Hi all

After a few months of reading many H1 posts and blogs, I have learnt a lot from fellow H1 members and enjoyed reading your building progress, photo’s and many building tips. So I thought it was about time I start my own H1 thread and set up a blog, to share our building progress with you.

We currently live in a single story 3 bedroom home we built 15 years ago. Started out with hubby, then our family grew to 2 kids, now 13yo girl & 11yo boy.

With hubby working from home for the last 5 years (his office is in our dining room!) and the kids growing up, it was time to upgrade. After 18 months looking at established homes, we decided to buy a block of land locally and build again.

We put a deposit on a 639sqm block in early October 2011 and started our search for our new home. Our journey begins!

Timeline
02/10/11 Deposit on land
31/10/11 Deposit paid to Wisdom
02/12/11 First tender appointment
12/12/11 Second tender acceptance
28/01/12 First draft architectural plans
09/02/12 Land registered
22/02/12 Contacts signed
29/02/12 Land settled
07/02/12 DA lodged to council
16/05/12 Council approved DA
10/07/12 Pool build commenced
02/08/12 Construction certificate issued
19/08/12 Site fencing
23/08/12 Site cut
31/08/12 Piering & plumbing
03/09/12 Formwork
04/09/12 Slab
12/09/12 Framing commenced
18/09/12 Frames complete and windows installed
02/10/12 Brickies started
18/10/12 Bricking finished
27/10/12 2nd floor roof
05/11/12 Scafolding removed
20/11/12 Air con ducting & electrical wiring
27/11/12 Gyprock
10/12/12 Stairs
12/12/12 Lock up
17/12/12 Water proofing of wet areas
18/12/12 Internal doors installed
03/01/13 Tiling commenced
15/01/13 Kitchen cupboards installed
16/01/13 Bathroom, laundry cabinets installed
19/01/13 Painters started
25/01/13 Bathroom & kitchen caesarstone benchtops installed
31/01/13 Taps, shower sets & semi frameless screens installed.
04/02/13 Electricals completed
05/02/13 Carpet and main floor tiles laid
08/02/13 Tiling undone
12/02/13 Tiling, take two
14/02/03 Kitchen splashback installed
16/02/13 House clean
22/02/13 Final paint and stairs built
26/02/13 Formwork for driveway and pathway
06/03/13 PCI
08/03/13 Driveway and path done
20/03/13 Handover
01/05/13 Landscaping starts


Our blog - http://ourwisdommajestic40.blogspot.com.au/

Congratulations!!!

Do you have a copy of your plans???

Good choice and congratulations on deciding to build another house for your growing family

I look forward to following your progress

K

Thankyou!........yes, plans will come soon I hope.

Well we now have final plans and we signed our home building contract last week. We also settle on our land this week on Wed 29/2.....Yeah!! So full steam ahead to get our DA ready to lodge.

Colours appointment booked in for this week......after MANY MANY hours over the last 2 months (and I mean a lot) I have been looking at external colour samples and combinations and we have decided on most things. Just one sticking point is the facia and garage door. We like the lighter colours to offset our darker brick and roof but can't decide from 3 of the lighter colours we like.

Brick - Austral Symmetry Asphalt
Roof - Bristile classic gun metal
Windows - Anodic off white
Front & balcony doors - timber stained Hume doors
Driveway - Gun Metal
Gutters - Monument (maybe ironside)

Facia and Garage door - we like 3 so far:
Surfmist
Evening Haze
Dune

We can't decide out of these 3 colours. Also considered monument for the garage door but we prefer the lighter colours to the darker ones.

I would appreciate any suggestions/ feedback to help me decide.

Great colour chioces. We have dark brown bricks with monument facia, garage door and front door. We ended up choosing Dune to go with our colours. If in dought, grab a sample of everything and it will help alot. Good luck

Hi onewheel,
Colour choices sound good, we have symmetry asphalt bricks with monument window, gutters fascia and dune garage door and dune cladding.
If you have white windows I wonder whether you are best to stick with surfmist
That would then give you the contrast against your bricks.
Although I think that dune would go well too

Thanks Rudolf1980 & gogo65 for your feedback, we are leaning towards surfmist but I like the colours you are using too......so many lovely colours to play around, we built 15 years ago and the colour range was more limited then compared to now.

Congrats, onewheel!!

I'm with Wisdom too & expecting slab next week...

Good luck for your journey!

Thanks Willcres....you must be excited now the house build is actually starting. Good luck with the weather, hopefully the rain eases off by then.

Thanks, Onewheel!

hi onewheel

congrats on starting your own thread. i had a sticky beak at your blog and i am so excited to see someone else from voyager point on here! I have been stalking this forum since we exchanged on our block in september 2010 and havent come across anyone.

have you had your colour appointment yet? I like dune and surfmist (we're actually tossing up between them and shale grey for our render and fascia), i think all 3 would look good but id probably lean towards surfmist if you are having white windows. are you having any render or cladding?

I look forward to following your progress (on and off the forum!)!

Hi EmRuss

Hello!! It's great to hear from a fellow homebuilder from Voyager point! What street & Lot No. are you? We settled on our land on Wed 29th Feb. Hopefully the DA will be lodged next week.

We did our colours today - we ended up changing the garage door and facia to Evening Haze after some feedback from here and a few other people. Many thanks to everyone for your comments. We also decided on monument for the guttering. I hope it will look OK. We are just having brick, no render.

We also did our internal colour selections, chosing the kitchen colour was the hardest. I have been looking for soooooo long at various websites, photo's, magazines etc.... so many colours to chose from. Then I stumbled across realestate.com.au and they have a section for "Home ideas" with heaps of photo's to look at to get idea's from. Anyway we have gone for a light beige colour for the cupboards (cafe cream). They didn't have a sample to give us but the colour looks a bit different online. So now slightly stressed about it and wondering if I have made the right decision. Hubby reminds me the colour of something online looks different than it actually is. I rang the kitchen manufacturer to send me a sample so hopefully that will put my mind at ease.

What stage are your building plans at? Who are you building with? It will be great to follow someone else's progress at our neck of the woods.

hi onewheel

im sure all your colours will all look great. i think i need to check out the home ideas section of realestate.com.au, i love looking at photos and pictures of people's houses and trying to imagine what mine will look like.

looks like we are at the same stage! we are also hoping our plans will be submitted to council this week. we're building a custom design with a small builder at narellan. we are in willowie, lot 124. which lot number are you? what colour splashback and benchtop have you chosen for your kitchen?

Hi Em Russ

We are also in Willowie Way, lot 410.....we are the 3rd last block at the end. So we are just up the road from you! Just waiting on solicitor to provide confirmation of land settlement then I assume the builder will lodge DA this week (fingers crossed). It will be interesting to see if we lodge DA around the same time how long we each take for council approval. Is your house single or double storey? Ours is 2, so our build will be at least 26 weeks.

Do you already live in the area? We have been at Wattle Grove for 15 years so we are happy with the area and the schools nearby.

Our kitchen we selected Polytec "Cafe Cream" which is a light coffee colour with a Caesarstone Organic White benchtop with a kind of milk chocolate glass splashback (called maltese). I wonder how they find names for some of these colours. I spent so many hours looking at kitchens online & magazines, it was only a night before our colours appointment look at realestate.com that I found what what we wanted, so hopefully it will look something like we are after. A friend of mine just moved into her new house, she also had organic white benchtops (with white cupboards), it looked great, so we are pleased with our benchtop choice.

What colours have you chosen?

Good news!!! Received a phone call to advise our DA lodged with council today........now need to get a move on with organising a pool, which needs to be dug before the house build commences.

Indeed good news, Onewheell!
Hope this rain will stop when you start the build.

yay that's great news! i spoke to our builder this morning and our DA will be sent in today.

we are currently living in holsworthy, my fiance went to school there and has lived at voyager point before.

your kitchen sounds nice, i cant wait to design mine but we'll probably wait till we have council approval before we see the kitchen people. it will be white on white with a grey splashback.

that's a nice block you've got! does it have an APZ?

here's to council not taking forever to approve us!!

Great news for you too EmRuss......interesting to see if we get our approvals back at the same time. Was told it takes 6-8 weeks.

Your kitchen colours sounds lovely, that colour scheme was in one of our builders display homes and it looks stunning. Hubby did not want white kitchen cupboards so chose a cream colour instead.

I'm not sure about our land and APZ. There will be bush across the road which I assume is council land, so they will have to worry about that. I think they have to make sure it is cleared a certain amount before the kerb. We have had to pay an extra $8K for bushfire requirements for the build, such as hard wood for the eaves, gutter guards etc. I'll look through our paperwork again to see what is required.

yeah ive heard 6-8 weeks too. will let you know how we go! we actually submitted a DA last year and it took them 7 weeks to get back to us. unfortunately the builder wasnt able to make the changes council required so we had to start all over again.

it's ok you dont have to go through your paperwork, i was just curious.