Telephone line issue, mostly resolved

OK - so the phone line hanging over our block in the last blog post... well, it's more or less on the way to being resolved. If anyone else ends up getting this problem, call up Telstra, and ask to be put through to "Network Integrity". An inspector will come look at the problem (actually quite quickly in our case, within a week of reporting the problem) and let you know how to fix the problem and how much $$$ it will cost.

Hoping to have that phone line moved by xmas - as soon as it's gone I'll email back our CSC, and hopefully we'll get a site start date pretty soon after. Definitely won't be until late Jan at this rate, but no big deal.

Way too many other things to organise and keep track of - doing a couple of weeks housesitting starting next week (if anyone needs a housesitter in Melbourne, contact us!), then off to NZ for a few days in January to sort out as well.

T&T

OK readers, please help us out by commenting on this picture!

So this is the phone line in question - you can kind of see it being strung across our land here. It goes from an underground Telstra pit in front of our land, up a pole, then across to our neighbours house.

I'm still waiting on Telstra/subcontractor to call me back - anywhere from 3-7 working days, just to get a phone call, on relocating the phone line.

Either we shift it to hang from another pole, or organise an underground telephone connection. It's right at the front of our block, at least 3.5, 4m up in the air? Would it really get in the way of construction? mmmmmm.... I'm hoping it wouldn't, just frustrated late at night having to deal with all these things which delay our construction.

Anyway, I'm hoping some bright blog reader out there can suggest any ways to speed up the removal/relocation of this phone line lead-in wire. Annoying thing!

T&T

Site start? Erm... not just yet

Went by the site yesterday to clean up a pile of dirt on the nature strip that Metricon told me must be gone prior to site start - even though United Energy are meant to come back soon for a review and cleanup, I figured I'd break out a shovel and clean it up myself. Also stuck in a few star pickets and rope just to cordon off the front, and stuck up a sign with our lot number and details for the construction crew.



Also received a letter from our CSC saying the contract was now (finally) unconditional as of December 3rd! But of course, I then received a phone call on Friday 4th, saying that because of one little issue, construction still can't start!

Turns out that our neighbour has a phone line running from the phone pole in front of our site, and because it runs across our block it's an OH&S issue. Meh! Anyway, contacted Telstra straight away and hopefully it'l be fixed... but probably not in time to get a pre Xmas site start. Oh well - it will allow the soil to settle a few more weeks before slab goes down, anyway. With any luck, we might be told of a site start date before xmas, but no site start before xmas.

One thing we're grateful for are great neighbours that we've met - spoke to our next door neighbour today about the phone line thing, to get consent for a contractor to go into her front yard sometime, and she was quite happy to allow that - thanks heaps Tina & Craig!

Also went today for the open inspection of the Nolan that is going for auction in a few weeks (see prior blog post). Also took my parents to check it out. And to "anonymous" who was thinking this house for sale is a Liberty - nope, definitely a Nolan (real estate agent confirms it).

The main thing was that it was nice to see a Nolan without all the display home upgrades - usually the display home Nolan has an ensuite to every bedroom, but we were able to see the original 3-way upstairs bathroom for a change - and it works really well! In our opinion, not worth the extra $20,000 to put an ensuite in every bedroom.

Main notes about this house:

• Sitting room converted to guest bedroom
• Study has double cavity doors (as we have optioned on our Nolan too) but with cutout niche in the front wall; a little odd.
• Rumpus room and dining/outdoor rooms swapped in position, done in this particular Nolan to take advantage of the NW orientation.
• Beautiful floor tiles on ground floor - but white grout would get kind of dirty once a family gets in there to live!
• Upstairs had plain vinyl sliding doors, upgraded to taller size. I still think mirrored robe doors look better.
• Kitchen had upgraded vinyl wrap doors - very nice! Plus upgraded handles, same as what we have selected for cupboards.
• Laundry entrance was kept standard, off the kitchen, with lots of extra storage.
• Semi-recessed basins all around with ceasarstone drop edge benchtops.
• Austral Hawthorn bricks, with off white rolled mortar - our brick selection, but we chose flush mortar. Looks beautiful in real life up close, so glad we upgraded to this brick!
  

Didn't take any photos inside, but scanned in the floorplan from the brochure - enjoy!


Also had a comment by "anonymous" asking about our floorplan modifications - if you search through this blog, you should be able to find our modified floorplan layout.

However, we did some thinking, and looking through our Metricon catalogues and books, it seems that you won't get offered floorplan modifications if you go straight to contract, and perhaps also if you choose a house & land package.

Why not - that's my main question? I mean, it's not like the house is already built and they have to knock down walls or anything. I guess it's to minimise paperwork and administration and time spent in drafting.

My advice to anonymous: If you want changes to your floorplan, take it up with your sales consultant, if you don't get anywhere with them, ask to speak to another sales consultant - don't forget, they get paid based on sales made! But then again, check again to see whether you must/need floorplan modifications. If you want extensive changes, maybe you should select another builder or floorplan that suits you better. Our main reason for choosing the Nolan was that it needed very little changes (and honestly, we could build the house as standard and be very happy with it). We also looked at Henley & PD, but some of their floorplans just didn't work for us, or ones we liked couldn't fit our narrow building area, or had poor orientation for our block. Liked the double storey Carlisle designs a lot (good standard inclusions too), but they flat out refuse to build in our area - oh well, one sale lost for them!

Our main "nonstandard" floorplan changes were:

• Modified laundry - entrance swapped to be near powder room
• Modified powder room - WC and basin in one enclosed room
• Modified ensuite - shower and WC swapped position
• Extra doors: To study, rumpus, ensuite, hallway.
  

Really, not major changes, all able to be done with internal wall changes only, no structural changes. Good luck anonymous!

T&T

OMG... there's "our house" for sale a few streets away!

Tina came across a crazy interesting find on Domain tonight - there's a brand new house for sale, only 3-4 mins from our site that appears to be our Nolan but with the outdoor room and rumpus room position swapped at the rear!


This is the Manor facade. Looks fine (not particularly to our taste), but for this particular style (Neoclassical? Georgian?)I think it looks better if the first floor extends above the garage. A good safe choice if you're building to sell, as it's conservative yet timeless. As it is, it looks like the house is half the width it should be! Could be our bricks though (Austral Hawthorn), and the front landscaping is quite nice. Check out the retaining wall running along the left side of the boundary under the existing fenceline - pretty significant slope, and you can see how much elevated the house to the left is as well!


This photo showing the entry certainly gives us the impression it's a Nolan floorplan! Very wide, grand entry makes a terrific first impression and feeling of spaciousness - one of the things we liked about the Nolan. Also, the staircase is offset/hidden to one side with a 90 degree turn - good feng shui. The standard study is visible to the right, with a feature cutout niche. Because we've got double cavity doors to the study, the niche is deleted so we can close off the study in case it gets messy. The other change we made to our Nolan was for a custom made wide cavity door that will close off the rear half of the house - in the photo above, you can see from the front door right to the back door - bad feng shui. Plus, being able to close off the rear of the house is better for climate control, and also stopping any cooking odours from reaching everywhere! The gloss white floor tiles are a nice elegant touch though.

From the looks of it, this was someone's redevelopment project - Google Earth still shows the old house on the block, and this house looks like it was built to sell rather than owner occupied.



Here's where things get interesting - see the room with the lamp? In the standard Nolan design this is the rumpus room, and it would be located on the opposite side of the hosue to where the kitchen is. Looks like the rumpus and the dining/outdoor room has been swapped. Since there's no first floor overhead, probably a relatively easy swap to do in preplanning.

Nice furniture too - probably hired in to make the house look good to sell (does it remind you of a typical display home?) Anyway, we'll see it in more detail this Saturday afternoon at the open for inspection! Want to go see it too? Check it out here - http://www.domain.com.au/Public/PropertyDetails.aspx?adid=2008116306

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