Another house 3D; full facade!

Spent some time last night working on an external model of the house so it'll help us choose brick and cladding colour etc.

One thing we're not sure on is the roof: concrete tiles, terracotta, or colorbond? There's so much info out there about relative lifespan, maintenance, weight etc, but ultimately Tina says she doesn't like the look of COlorbond as it looks like an old shed - can't really argue with that! I do like the fact that they're low maintenance, but then again the tiles on my parents house have been there 25 odd years without any problems, really. And tiles probably do look nicer, though that's again a matter of opinion.... plus we'd say about $4000 by sticking with tiles instead of paying more for colorbond.

Anyway, here's a pic of my work so far!



The colours aren't finalised, but we're thinking of a darker grey brick, lighter cladding, render and garage door, dark grey aluminium window frames, and maybe a lighter roof? Again, depends on whether we go with tiles or colorbond. Comments welcome!


We did see AInslee again on SUnday to review the quote - prices for houses has gone up about $3000, and the promo package is up $1000, so we're about $4000 better off for leaving the deposit last month - nice! Though some muckups in the quoting system now that the old promo has gone - we still get all the promo inclusions but it doesn't show up individually in our quote which is a little annoying but not a big deal. We've taken out some big ticket items saving a substantial $22,000 or so (!!) but added a few little things back in. Ultimately we need to know site costs when the soil test is done, as that will affect the overall budget.

Visualisation tools - sketchup to create house model!, and eventually render a full 3D facade!

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So I was thinking, why doesn't M have software that lets you visualise changes to your house, like layout options, colours, facades, floor coverings etc? I started using MVH (an Australian free program) but it was slow and terrible unintuitive, though if you've got no knowledge of CAD software it might be good for you. Anyway, that's free so google "MVH" and you'll find it for a trial.

Many more people recommend Google Sketchup, and while the learning curve is fairly steep, I have a pretty good background in vector design packages so it took half an hour to get to grips.

Anyway, after a couple of nights work, here's the progress so far:



I've seperated the two floors so you can see the room flow and layout, and haven't yet added a roof in. But certainly this is a brilliant tool to visual everything, especially when we come to picking facade/external colours. It's slightly less useful for interior colours as the textures aren't quite right and I don't think there's photo-texturing, but we'll see. You can of course rotate in 3D, change all colours, add/remove furniture and a whole lot more. I've got one problem where I've made a sloping wall in the laundry by accident and can't figure out how to straighten it, but it's a minor issue.

There's also some animation options which I'll research once the layout is fully finalised, and maybe I'll upload it to youtube too! I think I'm finding the 3D modelling more exciting than choosing tile colours right now - which reminds me, later today we'll head out to Beaumont Tiles Oakleigh to see what the standard and upgrade tiles look like.

Site survey and revised quote!

Got a call from a surveying company today, wondering if they could go and measure up our land.. today - as they had a cancellation! I said sure, why not - the sooner this is done, hopefully the sooner Metricon get the details and can do a geosite presentation for us. I don't think the soil test has been done yet though, so the great uncertainty with site costs is still in existence.

Also received a revised quote (V4) for our house - it's getting very close to ideal now I think, just a few subtractions to make and a few additions as usual. There's a lot of things that we've asked for, that really should be chosen/decided at the colour and electrical appointments, but otherwise Ainslee's doing a good job of reading through our extensive pages of requests and trying to fulfil them all. Hopefully we can tee up a time to see her this weekend to make a few minor changes, then we can more on from there!

It looks like we'll go with the standard L-shaped island bench, but with 40mm stone tops instead of the 20mm stone tops that were in the promotion - a little more expensive of course, but it does look nice! Probably will add it to the powder room too, and maybe even the bathroom if we feel generous :)

What else do we need to look at? There's some confusion in the door department, but I think this will get sorted at the colour appointment, as there's a door choosing section involved there. Might remove the $1200 flyscreen to the bi-part door - seems a little much, and I reckon it's doable later for less (hope i'm not wrong!). Will also remove the built-in cupboards to the sitting room - I'm not sure whether the quote was for what I was thinking of, but $7000 seems a little steep too! Other things like electrical details we'll leave for the electrical appointment.

And for those looking for some musical inspiration, for some reason I'm getting a lot of Australian hip-hop on, with the new Hilltop Hoods album excellent (of course!) and Pegz getting some rotation, as well as Birds of Tokyo; Day One a great set getting some replay value. Been nursing a sore back/neck/arms all day - I think the days of bothering to renovate the old house are over, it's not worth breaking my body over!

Renovation 101 - making the ol' estate livable! Wall prep and paint, carpets removed

We met with a Metricon finance consultant yesterday for an interesting discussion, will post about that maybe tomorrow.

As for today, we were going to go to Beaumont Tiles to check out available selections for the bathrooms/ensuite/laundry, but they're shut on Sundays. So over the last few nights we've been cleaning the old place up, as it looks like we'll be living in it for at least 6 months before demolishing and rebuilding.

Here's a pic before of the "master" bedroom - inch thick 50 year old carpets full of bacteria, insects, dirt, skin etc, walls with wallpaper removed but the wallpaper paste NOT cleaned away, so an inch-thich layer of grime, greasy curtains, a rather elaborate original light fitting which doesn't work because the electrics in the room are shot, sash windows which lift a few inches then fall down (I suspect a broken cord or two), a built-in timber wardrobe the last owner banged up himself ....



Here's a little pic after, having used sugar soap on the walls and a light bit of sanding to remove patches, and some leftover paint Tina's dad had lying around. It's actually quite satisfying to see what a major improvement can be had for essentially $0 and a couple of hours manual labour! I've also pulled up the carpet, underlay, removed the carpet nail tracks and given the floor a wash, but there's heaps of paint spots from the original painting done when the house was built 50 years ago. Makes you wonder at how tastes change - back then, these lovely hardwood floors were considered ugly, to be covered up by orange twirl carpet! Later on today I've got a belt-sander which I'll use to remove all the original paint spots, then either just leave it how it is, or maybe throw down some timber stain or wax.



This begs the obvious question, why aren't we doing this properly - hiring a floor sander for 3 passes, then putting down a polyurethane coat? All comes down to the usual 2 suspects - time and money. We don't have any time during the week to do this work as we're at our day jobs, and we're madly saving every cent for the new house!

Mortgages - what do you have to ask? And some of Tim's thinkings about money!

We had a meeting tonight with Karen from Vision Mortgage Solutions. Sat down for an hour or so to ask some basic questions about the ideal kind of mortgage for us.

Basically, we're planning to pay off the mortgage as soon as possible - I guess that's what most people aim to do; especially when you think that on a $250,000 mortgage over 30 years at about 5.2%, you actually pay back around $490,000. That means on a loan of $250,000, you pay $240,000 extra in interest charges! Guess you can't blame the banks for wanting to make a few bucks, and when it comes to your house, you don't really have many other options.

But think about it - if you bought a car for $50,000, would you want to pay $90,000 for it? Car loans are higher than mortgage loans, but for a shorter term - a key difference is that the basic asset (the car itself) is going to be worth much less than the total sum you pay for it including loan interest. For example, the $50,000 car you pay $75,000 to own is then worth $30,000, to pluck a few figures out of thin air! The motto? Buy the cheapest, crappiest car to drive that your ego can afford, unless you're able to get some other sucker to pay at least some of it for you (for example, salary sacrifice if you're a standard wage slave, or buy a McLaren F1 if you're sitting at the top of the big table!). Then again I shouldn't really give advice to buy a crappy car, as last year I imported a Skyline GTR which I drive maybe one a week or fortnight or so... more on that later!

Right, kind of off-topic.. but basically the reason why we accept mortgages on houses is that at least the basic asset should appreciate (go up) in value. For example, you might buy a house for $300,000, pay it off for a few years, then sell it for $400,000 capital gains free 3 years later(if you've lived in the house - investors need to cough up more tax to our wonderfully non-corrupt government bodies *cough*). Sounds great, doesn't it? You've had a roof over your heads, and made $100,00 tax free! To make the maths simple, let's say you've made 30% gain over 3 years. But let's say you'd put that $300,000 into an alternative asset - let's say you bought shares. And you held it for 3 lucky years, and sold your shares for $600,000 3 years later. That's 100% gain (less capital gains tax at your applicable rate)!

Why the higher rate of return? Basically, the universal rule is that the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Safe as banks? 4% return, only just ahead of inflation. Safe as houses? 6% or so - but your house might not go up in value, or your wonderful tenants might trash the place. Safe as shares? -100%, +100%, +500% or more?

Not quite sure how I got started on all that, but anyway I meant to talk construction mortages. Those of you building a new house on land you own or have paid off already, need to ask the right questions!

Builders generally want staged payments, roughly 20% at each stage of construction. Ensure your lender acknowledges this, and find out what additional fees (if any) apply. For example, you may need to pay $100 every stage payment in various fees and inspection appointment costs.

Lenders may also require a complete signed contract and building approval prior to approving the loan. With Metricon, you pay a 5% deposit at contract signing, before building approval is applied for. Where does that 5% come from, if the lender won't approve the loan without building approval? Ask the right questions!

On that theme, on the unlikely (but not impossible) event that you've paid 5% for contracts and building approval is not immediately forthcoming, what does that mean for any loan you plan to apply for?

What if you have an existing loan for the house/land - is it worth talking to your existing lender about a redevelopment loan or extension of your existing mortgage, or moving to an entirely new lender? Beware of break fees - money you pay, to avoid paying more money to a bad lender.

Anyway, Karen was great to talk to, and she came out in the evening to our place to talk things through. We're going to talk to a couple of other brokers to see what they have to say, but if anyone wants Karen's number, add a private comment with your email address and I'll get back to you. In fact, if there's any random things you want to ask, just comment below and I'll try to get back to you or blog about it. I've already contacted one reader who's also building a Nolan (Hi Newt!) and hopefully we'll discuss more specifics about Nolans as time goes by.

Tim