Wow Florida. Must be a nice holiday down there!

My wife has little interest in the house building and the inclusions but she started talking about traveling to the US for the 10th anniversary of marriage.

Hehe. actually I like to study on everything about the house building.
It can be quite technical & challenging when we go into the deep inside.
My wife doesn't want to think of complicated decisions.

She doesn't even fuss on cars as long as it's clean and has got a brake.

too funny. tell her that is why you are researching so hard - to save as much money as possible to build your dream home AND a trip for your anniversary!! It is a big job researching on your own though... My DH doesn't read the forum, but he does his bit researching some products and doing up the plans for us.

My mum is visiting at the moment and we took her to the house today. She was VERY impressed and excited for us, which is always nice to have an injection of excitement. A lot has been scheduled for next week, so hoping the weather (and the planned work) goes smoothly... I just want my roof up ASAP!!

So what have you got planned T, for the following week,
We have to wait another week till gyprock
4 weeks from roof to gyprock when we were told a week, unbelievable, I really thought we would see some walls before I went away, but just more disappointment, more delays.....
Don't get me wrong at least things are being done, but same old story, don't tell me a week when clearly that was never going to happen,

The electrician is going to be overloaded, he still hasn't finished our house, then needs to do SC, then the single story, then yours, Wily's and Ryans, each house takes about a week, he asked for some help but has been by himself each day at our house. I'm not sure but he has at least one day probably two at our house, that is not including any other houses that he has to do. Feel sorry for him, he does seem a really nice guy.

We don't know when the electrician is coming to our place. We still need to do the plumbing remember, so a while away I guess. Right now I am not concerned with the details, all I want is a roof. So this is what we were told our schedule is:

Wed / Thurs: scaffoling up; delivery for sand, cement, lintels and bricks
Fri / Sat until finished: bricks.

Before plumbing and electrician's work, we also need the deck to be built (which will happen after bricks). While the scaffolding is up the Moroka bagged finish will also happen (when we stupidly thought it would be at the very end - but of course it would be with the scaffolding up!) so we have to confirm our colours soon (we chose a Moroka colour last year with PGH Cement bricks with earlier builder, but now we have Austral Slate Grey with Zen, so need to look at the swatches again).

So with this week being a short week maybe another 2weeks till roof the weather forecast is pretty good so fingers crossed

We would be delighted if we could get a roof up by the end of next week. Maybe? Don't want to hope too much though... I am amazed that Lot 13 has plumbing done and scaffolding up!! Because we have the deck and Bagged finish to do, plus some by hand (not computer) fabrication required on site (for the skillion roof and deck I think), we expect these next stages for us will take longer than most builds.

As for gyprock, we are doing an independent inspection before then so that will probably delay a few days or a week at least as well.

Hi T!

Things seem to be moving along pretty quickly now which is great to see

Just wonder who you are getting to do the private inspection. Did you end up going with Howard Ryan?

Hi nerak! Haven't seen you for a while. Yes, we will get Howard Ryan. I met him about 2 years ago when he gave a tutorial. He has also been recommended by people on the forum (good old H1!). $550 for frame inspection (but actually done after bricks and roof) and $450 for PCI. I will probably just do the first one. I spoke to him a few weeks ago so I will touch base with him again when we are closer to the time...

Just wondering if Zen puts fibro (wooden) wall on some of front and back face of the building?

It seems common with project builders.

Hm, not sure what you mean? Do you mean cladding (for example above windows and upstairs?). Probably a question for Zen and to see what is on your plans? We have a small line of cladding above our clerestories, but this was in the design from Masterton before we went to Zen. Sorry can't be of more help.

Sorry yes. the Cladding. I'll ask Andrew for this.

The number of questions we should ask is getting out of control!!

Apue - write them all down. Put them in categories (like Kitchen questions, facade questions etc.). Much better to ask the questions now. Do you have plans yet? The plans would show that sort of thing.

Hey Guys,

I have been following thie thread for a while and thought i would say hi.

How long did you have to wait for your tender after you were happy with your design?

Hi streamline welcome,
We waited a couple of weeks maybe 2-3
Although with Andrew away for those two weeks things may have slowed down a little, I think he is still trying to catch up, best piece of advice, request a meeting time so that you can sit down and discuss tender, that way they work to a time frame

We have cladding at the front and side although we are having the sycon matrix cladding(the square cladding) as a design feature, but if you have it, it wil be on your plans

Hey Gogo,

Not that easy being on the other side of the country as we cant just pop in lol.

We do however have to come back next week for a funeral so we were hoping to have it long enough to review before we come over.

I would like to get a little list of questions together before we sat down.

Hi Zenners.

My three tenders are on my hands and I'm juggling with lots of doco to compare which is which.
Without looking at the figures, I've got strong feeling I should go with Zen because of the flexibility.

With both Mahattan 36 and Lincoln 35 the distance between the main home and granny are 5 ~ 6 meters.
Here is the diagram.
[ img ]
We wanted to have as much as 8 meters but it's not possible due to the minimum set back is 12.5 metre.
So I want to change the floor plan to reduce the length so the distance between the two buildings should be farther.

This is a preliminary design done by Jerue. The final one won't be much different from this.
[ img ]

I don't have a complete plan yet. I thought I have to pay 5k to get one?
Andrew said they can draw within a week or so.

Hi again.

Another reason I can't go with Eden is that their estimated building time is 46 weeks plus 5 weeks X-mas and rainy days. In addition to this, the starting date is about 31 of Sep.
So this means I can come into the house Sep 2013????

I'm sure Andrew and Mat will laugh at the building time frame.

Yes, I am sure that time frame will seem long. For most houses they guarantee 25 weeks (with $300 rent after that), but maybe longer for yours as it is two dwellings? Also, Zen will also be entitled to rain days - all builders are, but some claim the day sooner than others (meaning just a drop of rain ). But you haven't even been to Council yet (right?) so all that can take time (8 months in our case). Have you read your Council building guidelines to check if your building design complies? Good to do that early too, to avoid redesigning too much...