiring etc, but they've been stuffing me around a little so will have to make sure that it all arrived by end of January.

T&T

BEST xmas present EVER? Site STARTED!

So, I was in a shopping centre hating every second of shopping for xmas presents for staff (I like giving people stuff, I just hate having to queue with screaming bogan parents and children to buy it) when I got a call from Gena. Of course, being buried alive in Northlands meant I had no phone reception, so the call dropped out. Anyway, checking my voicemail, Gena said that we had a site start date... well, actually, it had already started - site start was TODAY 22.12.09!

Of course, this was totally unexpected news (3 days before xmas for a site start?) so we went by the site to check things out.

Here's our new temp fence (glad it's up before the long xmas break!) and our metricon sign.



And it's not just a fence - we've actually had a site scrape today as well!


Unbelievable! Wish Gena had called us yesterday, as Tina could've gone to watch the scrape being done. Anyway, on the left you can see the scrape is lower for the garage stepdown alongside the fence. There's also temp fencing along the side boundary too. At the back of the scrape, there's about 30-40cm worth of fill.

For some reason I can't transfer photos from my iPhone to my laptop, but once that's sorted out I'll get more photos done.

Funny thing was, we were saying that having our hosue start before xmas would be the ideal present, but it wasn't going to happen... but it did! Probably the best thing about site start is that now the clock is officially ticking - the "370" days in the build contract start NOW, so theoretically handover should occur prior to December 27, 2010, or M will need to start paying damages - not that $250/week is anything significant given the cost of the whole build process.

Now we're wondering when M will get their guys back on site after xmas - we're going away for 9-10 days, so we're hoping not to miss too much of slab preparation, plus being overseas may make paying for the slab a little difficult.

Best xmas present so far, that's for sure! Hope all you reading this blog are having a good one too!

T&T

Christmas shutdown, Nolan sold in Box Hill North result

Well, the Metricon office is shut for a few weeks over xmas - we were hoping to get a call before the shutdown to tell us of a site start date, but no such luck. Nevermind, it'll all happen when it happens. I think the worst part about building is the anxiety and feeling that someone should be working on your house at all times - gotta learn to relax, but it's not easy!

Anyway, I was meant to work on Saturday but took the day off so I could go see the auction of the Metricon Nolan in Lawford St at 11am. Quite a good crowd, maybe 100 people or so? As Deb pointed out on a comment on the prior blog entry, this particular Nolan had a modified open rumpus room - I think this was done because the normal sitting room was converted to a guest bedroom. And the while porcelain floor tiles looked great - very upmarket and modern, but would get pretty filthy once a family starts living in the house! But certainly a good look for a house for sale.

The auction started off with a vendor bid at 1.1m (quoted range was 1.1 to 1.2m). 3 bidders took the house to the reserve price of $1.25m, with a new bidder entering in and fighting to win the house at $1.43m. Nice result for the sellers! I did take a few photos on my iphone, but a dodgy USB cable is stopping me transfering pictures to the blog. Makes me wonder whether we should get a valuation on our Nolan once it's complete, but after spending so much time just planning this build, I think we'll keep this house for a good many years before moving on! Had enough of moving house over the last few years!

And funnily enough, I met up with a reader of our blog after the auction, who was standing next to me, who are building the Nolan in Doreen (sorry, I totally can't remember your name right now!) Nice to meet you!

Our current housesit in Preston is going well - the dog was a bit anxious around us at first, but now she's quite friendly. The cat - well, cats just need to be fed, right? And so far, it doesn't appear as any plants have died - yet. We may have lined up another housesit in Rosanna for next week after this one finishes, looking after cats & rats - we'll see how that little party turns out! Anyone else needing a housesitter in Melbourne, contact us!

And since I couldn't attach any photos of the Nolan, here's a picture of something a little different; my car is for sale, to help fund the house build of course!


It's a beauty - a 1997 Nissan Skyline R33 GTR Vspec series 3. It's a fairly rare enthusiasts' car, and if you're after a true Japanese supercar (or know someone who might) please leave your contact details as a comment!

T&T

Spoke to construction CSC, spotted 2 Metricon homes today

Missed a call from Gena, our construction CSC last night, so I called her back this morning. Seems nice enough over the phone, I just hope she's as organised as Mendo is!

With any luck our file is in estimating right now, and if we're super lucky she'll get back in touch with us end of this week to let us know a site start date - yaaaay!

*edit* Just checked My Metricon, and while the "estimating" box isn't checked yet, we have a site supervisor named - Brian! How exciting!

Today, had a temp job in St Kilda to get to, and I think I spotted 2 Metricon homes - one was on Riversdale rd near Highfield rd, and one on Whitehorse Rd, between Union Rd and Station St. But I could be wrong, was driving past them pretty fast but they looked awfully familiar!

There's also a messaive Metricon home going up on Doncaster rd, between the greythorn shops and balwyn road - looks huuuuge! Would be worth a fortune in the Balwyn North area too, certainly well into 7 figures.

Finally, we're moving into a house in Preston tonight for 2 weeks of housesitting. We're hoping to line up more housesitting gigs while our house is being built (we've probably got a month in Vermont housesitting in August 2010). If anyone is going away in Melbourne, and would like their house (and pets!) minded by two responsible, mature professionals, please let us know!

T&T