Building with Home Buyers Centre in Pearsall WA :)

sdmould · Aug 17, 2011 7:55 pm

So GREAT NEWS

Building license is approved!! 3 weeks in council and all sorted! When I got my voicemail the Sales Manager had left (hes looking after our file til we get to site because of all the probs we have had) so will call him tomorrow and find out when we go to site.. But YAY not long now.. Hopefully a slab in the not too distant future, which is great because I was really hoping we'd at least reach lock up for Christmas!

Sheena - have you changed your garage from the original plan? We got a price today to put more bricks in and a standard door there and it was $510.. And that isnt including a credit for removing the cavity brick wall (cant do that because its a structural change and even though HBC will let us, it means resubmitting to shire which I do not want to do at all!) Because we're with Bluebay we'd have to pay it (if we go ahead with it) before construction starts..

Amanda, I am really lucky to have such a handy brother and hubby

Though because its family they'll be slack and it probably wont be done as soon as I like it haha! Thats the trade off with it being cheaper!

Snags, we're in the same boat! None of my variations after prestart have cost me a thing because of the stuff ups and incorrect info we got told.. Plus they have stuffed us around that much they're starting to feel bad haha.. How long after your building license was granted did you have your slab?

meatbag · Aug 18, 2011 6:17 am

Congrats Shannon!

Must mean we should be seeing some pretty pictures very very shortly :p.

sdmould · Aug 18, 2011 3:22 pm

Thanks meaty!!

Any new developments for you yet? I keep going to look at your pic haha!

amandaander · Aug 18, 2011 7:41 pm

Congratulation Shannon - that is great news! Looking forward to seeing your house go up!

sdmould · Aug 18, 2011 7:57 pm

Thanks amanda

Got told they are getting everything ready and will give me a call on tues to confirm what date they are starting on site! And they have guaranteed they will at least be at lock up by Christmas!

Any chance of seeing a plan from ya? Oh and this is my updated kitchen, with the slightly smaller bench top, one cupboard removed, the other four bigger and the 560mm wide drawers either side of my oven!

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srichz · Aug 18, 2011 11:54 pm

OOOHHHH!!!! Congrats Shannon!!!

Can't wait to see the pics of the house soon. Please keep us updated, I was hoping that maybe we could have lock up before Christmas as well but based on our situation I think I might start expecting either February or March. :lol:

Good news guys, they allow me to change some things just a day after and yup I dropped the garage door, the shower head, the toilet upgrades and stuffs.

Btw, where did you get the quote for the garage? If you put in a standard door now, do you have to pay another 240 as a variation charge?

@Sir Snagger, the shower head is caroma Track, and its only wall mounted. I figure I could ask somebody to change it later and it only cost 200 or less on some stores.

@Amanda, totally agree with you on being jealous with Shannon! Wish I have a hubby that does all these things. :wink:

Anyway, I'm still waiting on whether we are allowed for more than 2000 on pre-start.

Srichz

sdmould · Aug 19, 2011 12:55 pm

Thanks Sheena

Im soo excited!! I'm seriously like a little kid on Christmas Eve so I can only imagine what I'll be like when the actual construction starts haha..

I am so glad they have let you delete some of those things! So how much over your prestart allowance are you now? Dont know if I mentioned this, but we were told if we got them to do the door at the rear of garage it would need to be paid before construction commences because we're with Bluebay..

The price was given to us by HBC thats why i cant understand why they gave me one price and you another based on the same design?? Normally you would have a variation fee on top of it at this stage, but because we have been stuffed around so much and we have been told wrong information and such we don't have to pay any variation fees. We aren't going to go ahead with it though because we can still do it cheaper and we have just received our rates so even though its only $500 we wont have that spare in the couple of weeks!

jaredlia · Aug 19, 2011 2:34 pm

Saweet!!! Not long before your slab!
I reckon you should have lockup before Xmas for sure.

amandaander · Aug 19, 2011 5:40 pm

Hi Shannon,

Lock up before Christmas would be great! Once it starts to go up time will fly - seeing progress will be so exciting!

This is our house plan. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/801/houseplan.jpg/

I just want things to hurry up - I'm sick of all the waiting and paperwork...but patience was never my strong point!

Amanda

sdmould · Aug 19, 2011 5:54 pm

It will just be nice knowing its secure when noones there

Oooh nice! I like the linen and def loving that pantry!! Plus the store is realy great - great use of space there! See I wish we had have thought to do something like that! Like us, that is the 'dead' side of the house with the garage being on the boundary so it was definitely a great idea you guys had!!!

Yeah trust me, I'm not patient either Amanda! I just want the bloody thing built!!!!!! haha

sdmould · Aug 19, 2011 5:56 pm

Sorry forgot to ask, what's outside the family room? Couldnt read it too well. Is it a concrete pad?

mixxa · Aug 19, 2011 6:26 pm

HI looks great. But I would put more draws in the kitchen cupboards. Just a sugestion.

that we're finally starting to get somewhere in this whole process, thought we'd start our own thread

We are building with Home Buyers Centre in Pearsall.. To be completely honest with you, I would not build with them again. We have run into nothing but problems with them already in only a few short months - onto our 3rd sales rep, trying to charge us multiple times for things, been sent someone else's plans, wrong address listed on documents etc. But we do love our house so that's getting us through!

So our design is the Ultimate St Mark's, and after a few tweaks this is what our floor plan looks like:

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We have added a double shower in the ensuite, upgraded to larger appliances in the kitchen, lengthened the kitchen island bench etc.

Our elevation:

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We are looking at adding in a lot of downlights, therefore there are a few junction boxes in the house. But this is our electrical plan at the moment:

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This is our kitchen layout:

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This is the details of the pantry, cupboards, oven, fridge recess:

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This is the details of the kitchen island. As you can see we have drawers, cupboards, a microwave recess, pot drawer and dishwasher recess. This was only meant to include the cupboards, drawers and dishwasher recess however there was no where else to have the microwave recess and we did not want to lose kitchen space so we extended the island and I got a pot drawer too!

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As for our colour selections...

Our face brick is Midland Brick's "Std Milano"

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We chose colourbond for our roof cover - "Monument" (Our gutters, front door etc are this colour as well)

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Our render colour is "Shale Grey"

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The feature render panel is "Windspray", as is the garage door

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For the internal, we went to European Ceramics for our tiling selection.

For the living areas, our tile is "Enviro Stone"

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The west areas are all the same colours, with the floor tile and feature strip tile being "Enviro Plus Chocolate"

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We selected our carpets from Carpet Call.

The back bedrooms are a dark grey from the standard range:

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(Sorry have misplaced my carpet selection sheet but will advise later of the colour and type)

The master bedroom and theatre carpets have all been upgraded to "Earth" (shaggy chocolate brown) in the Harmonica II Range:

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The kitchen cupboards are "Mocha Velour" from Formica:

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The kitchen benchtop is "Platinum Micro" from Laminex Squareform Range:

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Splashback - To be decided. We have removed the tiling and will be installing glass

The bathroom and ensuite cupboards are "Polar White" from Laminex, and the benchtops are "Earthly" from Laminex Squareform Range:

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The blind for all the windows are Venetians from Waneroo Blinds in "Mocha" and the blinds on the sliding doors in the laundry and the family are verticals in the colour "Chocolate" (different names, same colour!)

Will go grab my pricing booklet and share with you all the prices I got for various things... Thanks for reading

P.S. Really sorry for the bad quality of pics - were taken on my iphone.. And for some reason photobucket would not let me rotate them![/quote]

sdmould · Aug 19, 2011 6:58 pm

Hi mixxa..

Thanks, if you have a look on this page you will see the new layout of my kitchen with drawers both sides of the oven

Are you building?

amandaander · Aug 20, 2011 11:45 am

Hi Shannon,

Next to the family room is the rain water tank. I would love to take credit for the storeroom but as we are building a a (small) cottage block it is a requirement of the developers which worked out well becuase my husband was going to ask for it to be added anyway. The only thing that I'm still not really happy with is that I had to lose the WIR and have a BIR to have the linen, double shower and separate toilet in the ensuite ::sad::

but when it came to it I preferred those things to the WIR and we will just get the BIR build in properly to maximise space. Plus there is only the 2 of us so I can always use a spare room as a robe (I wish). And definately happy we made the kitchen bigger, we entertain a bit so that was important to us.

Shannon looking at your colours again I realised that we have lots of same or very similar colours! So obviously I love your choices! We had the enviro plus choclate as our wet area floors but changed the day before pre-start...still not sure it was the right thing to do but I do love the tile we ended up with.

aloha123 · Aug 26, 2011 3:41 pm

Congrats Shannon!!! You must be over the moon

I can't wait to see all the photos along the way.

sdmould · Aug 26, 2011 4:43 pm

Amanda I didnt get a notification from your post :S Hmm strange! Just take credit, who cares hehehe.. I think the double shower, linen and enclosed toilet definitely outweighs the walk in robe.. It is a nice thing to have but the built in robe should be plenty and if not, you can get some stylish drawers or whatever in the room

Its better than having the walk in and going without the other things!

Well I definitely love your colour choices too then

hehe what did you end up changing too? We really love chocolate brown and lovely grey shades so chosing the colours was so difficult because we wanted to encorporate both!

Thanks aloha

I am over the moon! Spoke to my CLO today and everything seems to be going good.. Going to visit the block on the weekend, for some reason Ive never taken photos everytime we visit haha so I HAVE to this weekend because I dont know how much longer it will just be a block for!

Hows everyone elses progress going?

aloha123 · Aug 29, 2011 3:39 pm

How did you go over the weekend Shannon, did you get the time to visit the block and take some photos?? We are just waiting for council approval atm.. fingers crossed slab goes down in September. How long were you waiting on the council approvals for?

sdmould · Aug 29, 2011 6:43 pm

Unfortunately not

Suprisingly had my godson so didn't get to do much of anything! I am DEF going this weekend before its too late!

Who are you building with aloha, and in what suburb? Our plans were only in shire for about 3 weeks but the City of Wanneroo is really fast with approving building licenses apparently!

aloha123 · Aug 30, 2011 3:43 pm

We are building through the Ultimate St Marks through the Home Buyers. We are building in Banksia Grove, so the City of Wanneroo. Its been three weeks today we signed the final plans, specification addenda and contract quotation for the HB

Did you just receive a phone call from the HB stating the date of when the slab will be laid?

aloha123 · Sep 02, 2011 3:37 pm

Good news we received our Building Licence & Pre-Construction approvals yesterday yippppee!!