Day 125: Painters working on a public holiday!

We went by the house today with some brooms just to sweep it out a bit, heaps of wood shavings from the cable installations, and found the painters were there, hard at work since 7am! Apparently they had to do it today, because the scaffolding is due to be taken down tomorrow. Nice to see tradies hard at it, though I do feel a little sorry for them, working on a public holiday!

This pic was taken after the cladding was finished, but before the eaves had started - you can see the cutting in of the eave borders.

Will look a heap better when all the scaffolding is taken down tomorrow. I've got a feeling that sometime this week we'll get the lockup stage bill - it's the biggest one at 25% of contract price!

The cladding is painted Surfmist to match the Surfmist fascia. Also, the metal capping (that was over the bricks at the bottom of the cladding) has also been painted to match, which is nice. The eaves colour is something else, think it's White-On-White for a slight bit of contrast. The white window frames are slightly different to the Surfmist, and it looks good; real good! Happy we chose a two-tone gutter and fascia, the idea was that the gutter matches the roof tiles and the fascia matches the eaves, and it's worked out well. That's the trouble with choosing your colour selections months ahead of starting the actual build - it's taken 7-8 months to see our colours in real life!


Rear cladding and eaves also been finished off.. of course, some roof tiles still need to be replaced. Apparently the scaffolding comes down, and the roof tilers use some sort of harness system to make sure they don't fall off the roof. They'll need to replace heaps of tiles on the ground and first floor roofs, and much of the roof pointing as well; we don't want a single leak in our new house! Maybe the ground floor bricks will be cleaned sometime too, after the scaffolding is off.

We're wondering when things will be finished - everyone says that after lockup things take longer. If by some miracle we're done by Tina's birthday in mid August, that would be perfect (!!!) but that might be hoping for too much? The problem for us (and for many other people building houses) is that knowing your completion date as far ahead is possible is a real help, to organise rentals and other things. We're housesitting at various places until September, but if we know we'll be done August, September, October or whenever, we can arrange our interim accommodations a whole lot better. Of course, the builder isn't in direct control of trades, supplies etc, but so far our SS has done a great job co-ordinating all the work to get us to lockup - hopefully this continues smoothly, with good quality, and an earlier-than-expected completion date!

T&T

Day 119: External lockup... complete?! Electricals... complete?! Progress!

Someone managed to spend 4 hours at our house today - the time went quick! Both the carpenters and electricians were on site today from about 7am, with the electricians wrapping things up around 2, but the carpenters staying until 5.

Facade is complete! Cladding has been installed all around, and eaves complete with eave edging also installed.


At the back of the house, the cladding has also been installed on the first floor.


While I was there, our SS also pulled up, as she wanted to deliver a couple of bits of timber personally for the chippies so they could finish the external lockup today. Thanks to Josh & his team of carpenters for doing a great job on our house! Things are going well - now external works are pretty much complete, the weather shouldn't really hold up any further progress.

The immediate plans according to Monique;

• Data, TV and phone cabling hopefully done this week
• Plumbers back for lockup plumbing fitoff (bathtub connections etc) and to fix the ensuite showerhead which shold be on the ceiling, not on the wall
  
• Painter to start work on painting the eaves & cladding Thursday
• Scaffolding to come down next Tuesday
• Lockup inspection by Metricon's surveyors plus Metricon's Quality Assurance inspection then to be done next week
  
• Plaster to be delivered next Thursday
• Our independent inspection (which we're yet to organise) tentatively booked in for next Friday.

And as for longer term stuff... plaster should hopefully be hung by start of May, then lots of painting and fixing. Cabinets, kitchen etc. June to July should see final fixing with tiling, showers, plumbing fitoff... and hopefully final inspections sometime in August, with handover September - or maybe a bit earlier!

We're not all that frantic about the handover date - as long as things are done correctly and well, we're not in a huge rush to get in - but it is nice to hear we'll be in sooner rather than later!



Someone also came in to cement in the bathtubs. You can also see some metal flashing between the floor and bath hob, part of the waterproofing process in the wet areas.


And finally, heaps more wiring in the house with the sparkies running in all the cabling for ceiling light battens, downlights, wall lights, step lights etc. It was a lucky thing I had today off, as our sparkies consulted me a few times to check I was happy with downlight and powerpoint positioning. Because the heating ducts are installed first, downlights often aren't located exactly where they're drawn in the electrical plan. Only two sparkies did all the wiring, the boss & his apprentice, and he'd been working for Metricon (and not any other builders) for more than 20 years! Thanks Rob & Rod!

So external lockup is pretty much done, and internal lockup about 90% done. Good progress!

T&T

Day 118: Carpenters back on site, facade taking shape and more internal work!

The electricians didn't come back today; but we had great progress with the carpenters back onsite getting busy. First of all, the facade is really starting to take shape! Carpenters have almost finished installing the weatherboard cladding to the first floor facade - just the very top level to be added!

Of course, with the sun setting earlier and earlier everyday, this photo is a little dull - I didn't even go to the house today, as by the time I get there it's already pitch black, but Tina normally gets there just as the sun sets.

Up close, we can see more detail of the cladding. Vertical timber studs are fixed to the studs behind the weather wrap, the weatherboards are secret nailed to the studs, with the corners fixed with a vertical timber piece.

Eaves haven't been completed, only a little bit left to be done, and the weatherboards to the rear of the house haven't been started yet. Not much left for external lockup now!

And on the inside, the carpenters have fixed in the double cavity sliders to the study and ensuite. Photo below is the study doors.


They look FANTASTIC - but then again, we're biased :) The doors are 720mm wide and 2340mm high each, and while you can see the routing for each of the two panels at the moment, the doors will be painted Dulux White-On-White.



Also , the bathtub to the ensuite has been delivered and installed. Might have to obscure that window, or the neighbours will get a heart attack watching me in the tub. Not sure what that blue tube is for.

Also, the bathroom bathtub has been installed... sitting on some spare bricks.

According to MyMetricon, internal lockup is due to be completed tomorrow 20.4.10, and lockup completion is scheduled for 23.4.10. Need to make contact with Monique tomorrow, as we need to organise our independent lockup inspection... maybe as soon as next week?

T&T

Day 111: Lockup carpenters on site

Got a voicemail from Monique this morning for our weekly update. Apparently the lockup carpenters are working on the eaves today, and hopefully will start on the balcony floor and cladding for front & rear tomorrow!


A minor job, but an important one - the bipart sliding doors have been installed in the frame. They look great already, can't wait to get them stained!



Also a very elegant sign from Slattery & Acquroff stairs! Check out their website for some of the stair designs on offer, many pictures of stairs from Metricon display homes. The stairs we chose is the Contemporary 17 design - cantilevered with stainless steel balustrade and continuous handrail, which we will stain dark to match the front & rear doors.

At the rear of the house, some timber framing has been installed outside the wrapping to which the linea board (weatherboard cladding) will be fixed to. You can also see the eaves installed, and when they're painted they should match the Surfmist fascia well. Plenty more broken tiles on the roof... but with a lot more work to be done above the roof, all the broken ones will be replaced after work is complete.

This view looking up at the front shows how the eaves have been installed -the lockup carpenters fixed extra battens under the roof trusses, to which the eave plastering is fixed to. Only a few more sections of eaves to be installed tomorrow!

Finally, went back at night to see how the house looks - things are moving along well, and I think I'll spend my day off tomorrow hanging around the front, watching the carpenters work! Monique thinks the lockup stage should be done in a couple of weeks, right on time for the end of April.

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 72: Happy 100...no, 95th blog post! Ground floor roof, gutter & fascia installed

*edit* Apparently this is not blog entry #100 - there were some draft entries still hanging around. Anyway, we'll probably hit blog entry #100 by next week at this rate!

Missed a call from our SS this morning - apparently carpenters would be onsite today, and roof tiling to start tomorrow, and hopefully finished by next Tuesday! Tried to call her back, but no answer on her phone - need to organise a frame walkthrough end of next week.

This pic is standing in the backyard, looking at the corner of the home theatre. We're loving the two-tone combination of gutter & fascia still! You can see the eave width on the ground floor roof is standard, compared to extended eaves on the first floor roof. There's no protection to the ground floor roof - I guess it's not that far to fall!


This pic taken from Bed 4, looking out over the home theatre and to the backyard. There's meant to be roof access from Bed 3 to this ground floor roof area, but from the looks of where the roof trusses are, there's not going to be enough space for that - add that to the list of things to check on. No windows installed today, but at least all the remaining windows/doors are undercover on the ground floor so they won't sit out in the long weekend's rain that is predicted.

The chippies didn't install any tile trusses to the roof - I'm not sure if that's the chippies job or the tilers job. Forecast for tomorrow is for occasional showers and the odd thunderstorm, so we're hoping for clear skies over our little patch of land!

T&T

Day 71: Scaffolding & bracing removed, first floor windows 80% installed

Another glorious day, stuck indoors at work. But at least every hour at work is an hour closer to 5pm, when we can leave to go check on our house progress!

Today we found that the scaffolding for the roof trusses/gutters had been removed, just the railing to the roof top remains. Also, all the internal bracing has been removed, but it's left quite a few small holes in the first floor that you can see right through to the ground floor! Of course, it'll be covered up by carpet, but it's still a little offputting but what can you do?! Also, most of the upstairs windows have been installed.


This photo shows two fixed windows in the upstairs leisure area, and I'm standing where the garage will be looking up at them. From this angle you can also see how wide our extended eaves will be - all 600mm of them! There's also a black pipe hanging down the right side of the photo, I think this one will connect to a water tap to be installed behind the rear garage roller door.

This photo shows a little awning window that will be over the bathroom bathtub, then to the right of that a loop of black piping which is carrying hot/cold water to the mixer tap for the bathtub. The last window on the right is the Bed 3 window, which we relocated to the south facing wall (rather than the hot west facing wall). To comply with rescode, it has obscured glass up to about 1700mm, then clear glass in the opening awning part.

Windows still awaiting installation: Home theatre windows x2 (relocating one from the family room installed incorrectly), leisure area sliding window, master bedroom awning window and french doors. Plus waiting on installation of the front doorframe, rear bipart and internal access doorframes.

T&T

Metricon Liberty for sale; Mont Albert. Redevelopment for fun & profit!

Of particular interest to us is the building of a volume builder's house (eg Metricon, PD, Henley etc) in established suburbs. While their houses are more often seen in estates (simply because... well, that's where people tend to build more houses!) there are certainly plenty of redevelopments going on in established suburbs.

Just drive around any established suburb for half an hour and you can pretty much bank on seeing some vacant land with temp fence, or 3 townhouses going up where one house used to exist, or one huge new place being built up. For us, we chose to sell our old house, buy a crappy house on a good street, and redevelop the site with our dream house. Doing this ourselves saved literally hundreds of thousands compared to buying a new house that some else developed (for more info check the Dec 09 blog entries about the Nolan auction in Lawford St).

Of course, it's not an easy process if you've never redeveloped a property before - weve both learned a lot about the redevelopment process, that's for sure! And by doing this blog, hopefully giving some help to others who are going through the same process.

So anyway, getting back on topic, we like to see new houses by project builders go on sale, because we all get a chance to stickybeak, but also to see how other redevelop projects have gone.

We were driving down Whitehorse rd the other day, and there was a house that I always thought could be a Metricon design, as it looked very similar to some of the facades on the website. Yesterday, driving past, we saw it had a "For Sale" sign up - so of course, after a bit of investigating, we were able to find it on Domain!


A "double balcony" is an interesting look - not sure how often it'd be used on a busy road like Whitehorse Rd though! Bricks could be Austral Nougat, quite light. Nice big flat eaves complement the wide balconies too.


The kitchen displays the typical Metricon L-shaped island bench layout. Additional cupboards over the fridge recess, and banks of 2 pot drawers either side of the stand-alone 900mm cooker (be interesting to see whether it's Baumatic or something else). Looks like a cavity door to the butlers pantry too. I'm not sold on the floor tiles - the ones in Lawford St were much better (though probably much more expensive). The white stools with the backs look nice but maybe a little too high? Also note the microwave perched on the bench near the cooker; you can option a microwave recess in the island bench which hides the microwave nicely - we got it included in our promo deal, its a pretty standard inclusion now.

(And by the way, this house is a Liberty 42 floorplan)


Main bathroom. Actually, it's similar to our tile selection, except we went with a lighter grey floor tile. Get rid of tha upright cabinet taking up all the floor space and it'd look much better!


Rear; outdoor room with lots of decking. Look over the rear ground floor windows for standard infills; we upgraded to brick infills - I just don't like the look of the stuff over the windows!

Of course, there's no price provded on Domain. The important details are that it's in Mont Albert, on a huge block of about 1000m with right-of-way access to the backyard, and the house is maybe a couple of years old and (should be!) in great condition still. Though it's on busy Whitehorse Rd, opposite a bunch of fairly unattractive shops (no cafes or newsagents), I'd reckon this would go for at least $1.7m - what are your thoughts?

Anyway, I'll be at the first open for inspection next Saturday 13th and at the auction on Saturday 27th, maybe I'll see some of you there. Say "Hi" if you run into me - asian guy with glasses [yeah that narrows it down!], probably clutching a detailed set of construction plans for our Nolan. Renee & Tom I expect to run into you again! :). Details and more pictures are here on Domain

evie & ian: Welcome to our blog! What stage are you up to in construction of your house? We are planning to get an inspection done at preplaster and final handover. We got a slab invoice on Friday and I'll pay it on Monday.

Phew, what a massive blog entry, hope you guys like it! And by the way, there's a new feature under this post where you can click on a Reaction to give us some quick feedback. For example if this blog post was Helpful, click on the relevant button and we'll know to continue posts like this. Of course, if you want to leave a specific comment (which we will reply to in a following entry) click on the Comments link and type away there. The more feedback and comments we get, the more we feel our blog is useful to people!

T&T

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

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

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

Preliminary Contract received by email yesterday - a LONG post!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hi sklnv,

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

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

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

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

Hope this helps."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

T&T

Nolan structural options

So I've been doing a little bit of extra research on some of the main structural options that we've tentatively put into the quote. Apparently now that our quote has been submitted to M head office, we can't change them through our sales consultant anymore, but will be able to do final additions/subtractions at the preliminary contract stage.

Anyway, stepping back in time a little bit, this is basically how you price up a new house build -

"When you invest your initial $1,000 deposit, Metricon will fix the base price of your home for 150 days. The final cost of your home is the sum of:

1. the base price of the home type (including facade) you selected;
2. any applicable site costs to build on your land;
3. the cost of any variations approved to your home; and
4. your chosen options and home specification selections."

1) This is a pretty standard approach from the major project home builders. The base price has a certain set of standard inclusions - eg timber frame, roof tiles, walls (duh!), basic kitchen, bathroom, laundry etc, doors, garage door, windows etc.

2) Site costs are probably most new builders greatest fears, as there's a lot of uncertainties in site costs. In a perfect world, your block of land is ideal for building your selected house and site costs are $0 extra. For our block, or consultant has put in a figure of $30,000 provisional costs because of many factors, including:

• We're knocking down an established house, so the site will most likely be a "P" class
  
• We're in an established area, so access to the site is a bit harder
• We have an easement at the back of the property as most land sites do, but we have an additional easement along the side of the property which we'll probably need a whole bunch of piers to avoid encroaching upon

And in a comment from one reader of this blog, due to being in a flood prone area, their site costs are estimated at $45,000. Not knowing much about flood areas, I'd imagine there's some provision for having the habitable floor level above the flood risk level, plus much reinforcement/foundation for the slab?

3 & 4) I'm not sure what the difference is between variations and options/specifications, but both will cost your some money!

Lately I've been thinking about some of the structural options we've chosen, mainly reasearching Colorbond roofing and eaves.

Colorbond on our house is approx $3000 more for the Colorbond, $1,600 for the sarking underneath. While I love the zero maintenance aspect of colorbond, Tina likes tiles as I've mentioned in a previous post, and here is where we could save $4000 or so. We'll probably talk it over more later, but I'm happy to have tiles now, I think! Plus the new houses in our street (the Porter Davis design across the road, and the Ashford home 3 doors down) both have tiled roofs.



I've also mentioned big eaves to our sales consultant, and she's put in 600mm eaves all around the first floor as an upgrade, which is about $3,300 additional. The standard plan has 450mm eaves to the front half of the first floor. I've been researching lately, and since the front of the house is facing north, eaves to the north give the most benefit compared to eaves all around - so potentially this is another area we could save some money in.

By dropping the colorbond roof, and having the standard eaves, save $7,500 or so? Mmmm... decisions to be made! Comments anyone?

I'd also be quite interested to hear about other people's experience with timelines since leaving their deposit - eg how long did it take to hear back from M about colour and electrical appointments, and how long until the prelim contract appointment?

Thanks for reading!

Tim