Thursday 12 July 2012

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......

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