Hello There,

I have been trawling the forum for quite some time and thought that now that I'm all signed up and about to do my colour / tile / electrical selections that it was about time I start my own thread.

My fiance and I (Cat) have chosen to build the Drysdale 30 with Porter Davis and cant wait to get started. We have paid $1000 deposit and are hoping to get started as soon as possible. I have previously started a blog on our progress so will just paste a few posts from y blog into here to get everything up to date and will then continue from there.

Cheers,

Cat

The Land...
We found our land online and were very lucky as it had only been up for six days before we found it.

The below was taken from the LJ Hooker website 03/08/2011

Balmain Circuit , WALLAN
If your looking for a bigger allotment near a park then then let your search end here! This is one of the last remaining blocks available in Balmain Circuit, which overlooks what is soon to be Merri Creek Park, an open greenspace space which will accommodate BBQ facitities, playground and a half basketball court; perfect for families with children or those who love to picnic! Offering 612sqm, with fences to two sides; plus gas, water, power, sewer and phone services all available. (dimensions 18m X 34m - 612m2)
The Wallara Waters Estate is is a Green Estate; offering wide open spaces, a grand entry lake and recycled water for all residents, which means green gardens all year round.
Planned for the future there is a proposed schools and a shopping precinct, plus the estate is located within walking distance to the local train station, which will have you at Southern Cross Station in approximately 40 minutes.This is the place to be, enquire today to avoid missing out!

OUR BLOCK!

[ img ]

THE PARK ACROSS FROM OUR BLOCK.

[ img ]

The house...
We are planning to build the Drysdale 30 which is a Porter Davis homes.We love all the extra room having a big house will give us. The huge living space plus a home theater room and 4 big bedrooms really sold us this house. We also loved the open study and huge walk in robe at the front of the house.

This is a simplified view of our floor plan to give you an idea of what the house looks like.

[ img ]

This is the Waterside Facade for the Drysdale. Ours will look the same but in different colours.

[ img ]

Appointments and Settlement...

Appointments
Tile Selection
Unfortunately due to car issues we had to reschedule our tile appointment from last tuesday to tomorrow which means that Pete is unable to get the time off work. We went to the The Tile People (Yes that is the actual name of the company!) on Saturday to pick everything together so that I can go tomorrow by myself and know exactly what we both are after.I just remember to take plenty of photos to show Peter just in case I have to pick something that we didn't think of on Saturday!

Colour Selection
Colour selection is going to take almost a whole day with the rest of he day given over to electrical selection.. or more like which light goes where and exactly how many power points do we need in the theater room? So I'm really looking forward to that...

Contract
Our last appointment will be our contract appointment where we find out the final cost to build our home, agree to it and sign our contract to start building. We will also be required to pay another 5% of the total cost of our build to get the ball rolling.

Settlement
Our land settles in two more sleeps. On 9/9/2011 we will officially be land owners. There is a small chance that it could be delayed until 13/9/2011 if something goes wrong at the bank but so far it looks like everything is on track for our Friday settlement. If everything does go to plan it will be drinks on us on Friday night!

Looks great...lovely design. I look forward to following your progress and seeing your colour selections. Have you been to Hopetoun before? If not I recommend you go before your appointment to start choosing colours/styles etc.

Good luck for Monday

awesome cattycatcat, i remember when you were looking for the block. good luck with your build

Just a quick post...

Settlement has gone through without any problems...


WOOHOO!!

[ img ]

Tile selection went as smoothly as I could of hoped for. It only took about 15 minutes to go through everything that we wanted to pick as we pretty much had already selected everything. I of course took way to many photos but at least it means I have something to show for the effort. We have been sent home with 3 full size tiles as samples to help us with our colour selection on Monday. We have decided to pick the same tiles / Colours for the Ensuite and bathroom as that way we know it will work with the selections we make for the rest of the house. These are the tiles we have selected:

Bathroom/Ensuite:

Shower walls, Vanity Splash, Hob, Niche: Gloss White 20x30
Ensuite, Bathroom, WC Floors: Victoria Black 40x40

[ img ]

Feature Tile: Glass Listello Nero Marble Mix (This will run from the floor to the roof of the shower in a strip 6 wide)

[ img ]


Trims: Aluminium Bright Si 10mm x 3m

[ img ]

Entry, Foyer, Study, Dining, Living, Kitchen, Laundry: Decona Grey 40x40

[ img ]

Now just the Colour and Electrical Appointment to go!

Your tile selections look really nice, they all flow together well. For us once we had the flooring worked out, the other selections followed easily.

Today we had both our electrical and colour appointments at Hopetoun Interiors in Port Melbourne.


Electrical Appointment
Our first appointment was our electrical appointment in which we picked we picked where all our lights, power points, internet connection, phone line etc.

We ended up adding more lights, down lights, double power points, outdoor power points and extra data point throughout the house. We also added Pre wiring for a 7.1 surround sound system as well as 2 outdoor speakers which will be linked in to our sound system. All up we ended up only going over our electrical budget by about $500 so we were very happy with the results.

Colour Selection
We have already been to have a look at all the colour options we had so when it came time to sit down with our colour consultant we were pretty much ready to choose everything we wanted. These are the selections we made:

Kitchen/Interior:
Walls: Flokati
Bench Top: Ceaser Stone - Osprey
Bottom Cabinets: Burnished Wood
Overhead Cabinets: Polar White
Internal Doors: Oriental White (Gloss)

[ img ]

Splash Back: Dulux Align

[ img ]

Carpet: Chester - Rainy winter (I Forgot to take a photo but it's a dark grey carpet)

Interior Door Handles: Velocity Glide - Chrome

[ img ]

Outdoor:
Brick: Homestead Red Gum
Morter Joint: Rolled Joints - Standard colour
Infill Above G/Door, Render: Colourbond Woodland Grey
Garage: Woodland Grey
Fascias, Gutters, Downpipes: Colourbond Monument
Windows: Black

[ img ]

Roof Tiles: Ebony

[ img ]

Front Door: Panelmasta Caprice
Colour Woodland Grey

[ img ]

Glass Infill in the Front Door: Rice Paper
Windows Either Side of Front Door: Rice Paper

[ img ]

Bathroom/Ensuite:
Bench Top: Ceaser Stone Zulu
Cabinets: Natural White

[ img ]

Sink: Valentino

[ img ]

Laundry:
Bench Top: Laminex - WHite Valencia
Cabinet: Burnished Wood

[ img ]

So that's about all the photos I have, we also upgraded the toilets but didn't really think that I needed to take a photo!

well done!!!!! good job!!!!

(we have burnished wood, and it does show finger prints, VERY WELL
incase you didnt realise).

Glad to hear everything went well. I really like your choices especially the splashback, ours will be blue too it will all look beautiful with your tiles.

Nice Job catty seems like you're got a nominally black-on-white color scheme when a few touches of colour - kind of like ours actually...

Thanks Guys!

We were going for a black a white theme through out the house with grey tiles and carpet. The only real colour we have is the splash back. We are planning to do a little bit of painting later on after we move in but for the moment we are pretty happy.

Hey cattycatcat, your house is going to be HUGE! What will you do with all that space?
There'll be enough room for your inlaws to move in with you hehe

Well done on the colour selections, they are gorgeous!!
Look forward to seeing it all come together x

mmm that splashback is going to be awesome!

Contract Signing...
We had our contract signing appointment at the Porter Davis Northern office in Bundoora on Friday afternoon. We met with our Customer Service Co-ordinator who went over all the important points in our contract as well as covering all of the other information that needed to be signed off on by us.

[ img ]


During the appointment we covered:

The Porter Davis contract

Promotional items
Upgrades and variations and plans to demonstrate these items
Porter Davis terms and conditions
Specifications
6 star energy report
Soil report
Insurance details


The HIA New Homes Contract:

All the legal obligations of each of the parties to the contract (ie Porter Davis & the Client)
The terms and conditions to allow construction of a house in an efficient and orderly fashion


Once everything had been covered we needed to clarify a few points as well as check a couple of things that we thought were included in our original sales quote that we hadn't covered. At the end of it all we included a couple more cost to our build which were:

Fly screens to all opening windows and Doors - $4500
6 Extra Down lights to living area -$900


Once we were satisfied we signed all the documents and paid a 5% deposit. Our Customer Service Co-ordinator will now need to send a copy of our signed contract off to our broker to get our Constructions Loan approved and then we will finally be done with all the admin side of our home and we can get ready for the construction fun!

Inlaws...

Hey guys - so excited to come across your posts. We are at a similar step to you and are just about to have our appointments for our drysdale 30.

Any chance you would be willing to share some quote info with us? We just have not had anyone discuss the glass next to the door with us- was that an extra cost? Also what the cost of caesar stone to the benches was?

Any other Upgrades we should consider adding would live you to make suggestions.

Cheers!

Hey thebigbuild,

Nice choice of house
I would be more then happy to give you some help..



The side light (Thats what they call the window on the side of your front door) is included. We upgraded the glass though to have Rice paper in it for more privacy.



The Caesar stone to the kitchen bench and the island bench was included in the promotion that we chose (Gourmet Kitchen $5499)
We did pay extra to have Caesar Stone in our bathroom ($248) and Ensuit ($451) We are having a double vanity bench in or Ensuit.

Other things we upgraded were having kitchen cupboards all the way across the kitchen wall, we added a glass splash back rather then tiles which is standard, but these this are more for looks then a necessary thing...

Things that we opted for that were more practical:
*Included insulation to the interior walls of the house (PD doesn't put anything in the walls which means sound can travel very well from one end of your house to the other) $1224
*Upgraded the underlay for our carpet which cost $204
*Evaporative Cooling to whole house $5475
*Fly screens to Whole house $700
*Sliding security screen doors to glass sliding doors $1179 x3

So yeah, we added quite a lot that I didn't list above but they are the main upgrades. Feel free to ask any questions you have. I am more then happy to help out