I had a phone message left this afternoon. Apparently it was about the soil testing that needs to be done on our property. I couldn’t understand the callers name, and he said he was from “something unintelligible” Consulting Engineers and wanted to know if anyone would be home tomorrow morning so they could come and start field works. When I called back he didn’t answer with a company name and told me his client was someone I had never heard of. When I questioned this he changed his mind and it was actually soil testing he wanted to do and said maybe my builder had sub-contracted the job to someone else.Apart from the fact that I am definitely not going to let complete strangers into my yard if I can’t verify who they are, he had some nerve calling the afternoon before to have someone let them in between 8 and 9am the next day. What is it with people who think you have nothing better to do than drop everything at a moment’s notice and who will probably actually not get there until about 12pm – wasting my entire morning!I know this only the first of many such situations. On the upside, things are actually under way (assuming this guy was for real and not just a stalker).
Category Archives: builders
What an exciting couple of days!
Its all happening over at our place at the moment. Yesterday we paid a deposit to start putting together the plans for our new house and today I got offered and accepted a new job (a very important box to tick when you are going to be asking the bank for lots of money!).Yesterday we went for our walk through of the Hawthorn Attic and talked through the changes we wanted to make with the design consultant. The main ones were:
- All “weather board” facade.
- Timber flooring throughout the ground floor (bedroom area was carpet).
- Remove the 4th bedroom and increase the size of the 3rd bedroom and alfresco area.
- Remove the fire place and built in desk unit in the attic.
- Install our own heating system (we hope to salvage and re-use our 3 year old heating and air conditioning in this house).
- Provide our own exhaust fan for the kitchen (one of those silent ones).
We hadn’t expected to get the estimate yesterday, but our consultant was able to put it together while we went and had lunch. With all the ins and outs the changes didn’t add a great deal to the original price – so we are going to the next stage – getting the pre-tender documents prepared. And with the changes to the 4th bedroom we have created a little alcove in the alfresco area for hubby to build an outdoor kitchen (plumbing and electricity points have been included in the plans) – he’s already making plans to salvage the sink and some of the cupboards from our current kitchen.
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| This will be our new home (Source: Premier Builder’s Group) |
Oscar is getting excited about the new house, we showed him “his bedroom” – he wants to paint it brown. And Teddy who accompanies us on all our display home visits (except one week off when Spot the dog came instead) was also very impressed!
This time around (read here for the previous attempt) the process feels a lot more comfortable and we are much happier with how the consultant is working with us. He didn’t find any of our requests too difficult and their process is quite easy to understand. At this stage our plan is to demolish in January and start the new build in February, but we have a lot to do between now and then…………..
Things on our to do list:
- Investigate salvaging and re-using our heating/air con system
- Talk to the bank (or banks)
- Contact the council about a planning permit to demolish
- Keep an eye on the prices for the exhaust fan we want to install
- Get quotes for the demolition, and investigate whether the house can be sold and removed
- Investigate carpets/floor coverings that are suitable for asthmatics (Oscar, and the carpet in the attic)
One more builder
We went to one more display village last weekend – back out to Doreen. I can’t even remember the name of the estate – we’ve been to so many now! We would have passed these homes on our first trip out there, but were obviously so focused on the map that we didn’t see them. Oscar wanted to look for a purple house and a green house. We didn’t find any of those, but we did look at 2 displays from Highview Homes – the Seachange Cottage and the Victoriana:
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| Seachange Cottage. (Source: Highview Homes) |
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| Victoriana Home (Source: Highview Homes) |
The Victoriana had the traditional style interior, but is far too big for what we want. The Seachange was modern inside and very basic, but it did have this lovely “raked ceiling”.
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| Source: Highview Homes |
Neither of them was overly exciting, so the Hawthorn Atticis still in number one position.