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.
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)
We got our revised floor plan and ball park estimate from the builder a couple of days ago. The first thing I did was check the final figure – it looked OK – not much more than our renovation quotes! Then I started reading. There were so many things left out – “Owner to supply” – things we had discussed to be included: flooring (!), solar hot water system (required for energy rating compliance), installation of the heating and cooling system (that we are going to salvage from this house) and balustrading around the deck (legal compliance), and more. Then I had closer look at the floor plan. We had been required to mark up our changes to the previous floor plan and sign that these were our final changes, but the revised version didn’t include them all or had made them incorrectly. That’s one mark against for quality control! Then there are the provisional allowances. If the actual cost goes over the provisional allowances we are required to pay the difference (fair enough) plus 30% – what a rort!!!!
We have also found another company that does federation style homes – Harkaway Homes – but they only supply the shell of the building (no internal trades, fit out, etc.) and we would have to be owner builders to engage them and then organise all the trades and fit out companies. Its a bit of a scary thought, but if we have to do a lot of that with this builder, then why not? It will give us more control over what we spend our money on, but means a lot more work for us. So now we are going to spend the next few months investigating this option further.
I visited a kitchen place yesterday that do wooden bench tops and they are going to put together a design based on our draft floor plan. Not only do they do the timber bench tops, they were very happy to propose a design to us, which is great because we really have no idea what we want in terms of cupboard configuration. Our layout is quite basic – a galley kitchen – so we are really only talking about what type of cupboards to have along the wall and under the centre bench.
