Bathroom tiles complete. Photo's!

Kitchen installed and bathroom tiles

Allworth have been busy the past week. They installed the kitchen with the ceaserstone and the bathroom tiles have started. We were told 5 weeks from lockup so we could quite possibly be ready first week of Feb, depending when Allworth come back.

Locked up!!!

There has been plenty of action lately. We had the insulation placed in the walls and the roof, followed by gyprock throughout the house. The house is looking bigger now that the walls are up. The bricks were cleaned, the bricks look darker then we anticipated. Hopefully the white garage will brighten things up. Cornices were completed and doors were delivered. The house is locked up now, im finding it hard not being able to walk through the house.. Been told by our supervisor that kitchen will be installed this week and tiling may start in the bathrooms.
Also fyi Allworth come back from the Christmas break on the 10th of January. So hopefully they might start doing things from the middle of January. Also the concerto next door to us has been scarped.

What colour splashback?

Hey guys just would like some advice on what colour splash back i should get. I have cs cashmere and laminex moleskin cupboards. Our kitchen is sort of like a u shape and its really long. We would need a lot of splash back. I really want a glass splash back and is wondering if red would look ok? Nothing in the house is red.... Do i need to accessorise the other areas to match the kitchen? I found this red kitchen picture and fell in love with it. Tell me what ya think.

Roof and Bricks complete..electrical wiring...

Good news the roof and bricks are complete! Finished off yesterday.
Drove past yesterday to find around 10 people working on our house. We had the brick layers finishing off, people installing wiring, and people putting the eves on.



Bricks and roof



double sliding doors to home theater



Electricity box




built in vacum cleaner



wires for intercom, telephone, speakers...

Roof & Bricks

Roof was delivered and installed 4/11

Bricks were delivered 4/11 and began 11/11. Bricks should take two weeks to finish.

Frames Completed

House is moving along really well, the frame work is all completed now with the windows in. Tomorrow the facia's are getting done if it doesn't rain and roof tiles are due to arrive on Thursday.

We've got an issue with the power at the front of our land, there is none... We don't have a power box directly to our block so the electrical company only ran a conduit from the power box to the front of our land. However the electrician/builder are going to charge me $885 to pull the cable through.. Not sure what I can do, have spoken to Landcom and they said thats how it is.. Thinking of going to Fair Trading now to get this resolved...

Here is a pic of what of what I'm talking about.

Completion date

Recieved a letter saying that completion date is 3rd of March. We hope they complete by this date as we are renting and want to move asap. Before we can move in we will be doing our tiles and carpet. The count down has begun!

frames & windows

Frames were delivered on the Wednesday, drove past on thurs to find the frames have started! Friday the windows were installed. Hopefully this week they can finish the roof! The progress is looking good.

Removal of soil

Was told by Allworth that we had to remove dirt as we've got a fair bit (58 piers at 2m each x 400mm diameter). Did not get an official price from them..however a mate quoted $3500!! We asked Allworth if we could put the dirt at the back. The dirt is mostly clay but was told we can use lime to break it down. We will use this soil to fill instead of buying soil later. On Thursday my hubby, brother and myself decided to move the dirt by wheel borrow. We were on a great start..however after a couple of long hrs it didnt seem like the pile was going down :( My hubby hired a dingo digger and moved 13t in 4hrs! It saved us so much money doing it this way.
We are told that the frames will be delivered on Wednesday, hopefully the rain will stop..

Slab and Allworth sign

Drove past this afternoon to find the slab has been poured and Allworth have locked up the fence. Also the land behind us has been scraped. We will have a neighbour!!

Waffle

Waffle and steel reinforcing have been completed now waiting for concrete to be poured early next week.

Plumbing

Didn’t think much was going to happen today as i assumed the concrete would need to dry. Drove past the land and noticed that plumbing had been done. The weather is not looking too good so they might not do much done till next week. Will post some pictures on the weekend.

Concrete Piers

The have dug a lot of dirt and put concrete in the holes. They have also marked out the house. Its great seeing how the house will sit on the block.

Fenced

We have been fenced!

We’ve started!!

Went to Allworth to give them all the papers they wanted us to hand in. Inquired when our commencement date would be.. to our surprise it was yesterday! (6/10/10)
We were so excited so we went to our land and YES our land has been scraped! So happy  We are told that our house should be completed in 15weeks. Allworth take a 5 week break for Christmas so we believe that we should get the keys in 19 weeks! Cant wait.

What are the odds?

Just got a letter from council advising us that the block directly besides us is going to have the same house (Concerto) built. They are even using the same fascia; the only difference is we are having a little render on the bottom. Im just a little annoyed as there is not one concerto in Alba atm and now there is going to be two side by side argh!
Has this happened to anyone else? Should I be concerned?
Fingers cross they didnt choose the same colours..

Building certificate

Got a phone call from the bank that our certificate has been given to Allworth. Spoke to Allworth and we should be starting in 20 working days! So excited!

Contracts signed

After a long wait to check if the sewer line affected our slab.. Allworth have given us the ok to sign contracts. The engineers have said that the sewer will not affect our slab. We are waiting for the water aboard to approve this before we can commence building.
We have lodged all paper work to our bank and are waiting for a building certificate. Allworth said they will commence building (20 days) after receiving the approval and certificate.

Sad day for the Noddy's

Well we were hoping to sign our contract with the Allworth before end of month, but got a call yesterday saying that the waterboard has not approved our plans...

Cos we have a sewer running down the left hand side of our fence (in parrallel in next doors property) and the dirty side of our house runs in parrallel with that fence the waterboard are saying its too close..

So our builder has to organise a sewer peg out (which is from the bottom of the sewer piping on a 45 degree angle) to see how close it comes to our house or if its going to hit our slab. If it is too close or hits our slab then they have to send out plans off to the engineers to redesign the slab on that side and add more piers etc...

All this means is a delay of at least 1 month and extra costs to us no doubt for the peg out, engineers, extra slab costs etc...


The dream of moving into our house by Christmas has definately gone out the window now...

We are out of council!

It took 4weeks in BTCC. Very happy that is it finally out. Waiting for the building certifcate and signing the plans.

Still waiting for council

It has been 3 weeks at BTCC so hopefully not to long now..

Interior Selections done

We're coming to the end of all our decision making, yesterday we saw the consultant at Allworth Homes for our Interior Selections.
The whole process took just under 2 hours, selecting door handles, interior paint colours, interior changes, kitchen cupboard layout etc. Electrical plan was handed in as well as signing quite a few documents and confirming the details we'd already written down in the book.
Pricing will come back to us this week on the upgrades we selected, I don't think it'll come back to expensive as alot of the electrical upgrades I'll be doing once we've moved in.

From here we're just waiting on our plans to be approved by the Blacktown council, which will hopefully be this week or early next week. Once thats all back to the builder we sign off on the fixed price contract and start building :D

Took advantage of the Clive Peeters closing down sale

Well mid last week Gerry Harvey announced the acquisition of Clive Peeters, so the sales started, we first went to the Norwest store but pretty much everything was gone, so then we decided to goto Mount Druitt. We were after a oven, stove and rangehood.

We looked around and found a Blanco free standing oven and cook top and a range hood, the great thing for us we were saving 40% off the retail price. Normally the products would have been $4000, we only paid $2300.

We are in the newspaper!

We were interviewed by The Daily Telegraph about being first home buyers. The article is about people rorting the FHOG. They took a heap of photos of us but for some reason didn't put any in the article... Have a read and let us know what you think.

Newspaper Article

Land Settled!!

This post is a little late, but better late than never I say..

On Monday June 28th our land settled at 3pm, a bit of a long story but our land was meant to settle on the Friday 25th June but in the days leading up to it we had to resign our mortgage documents and to cut it short, our solicitor stuffed up with signatures. This meant we couldn't hand in the documents until the day of settlement which is not accepted so we had to settle on the next business day. As for the delay we were charged $280 which I wasn't happy at all with and complained to the solicitor saying it was there fault because they missed the signatures etc which caused the delay. They agreed with my complaint and paid the $280.

It was a fairly dramatic week and very stressfull for settlement, I really should've taken 2 days off, but it all worked out in the end.

Ponds Approval

We have been approved by The Ponds board! Very exciting now off to Blacktown council. Fingers crossed :p

Plans submitted

Well this weekend was busy, with submitting our plans to the builder along with our landscape plan for them to forward onto The Ponds board to get approved and then off to Blacktown council.

I always wanted to do my own landscape plan as I couldn't see value in a landscaper drawing up the plan and charging $600-$800 for it.. So I initially I started drawing up on paper the rough design for it and then did a good copy in a thin black pen. I submitted it to Allworth yesterday but I wasn't really happy with it and worried that it might not get through The Ponds board... I was very busy for the rest of the day and decided at 9pm on a Saturday night that I was going to do up a new landscape plan on the computer. So I started out, based everything off my hand drawings and came up with the plan below, pretty happy with my efforts as it took a fair while and didn't finish up until 4am Sunday morning. It felt very rewarding to complete the plan, now just fingers crossed The Ponds board agree with it and pass it.

Now its the waiting game, our land is registering this Friday and our plans are being submitted so we just have to wait for everything to come back to the builder so then we can start building.

Inspiration

This part of the blog will be ongoing as im finding inspiration left, right and centre! Here is a picture of front door- We are having a timber door. Found a picture that has our bathroom tile design around the bathtub (in Cappuccino)
For our home theatre we are going to build a step up before carpet is laid. We are doing carpets after handover. Eventually we would like to have seats infront of one another.

Kitchen Ideas

My favourite part of the house.. The Kitchen! I have been doing lots of research and im getting really excited! We went to caesarstone yesterday to choose our bench top. We both loved Walnut. We want to have caesarstone splashback, as it will complement the cupboards really nicely. We can only get the splashback after handover so we will decided later if we will have caesarstone or glass splashback, depending on price. We are thinking of having high gloss polytech cupboards on top and using a similar colour for the bottom in Laminex/formica (if colour is not available we will use matt finish in polytech).
We want to upgrade our cook top and rang hood, I do a lot of cooking and would love to have…. A 5-6 cook top burner and a big range hood. We are taking inspiration from the Allworth display The Meridan.(Also the colour of the cupboards are next to the rangehood)
With the advantage pack we get a free dishwasher, microwave and double sink, we went to Oran Park and took some pictures.