The Rowland by Porter Davis

Our experiences building the Rowland by Porter Davis in the Somerfield estate Keysborough

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Bronte facade - flipped to match our plans

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Rowland floor plans

Index

Intro
Why the Rowland
Selections

Build Timeline
Land Settled - 29/08/2011
Week1 - Pegging - 11/09/2011
Week2 - Slab Boxing - 17/09/2011
Week3 - Slab Poured and Frame Start - 24/09/2011
Week4 - Ground Floor Framed - 02/10/2011
Week5 - First Floor Framed and Roof Truss - 08/10/2011
Week6 - Brick problem - Stalled - not much extra done - Roof tiles - 15/10/2011
Week7 - Roof Complete - Windows - Reselect Bricks - Stalled 2 more weeks to new bricks arrive - not much extra can be done - 22/10/2011
Week8 - Wrapping Ground Floor - ready for bricking - 31/10/2010
Week9 - Still no bricks - 04/11/2011
Week10 - Bricks Started - 13/11/2011
Week11 - Bricks Ground Floor - 20/11/2011
Week12 - Bricks Ground Floor Complete - 25/11/2011
Week13 - Scaffolds First Floor - 02/12/2011
Week14 - Bricks Complete - 10/12/2011
Week15 - Bricks Cleaned - Eaves - Roughing in - 18/12/2011
Week16 - Christmas - 25/12/2011
Week17 - New Years - 1/1/2012
Week18 - No change - 8/1/2012
Week19 - No change - 15/1/2012
Week20 - No change - 22/1/2012
Week21 - Frame fixes - not much else done - 29/1/2012
Week22 - More Frame fixes - Stairs - 5/2/2012
Week23 - More frame fixes - 12/2/2012
Week24 - Plaster - 19/2/2012
Week25 - Basic Fixing - 26/2/2012
Week26 - Internal work - still no garage/alfresco - 4/3/2012
Week27 - Garage and Alfresco trusses - 11/3/2012
Week28 - Garage Alfresco roof tiles & gutters - 18/3/2012
Week29 - Garage Alfresco roof capping and some plaster repairs - 25/3/2012
Week30 - Still waiting on plaster repairs - 1/4/2012
Week31 - Painting Started - 8/4/2012
Week32 - Still Painting - 15/4/2012
Week33 - Painting Finished - 22/4/2012
Week34 - Tiles - 29/4/2012
Week35 - New site super - 6/5/2012
Week36 - Heating Vents - Alfresco repair -13/5/2012
Week37 - Door Handles - 20/5/2012
Week38 - Base Render - 27/5/2012
Week39 - More fixes - 3/6/2012
Week40 - More fixes - 10/6/2012
Week41 - Still more fixes and still no PCI - 17/6/2012
Week42 - Yawn.. - more fixes - no PCI - 24/6/2012
Week43 - ...1/7/2012
Week44 - Same Same - 8/7/2012

Intro

When our son was born 6 years ago, we were living in a rather small and old 3 bedroom house. One room was for me and the missus. One room was my office/study. This left the 3rd bedroom for my son. I bought the old place back when I was single and although it was freshly renovated, it still had many old problems like no insulation, flat tin roof, no air con. In summer it was an oven and in winter it was an ice box. Not a really comfortable place to raise a family.

I instantly knew there needed to be some adjustments in that first summer (funny how you get all protective). First thing I did was buy a big air conditioner. This did the job for the main living areas but it was very expensive to run and didn’t really get to the bedrooms. It still made those 40+ days comfortable but we would still all have to sleep in the lounge room.

With the birth of our daughter 2 years ago, we decided it was time to upgrade our house as there was just not going to be enough room in our current rather small and old house for everyone to fit. I could have given up my study and made it a bedroom but with all the other problems and space issues we would face, it just didn’t seem worth it. It would cost us way too much to upgrade or extend and given that the house was an old design and didn’t really make use of any modern building or energy saving materials, it seemed like it would be a case of putting good money against bad. So, time to look for a new house.

While searching online for houses we would come across these brand new houses that were within our budget but were not built yet. We found out these were house and land packages offered by various builders. After 6 months of disappointments looking for houses we decided to take the chance and build our own. This would be the house we had dreamed of but could never find (and when we did find one even remotely close, it was too expensive to buy outright or we would get outbid at the auction). Finally, this would be… our dream house!!

After looking for house and land packages that were both affordable and close to our preferred neighborhood, we settled on a block on land in the Somerfield estate, Keysborough offered by Porter Davis. We went with Porter Davis because we liked the facades’ they had and the overall look of their houses plus we couldn’t seem to find any other designs from the other builders that ticked all the boxes when it came to our dream home. The home design we settled on was the Rowland.

Why the Rowland

When looking at potential houses we liked the idea of having the master bedroom and our main living areas downstairs, and all the kid’s rooms and play areas upstairs. The theory was that we would create two zones, and therefore, a little bit of space and peace for us as the kids got older. We saw many designs that had the master bedroom upstairs but just didn’t like the idea of having our rest area just next door to where the kids would be making the most noise. As they got older we figured that this would only increase in volume and activity.

This would also allow them to keep all their toys, movies, and games upstairs and they could set up play areas that might last a few days without us having to worry about them packing everything away before meals or bed. That way, the downstairs zone would remain relatively pristine as they would have no real reason to leave any mess downstairs. As the block we had was quite tight, going two stories would allow us to keep a little more backyard as well.

Our only requirements with the house were now master bed downstairs, all other bedrooms upstairs and we needed at least 4 bedrooms overall as I really wanted to keep one room as a study/office.

After a few clicks on the PD website we found it, the Rowland. This had a whooping 5 bedrooms plus a study and an office. Tack on a big open living area and rumpus/theater room downstairs and a games room upstairs and it was sorted. Only question we had was what do we do with all those bedrooms?

With the (my) study its own room (plus my balcony), we basically had 2 extra rooms now. “Better more rooms than not enough” was my comment. Plus, I really liked the idea that I could keep my study (now known as the Den! ) and the kids could have there own study area. I did think about knocking a wall out but it was too much of a change in the design at this stage so we decided to convert one of the bedrooms to the kids study. This would serve as a quite zone for them as they got older and so they would not disturb each other if they needed a quite place for homework and study. The other bedroom could be kept as a spare bedroom for use when we had visitors staying over.

Only one room left to take care of now, the office. The office is at the front of the house and right next door to the master bedroom. Looking at the house plans, we saw that the Rowland came with a “Master Retreat” option. Perfect! We could just remove the wall between the master bedroom and the office and create one really big bedroom. This was just the thing we needed to utilise the extra space effectively and it didn’t cost anything in variations. We also saw that the living area came with and alfresco option so we decided this would be perfect for our lifestyle. It would make good use of the bi-fold door we had that opened up from the living room into the backyard.

With all the bits and pieces sorted out, it was off to Porter Davis to lay down our deposit.
Little did we know, this was just the beginning…

reserved

Hi Zinner,

Thanks so much for this post, it's great to hear people sharing their building experiences and its always good to hear about their building journey. The Rowland is a fantastic house and we're all looking forward to hearing how your build process goes. Feel free to posts plenty of pictures along the way so we can see

Cheers, Ebony.

Good luck with ur new dream home.

Week 1 - Site Cut and Pegging - 11/09/2011

After only 2 weeks since the land settled we have had our site cut and pegged, ready for the slab.

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Week2 - Slab Boxed - 17/09/2011

The slab has now been boxed and ready for the pour.

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Front left side view

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Front right side view

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Rear view

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Opps, cracked footpath

Week3 - Slab Poured and Frame Start - 24/09/2011

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Yay! Slab poured and house frame has started

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Frame Layed out. Thats one nice looking slab!

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From the rear. Who let the gremlin in!

Week4 - Ground Floor Framed - 02/10/2011

Moving along very nicely. The ground floor has taken shape.

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View of the front. House is starting to take shape.

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Master bedroom

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Ensuite with pantry and kitchen frame at rear

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Rumpus

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Living-Dining room

Week5 - First Floor Framed and Roof Truss - 08/10/2011

They got stuck into the first floor and almost got all the roof trusses on. A few windows were also fitted to the lower floor. Things are going really well and we are all excited about the house finally starting to take shape.

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House from the front. Starting to take shape.

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Side view showing some windows that have been put in

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Rear of the house showing the bedrooms and WIR size

Week6 - Brick problem - Stalled - not much extra done - Roof tiles - 15/10/2011

On Wednesday 13/10, I went down to finally meet up with my SS and check out the site as it had completed frame stage. I had a private inspector to do a checkup of the slab and completed frame as well.

The frame had come up nicely and there were just some minor fix ups to be done so I was pretty happy with everything at this point. The roof tiles were also on and they just had to put the guttering and fascia on to complete it which would happen over the next few days so another tick for PD.

Things seemed to be going really smooth and I was expecting the bricks to have arrived when I was informed by my SS that the bricks were not coming. The batch of bricks in the color we had selected, CAT6- Merlot, had some problems when they were being made and to the credit of the brick supplier, they would not release them. They had tried 2 batches over the last few months and both of them had failed. Had they come in on time then they would of started bricking on the 12/10, a day before the meeting with the SS.

I was gutted.

The most important part of the outside of our house was going to be the brick color. The bricks, in our opinion, were to define the whole character of the house and all the colors we selected were based off the bricks.

Keeping positive, I quickly got on the phone with our CSA who had already listed some replacement brick colors that we could select from. That night we were off driving around doing stealth brick missions on a bunch of houses, units and flats checking out the different bricks our CSA had suggested.

We settled on the same Category brick, CAT6, but in a slightly darker color, Espresso. This seems to be a dark chocolate color and a slightly darker brick to our original selection. When I sat back and thought about it I figured we might of dodged a bullet. I get the feeling that the new bricks were actually more like the color I imagined my house to be. Its just that when we selected our brick color we only had a very small selection plate to look at like 6 or so bricks. This, I was told, can look very different when you see a whole house built from the same brick color.

Overall, I'm happy with the change and think that this brick issue might of actually worked out for the better.

[ img ] Merlot [ img ] Espresso

Week7 - Roof Complete - Windows - 22/10/2011

The roof was finished off and all the windows are in. Some of the windows were broken as noted by my SS when I met with him a week ago but I guess they put them in so that the brickies have an idea of where to brick. I figure that they will fix them at a later date (hopefully before lockup so I don't get any rain coming in the house).

I was also told that it would be 2 weeks until my new bricks arrive. Not 100% happy with this but I guess the brick supplier has already committed their current supply of the bricks to other builds. I was hoping I would get some special treatment and be able to jump the line as they were not able to supply my first selected bricks but not to be.

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Roof and windows done

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View of the games room and hallway to bed4 and 5

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broken windows in bed 3

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broken window in games

Hi Zinner,

WOW your build is going great..... don't worry about the broken windows the roofies did that to our house and PD will cover that under their insurance

Glad to hear that your brick issue has been sorted, such a shame that it put the building process on hold Never mind moving forward it sounds like you are happy with the new selection, and full credit to the brick maker for pulling the bricks.

Look forward to watching your home take shape once the bricks arrive onsite

Thanks for the support baby bacchus.

I am still a little behind updating this thread with pics but I should be able to get it to the current state this week. I'm also going try to get the selection and spec information at the start of the thread finished as well... everyone loves the selection info

Week8 - Wrapping Ground Floor - ready for bricking - 31/10/2010

The ground floor has been wrapped and its all ready to be bricked. Still waiting on the bricks. I was told they should come this week. I have my doubts as I figure that most tradies will take a long weekend as its Melbourne Cup on tuesday. I'm not too phased as even I have a long weekend due to my work requesting staff take the Monday off as well if possible.

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Week9 - Still no bricks - 04/11/2011

I rushed down to the site after work on friday to see if the bricks were there but it was as I suspected, no bricks. Dam Melbourne cup!

I took a few photos as it was nice and sunny but nothing has been done since my last update.

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Week10 - Bricks Started - 13/11/2011

This week the bricks finally arrived. YAHOO!!! I was so happy After 4 weeks of waiting it sort of suprised me so I had to dance a jig...



The color looks really nice and the missus is super happy about it (so double bonus points for me! ). I was there on the saturday and it was sunny which gave the bricks a dark brown/chocolate color to them. The next day I went down to take some pics. It was overcast and I noticed that the color of the bricks had changed to a dark grey color . I couldnt put my finger on the change so I started calling them "magic bricks" (at least that's what I was saying to the kids who think its great), as they seem to change color depending on the weather... almost like they have there own moods...

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Bricks are here and the garage has been started already.

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From the front

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Garage wall - For a closer look at the color

Great work... those bricks are GREAT!

Just wait till they are cleaned they will change again!

Week11 - Bricks Ground Floor - 20/11/2011

The brickies did a top job this week and almost completed the all of the ground floor. Hats off to good brickies

They should complete all the ground floor bricks by the end of this week and then the scaffolds can come in so they can finish off the first floor bricks the week after next. Loving the look of the bricks and getting ready for some roughing in from the electrical and plumbing guys.

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Front (can just see the opp side garage wall on the left hand side)

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Full frontal

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Rear

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Side (can really see the diff color when the sun hits them in this shot)