Hi everyone, I've enjoyed following your builds and thought it was time to share mine. My bf (or as I like to call him, my "de-fecto") and I are building with Commodore Homes in the Boardwalk Estate, Southern River.

Our story began on an average September day last year... after looking around at existing homes in our price range (and being very very dissapointed) we decided to stop into a display village to have a look. And holy cow, we couldn't believe that we just might be able to afford to build... maybe... if we saved extra hard for another year or two. A couple of weeks later they announced the FHOG boost. As far as we were concerned it was a sign:

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After a few weeks of searching we found our block.
It's a corner block, kind of triangular in shape. There is a laneway at the back where the garage has to go, so finding a house plan to fit was going to be a little tricky.
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We settled just before christmas.

In the meantime we had chosen a builder, and found a plan that worked. I'm kind of glad the shape of the block limited our options with the plan, we only had a few plans to chose from, rather than hundreds!

NB - I'm obviously glossing over the whole frustrating, confusing, painful process of dealing with banks, settlement agents, and worst of all SALESMEN.

Here is our modified plan with the garage moved to the back.
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Here is the plan on the block so you can see the odd shape. It actually has worked out well, giving us a decent backyard.
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In January we hit our first stumbling block. The builder's soil test uncovered some problems, three of the four holes they tried to dig only made it 30cm down. To cut a really long story short, the developer ended up excavating the whole block and replace the soil at no cost to us. I can't thank our builder enough for standing up for us and fighting to get Stockland to fix the problem. Everything was delayed for a few weeks while it was sorted, but we did get the best outcome possible so I'm not going to complain about that.

Here's is our block with brand new soil
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And then the waiting game began................................................................................ I suck at both games and waiting, so not a fun time.

We had pre-start in March. Here are some of our colours:

The kitchen:
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It was love at first sight with the mosaic tiles. The tile guy told us when we were making our selections that there's a chance they won't be available by the time they're ready to put our kitchen in so we bought them outright, and will have to get someone to install them after handover cos the builder won't accept any owner-supplied items.

The main bathroom
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The ensuite
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And then the waiting game resumed.....................................................

The bank stuffed up two lots of paperwork which took 7 weeks in total to rectify (seriously, I thought banks were meant to be good with numbers?). I think our broker was nearly ready to put a restraining order on me I harassed her so much!

Then we got the most exciting letter of all time. It said construction would commence on the 14th June. I drove up on the 14th and all they had done was stick a sign in the ground. Booooo. The rest of the week it rained everyday so we didn't bother going back up (we are currently living an hour away from where the block is). The following week I had to fly to Darwin to work, we stopped at the block on the way to the airport and were gobsmacked - the most beautiful slab of concrete we had ever seen!!!! We hadn't expected it, and I loooove surprises!
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I ended up staying in Darwin for 8 weeks, so didn't see the house again until we had a roof. In the meantime my de-fecto took some pistures for me when he was in town. There's only a few, he works away as well.

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As soon I got back we drove straight to the house and once again we were surprised. A roof! We weren't expecting it until the following week. It had obviously only just gone on as there was a lot of water on the floor. It was too dark to get any outside pictures.

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A week later they had started rendering.

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Here is our roof. The black tiles were not our first choice, we originally picked a charcoal grey tile that got discontinued. But I'm quite happy with it anyway. The gutters are going to be painted bluey-grey. I have a sneaking suspision the blue we picked is going to be more blue than grey, I hope it looks ok, if not I'll re-paint it at a later date.

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These are the latest photos from the weekend. Plastering & ceilings nearly complete, windows are in and garage in concreted.

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Sometime this week we should be locked up!

To be continued........

Hi Shell,
Im in Bletchley! I love your kitchen tiles!! your house is looking great! welcome to the forum, and we love pictures!
Lisa

wow look at that! i like how you guys used the block!!

Plan is good too, sunken theatre looks awesome

my silly computer wont let me see the plan and your block pic..

i love your thread, very funny. Almost finished how exciting.

I cant see your plans either, just a little red cross
However i can see your photos and they are lovely, your bricks are stunning,

looks great. I love a good red brick house

very very nice...loving the tiles too

Hi Lisa, I just love bletchley, we drove through there the other day while checking out the neighbourhood.



Thanks jpeg, once my bf saw a sunken theatre in a display home he just had to have one.

We had a bit of a hard time finding a plan that worked, because the stupid covenents dictated that the house had to be between 2 - 4m from the front of the block, which is where the main bedroom is. But because of the easement along the side (shown as a dotted line along Balfour st) we couldn't have any brickwork over that line, which is why the theatre room is set back so far.





Thanks guys. Here are the direct links, hopefully it will work.
http://i584.photobucket.com/albums/ss28 ... teplan.jpg
http://i584.photobucket.com/albums/ss28 ... orplan.jpg





Thankyou!

Gorgeous bricks Shell!!! I love all your tile selections, especially the ensuite bathroom!!

Unfortunately i'm unable to see your house plan so will check it out again from home

Yay we've been locked up!! Or at least I hope so, we just received the bill for it, but haven't been able to get up there and have a look because of the crappy weather.

SS said cabinets were going in today and tiling would start next week.

I feel like we're on the home stretch now They've said it should be about 4 weeks until PCI!!!

Congratulations on a beautiful house.

I love the red brick.

I thought I had decided on what we were going to get, but having seen yours, I'm having second thoughts.

Thanks Mr Gum. They are Austral Leonora and they were actually our third choice (the first two were not in the builders standard range) but I LOVE THEM! They are just so warm and inviting. It's funny it took us so long to notice the neighbours have exactly the same bricks - I think its because they have cream as their feature colour on the gutters, windows etc it actually makes them look a lot different.

We have friends building with Scott Park in Success, so it will be interesting to see how your build progresses compared to theirs. I think their pre-start is booked just a week or two after yours.

Well we live in Gosnells, so go on a nosey around Balfour Street to get ideas for our build quite often.

Will look out for yours.

Wow. Its all happening so fast now. We have cabinets, benchtops, sinks & a bathtub, doors, exterior paintwork has been done and the tiling has been started. This is all since Thursday. Unfortunately I couldn't get any photos of the bathrooms because the tilers butt crack was in the way.

The kitchen cabinets. No overhead cabinets at this stage, I'll have to add them in down the track.
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The newly painted guttering. I'm still not 100% about the blue, I wanted something more like colourbond Blue Ridge, a kind of bluey-grey. I think its a bit strong but I might just need to get used to it.
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Some ******* brickwork in the garage. I don't have any complaints about the external brickwork, it looks like they just saved all the "bad" bricks and faced them inside the garage. The SS told me not to worry about it, so naturally I am. However it is a single run of bricks and the other side of this wall is fine so I guess they were just put in with cracks on one side. If they were cracking after they had been put up then the other side should be cracking too right?
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In other news, we have picked some interior paint colours. We'll be doing all the painting ourselves. I have convinced myself its going to be a super fun job and am happy to live in denial for now.
The blue is going to be the feature wall in the main bedroom. The dark grey is for the home theatre. The pale grey is for the doors & frames, and the white colour is for whenever we run out of enthusiasm and just want to finish the job.
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Wow that looks great! i like the kitchen colours keep the pics coming you must be stoked

yea our prestart lady warned us about it during prestart she said and i quote" by the way you might find that the internal bricks of the garage wall are not the pretty side of the brick. we keep the good side for the external facing, so dont be alarmed when you see your garage. Its normal"

so yea seems like its a "standard" with all the builders.... i was just speechless when she said that!... i know its a garage and no one looks inside so much...but still.. we pay $$ for the bricks!!

sigh...


But i love your build and the colour scheme .....

you must be excited... its not too long now

Thanks tinfish, its actually quite re-assuring to hear that its normal, and not just us! I was more worried about the cracks than anything because they seem localised to that one area. I was reading in someone elses thread that they complained about chips and cracks in their bricks and their SS told them that don't pay for the brickies to check every brick before they put them up!!! I couldn't believe that, all this money we're paying and its still not enough for the brickies to do a decent job?? Grrr....

The paint colours look great! Seems to be all hapening at your place

Tilers butcrack seems to be a common problem for homebuilders...

The house looks great! I wouldn't sweat the cracks in the bricks too much. I'd be surprised if it's anything structural....not that I am an engineer or anything

oooh, shell83 - your kitchen is going to look amazing! those tiles are great!