Final draft plans

Merry Xmas

Just want to say Merry Xmas everyone, I hope all those who read this had a wonderful day.

Our plans are still on track, we have the contract sitting on our coffee table, our house plans have gone from white to yellow and as soon as everyone gets back after Xmas it will go to council. We have engaged a demolition company for the end of February, 2010 should be a big year.

Ouuuccch!!! Footing costs

As I have stated, we live in Pasadena and I always knew that the soil in my area was below average, what I did not know was how far below average it was. Our quote had provisioned $18000 for footings, we were told that this should be very close to the mark, oh how wrong he was. 

Our soil is type E soil, E for EXTREME, E for expensive, E for Eeeek. I was expecting $22000 or $25000 absolutely worst case, the costing came in at $32000, I felt physically sick. Our sales guy said he should be able to reduced a little but we are still going to over estimate by 14k.

However, after getting over the shock horror of it we looked at our original budget and our target build budget of 230k might not get blown by that much, if at all. I had allowed a 10k misc. figure in there and now that seems to be working in our favour.

First draft plans

We received our 1st. set of plans yesterday, these give you a house plan view, elevation views and a plan view of the suggested position of the house on your block. On the same day I recieved another quote for our house demolition, this time I am happy. 
Our first quote came in on target but there were a few exclusions that bothered me, the house has a deep 6 asbestos roof and asbestos on the walls. On top of this and quite literally on top is another potential layer of asbestos in the form of artificial brick facade, this I will be getting tested. The first quote completly missed this and the roof. So now I'm happy that the demo guy has a full and complete understanding of what he is in for, no hidden costs.

So next is to contact the sales guy with our modest changes and hopefully by then we will have the soil report back and a footing cost. A final price is not to far away.

Soil sampling being done today

Walked out the front door this morning and spied a drilling rig parked on the road with a dude ready to drill holes. Wooo Hooo things are starting.

Deposit Paid

Paid the deposit yesterday, then had a good chat with the bank again. We have preliminary approval and things are looking good. Soil tests will probably happen late next week or the week after. Had to give my tenant the bad news today, I had been keeping him in the loop since we made the decision to build but there is never a good moment to hand an eviction notice to someone.

Signed up tonight

We took the plunge. Our friendly sales guy came around tonight, we sorted through some of the bigger last minute stuff and snap. Next stop will be be firming all the quotes we half halfheartedly approached over the last few months.

From a dream state to "ok I'm awake now"

Hello I would like to introduce ourselves and give you some insight to the journey of building our new house. We live in the suburb of Pasadena in Adelaide, we are both in our 40'ies and this is our first build. Over the last few months (6 at least) my wife and I have been doing the usual dream sessions , walking through some beautiful new display homes and slowly getting our heads around the enormity of our pending decision.

We were put onto Homestead Homes through a good friend who had built two houses with them in the past so we thought we would have a look at their designs. We liked what we saw and at first we had settled on the Grayson, we enlarged the living area and moved the laundry away from the main bedroom. We went through the initial quote process and with our desire to have a large out door living the price ended up blowing the budget beyond repair. From this base we revisited a design we saw earlier on which was the Lamont. After another cut and paste session we came up with a layout that suited both of us and our budget.
So that basically has covered the last 6 months of what I'm sure is what most if not all people go through. We will be doing our Lamont build on a 890sq/m block which currently has a old fibro place on it, the site in the Mitcham Council area. We had our first serious sit down discussion with the sales guy the other night and so far things are looking very good. We will be signing very soon, once we have sorted out a few more details and more quotes for demolition.