End of Week 3

Well, at the end of the 3rd week, and we have half our slab down. so now we can really get idea for how it sits on the block. looking at this photo it looks like the house completely fills the block, but there is actually a good 6.5 meters of garden to the rear and 2.5 meters to the right hand side of the house. Although it was extremely muddy, we enjoyed this visit, as its the first time we have seen any actual 'building'. The only real surprise so far is how hight the house seems to be sitting at the rear of the block (we are going to have a good view into the row of gardens behind us.....we may have to think about some creative planting.) its really quite hard to visualise the finished effect from the builders site drawings. On the plus side, its not our garden thats too over-looked!

As i am writing this a few days late, i can confirm that the slab was completed on Monday, and i believe they are still aiming to have the frame completed by next weekend. Its amazing how quickly they can get the frames up. So fingers crossed by our next visit we should have a 'skeleton house'. it will be good to walk through and show the kids where everything is going to be.

Week 3 - Midweek

 We went up to the site on Wednesday to see if the slab had been poured, unfortunately it turns out it was rescheduled for Friday. So 2 more days to wait - which isnt too bad really! however the site was very definately ready for the slab.  Someone had spraypainted  on to the ground exactly where the edge of the slab was going to be so it was quite interesting to see where everything was going to go (after months of guessing)

 The picture above clearly shows the edge of the garage, the porch and the alfresco. it all looks so small, but ive been reliably informed that everyone thinks that until the walls go up ;-)

As well as discovering the slab is due to be poured tomorrow, i also discovered that the frame is due to be complete by the end  of next week, which is really exciting! I think the kids (and to a certain extent the adults) will find it easier to visualise once we have a frame with defined rooms in the space. Its so exciting!

Week 2

Week 2, it was a tense week, watching the weather. luckily it was a relatively dry week - hopefully we are in for a run of dry winter days ;-)

 I was over in doreen on Friday, to enrol my daughter at what will be her new school so we popped in to see the site. we were both excited to see a tractor on site busily digging trenches. It was also apparent that there were a lot of pipes going in. There does seems to be a lot of pipes, however as i have no idea how many pipes houses normally have, i assume everything is correct. We also now have a portaloo on site, so we match all the neighbours sites, AND its officially a building site!

We returned to the site on sunday, so that the rest of the family could see the progress. This time there were even more pipes popping up all over the place - i'm now even more lost, i have no idea what they are all for, nonetheless it is good to see them all in place. The kids enjoyed the fact that the fencing had been left open, so that they could climb in the big piles of mud!!!

We are all excited about next week  - pouring the slab. Apparently the slab is due to be poured on wednesday (weather permitting) luckily the forecast is suggesting it should be another relatively dry week - fingers crossed!

End of week 1

Its the end of the first week, and typically, it was tipping down with rain when we got the the site. However we do now have a large house shaped area of flat mud. Its not very impressive yet, but exciting to see it taking shape We visited the site again on Sunday, nothing had changed of course, but We could see about 40 kangaroos from the front of the site! Very exciting for a girl from England! I hope we'll be lucky enough to keep seeing them once we move in.

Week 1

We got to site this Tuesday, and by Wednesday evening (when I went to check on the site) we had the start of a retaining wall and a strange barrier ' thing' at the front of the site, apparently to stop surface water running off the site and polluting the waterways (or something like that). It was an amazing feeling to see things starting to happen though.( I did take a photo, but I am having trouble uploading it ) hopefully by Saturday morning, when I'm next going to check on things, there will be even more progress :-)

I have been told by our construction administrator ( who like everyone else at urbanedge homes is being great answering all my questions, and keeping me informed) that next week we will be getting the piers, and the underground drainage pipes, with our conrete slab due to be poured the following Wednesday! I'm now anxiously watching the weather forecast, as I really feel like getting the slab down will be a massive thrill, and start to make everything feel 'real'. I'm also excited to see the slab down so I can get an idea of what our garden could look like!

So far..........

A quick introduction ;-) We started looking at building a house in Doreen over 3 years ago. This week we finally 'got to site'.

In the last 3 years we have visited nearly every display home in the northern suburbs. Eventually we decided we wanted to go with a small/medium sized builder, as they seem to offer a slightly more personal touch to the whole process. After studying many builders house plans, prices, and inclusions list we eventually went with the 'Jell' house plan from Urbanedge Homes. We chose this home design as it offered all the space we needed/wanted for our family, and it would also leave us a decent ( although still small) garden. We also liked that the alfresco was on the side of the house, so should be less overlooked - hopefully!

 

We initially wanted to go with a house and land package, but as we weren't 100% sure about any of the packages we discussed with the sales guy, so we started looking for land separately. The sales guy was very helpful in advising us of what we needed to look for, he even offered to drive out and check various blocks that we were considering. We eventually settled on a block of land that we were very happy with. So we were now able to purchase the land and move forward with our quote from urbanedge.

Urban edge booked us in for our colour selection, our electrical, and our tender meetings. The colour selection was something I was very anxious about, however the colour consultant was great, and we left the appointment feeling quite confident that our house was going to look just how we wanted. Best of all their category 1 range was in general very good, so we didnt end up having to upgrade too many items.. The tender appointment was next, that didn't go so smoothly as no one had noticed our bushfire rating had been recorded as 'extreme'. This fire rating would have meant $20-30k in additional upgrades, which we weren't happy about. Urbanedge homes however worked hard alongside us to resolve this issue, and 2 weeks later we were able to return for the second tender signing (without the extra upgrades - thankfully). Finally we had our electrical appointment ( I still don't quite understand why it is done in this order, as I would have preferred these costs to have been included in our tender, but that's just me! Still it felt great when we had all this stuff sorted and signed.

Next we had to work with our pre-site administrator to get building permits sorted. We met a few extra costs here, and the council don't have the easiest system in place to process everything effectively (surprising when you consider how many house get build in the whittlesea region each year.) however after a couple of weeks the building permits were granted, and we were ready to get our site start booked in! This week we 'got to site' and its an amazing feeling after 3 years! And this is where this blog starts, a week by week record of our build. I've never done a blog before, so not only will this be my first home build, it will also be my first blog......