Building with WA C*****y B******s in South West Western Australia.
Donnybrook to be precise. Donnybrook is a small country town.
We decided we wanted a "tree change" and to move away from the city.
We moved here from Perth in January and less than a week later our house in Perth sold. ( thank goodness) So we were able to put in an offer to buy the block we are going to build on so that settlement matched settlement on our previous house.Our block is 3/4 of an acre within the town.

Our Land title arrived Thursday First formal plans should be ready in the next week or so.


Our builders rep rang today and asked us to organise to come in to decide exactly where we want the house sited. The site engineers have come back with what he thinks is good news about site costs and we should have costing with in the next week. We are meeting him tomorrow to work out exactly where the house will be sited on the block.

http://wherethehearthis.blogspot.com/

Congratulations

Had a look at the blog....nice aspect....nice house...and nice mailbox....

Look forward to future installments.

I told hubby about the mail box and his comment was. "How about a nice metal one. " Oh well. we had an old office dustbin with a spare roof tile on it for a postbox for nearly a year at our previous house until finally, fedup, I bought basic wooden one. Hubby refused to let me build a brick letter box as he said I didn't know what i was doing. (so i went and did a brickies course). I never did get my brick letter box although i did end up building most of the brick piers for our patio.(On the understanding that if hubby didn't think they were up to scratch he would demolish them. )
Our neighbour who was a brickie by trade came in to inspect them and told hubby i'd done a brilliant job so they got to stay.

This time I'm not sure what sort of letter box we'll have. Hubby said he is happy enough to have the most basic metal one he can buy but I'd prefer something a little nicer. I guess we have 12 months to find a compromise.

I've added some details about the block to the blog

Ah, a brand new block .... plenty of sweat and tears on the way!

Good luck.

New block, underground power, town water, phone connected to front of block. fingers crossed there's broadband. ( have concerns) even though it's only 2.5 kms from the rental we are currently in which is less than 1 km from the exchange.
[ img ]

[ img ]

Well it's starting!. I got home tonight and DH had visited the block today and....
wait for it...
we've got a builders sign.. tada! ok sad I know.

First plans are complete and we've been told they were posting them to us today to arrive tomorrow so we'll be able to spend the weekend admiring them and finding mistakes and errors and realizing things we should have asked for.

Prestart is tomorrow. Very nervous. we spent almost 3 hours tonight going back over everything and making sure we hadn't forgotten any things to ask about and triple checking all the positions of power points, tv points, extra lights etc , etc...

Here's hoping the kitchen drama is sorted out easily and reasonably inexpensively. ha! is anything ever inexpensive?
recap-. - mini pantry door.. kitchen, miles too wide.

Think good thoughts for us tomorrow please.

Good thoughts sent out - hope all goes well.

Pre-start concluded. It went for just under 4 hours. Should have been 2-3 hours but I can only assume it was because of the discussion and fiddling about over the kitchen changes. We've had the kitchen changes sent off to the draftspeople to be redrawn. We do get to sign off on it or not before we are locked in. Prices for all the additions should be in within a week or so then everything will be sent to us for approval/change etc in the next week or 2.
We had a few alternative scenarios priced for certain variations. won't know until it all comes back how much we will have to outlay for the granite benchtops yet. Dreading that bit of the pricing.
Also got some pricing for having some rail showering but at this stage we will probably get the standard fitting and upgrade it ourselves later. Can't hurt to find out the price though.
We've also canned having the builder do our driveway after advice. Given we wanted other paving done it will be cheaper to get it all done privately. So now we'll be looking for a driveway contractor. I guess that means we can reconsider the whole issue of what to do the driveway with now. For the short term this gives us another 4- 4 1/2 k to spend on the house but we'll still need a driveway before we move in so it's not really a saving.
We found out our ground has been rated S4 for slab works which is one step better than an M but only just.
We ended up changing a couple of things including the colour of all window/door frames from blue mountain to charcoal.

And our back laundry door and the door at the back of the garage will be painted in wattyl's "weekender"

One more thing ticked off the list

kexkez,
The real fun begins! How did the kitchen isssues pan out? Did you get everything sorted?

Jo

Yes Paula. Can't wait for something to change on the block but thats about 6-8 weeks away I would suspect. If not longer.
From memory ( i did write it down on hubby's note pad at teh time)
it's about 2 weeks 'til contracts are finally signed with completely locked in variations and it gets any minor changes done. Plans are finalised. then it's off to council for approval ( 2-3 weeks) then a couple of weeks after than for earthworks slab prep. I did workout that we might be at plate height around the end of sep-oct. so anything sooner than that would be exciting. We expect to have the keys around easter next year. But who knows it could be sooner.

Hi Joles Hopefully. I'd have loved the pantry to have been slightly longer but it's fine. Door is now a practical 620 width. Hoping the shelving at 450mm isn't too deep. We can still make it narrower a.t.m as 450 is their standard depth. Unfortunately to make the pantry any longer would have meant making the bench area beside the stove smaller and I didn't want it shrinking any further. In the end DH was keenly eyeing off one of the wider 950 sized stove tops but there really wasn't the room.
I'm a bit nervous about losing cupboard space for a dishwasher recess. I love my cupboard space.

Congratulations on getting your pre-start done kexkez!

Would you really sacrifice a dishwasher for more cupboard space?

but I'm not getting a dishwasher. thats the whole point.

OH! sorry, must have missed that! sleep deprivation again ...

np. hubby wasn't keen but I thought it was something to consider and the general opinion on here was it was worth it for possible resale later. Not that we intend to sell for a very long time. I figure we can always put the rubbish bin in the space for now. Who knows perhaps one day DH will change his mind about dishwashers. DH's view is that they don't do a good job of cleaning dishes. he has a real phobia about dishes and cutlery not being clean and tends to inspect closely and if needed ( in his opinion) polish cutlery before eating with it if we go out for a meal. If someone wants to give me some links to prove they do I'd appreciate it. With the info that they are also more eco friendly than once believed and waste less water than washing up that I've seen recently maybe i could tempt him.

I must point out he does most of the dishwashing here.

Hey Kex, finally found your building thread! I can stop asking all about it via PM now I always thought "home is where the hearth is" was just your signature, didn't realize it was a blog link! At this stage I wouldn't be surprised if our two places start at the same time.

Our pre-start would have gone for about 3hrs, it just seems a long drawn out process because they have to go through every single detail, so it's very lengthy even without any changes.
The good thing is that you can still change some preferences once the costs come in.

HI Pebble. re: preferences - Well I hope so. I'm going to change the dishwasher space back to a 600mm width for a start. Then hope most of the expensive upgrades come in within a do-able budget.

Could be fun watching our houses race towards the finish line.
Hopefully we won't be going through the same drama with earthworks.

Hmm May completion? I'm still hoping for April.

I'm being on the cautious side I suppose. They said 10 months, but I'm hoping it will be less than that, considering the industry has slowed down etc the building times should be faster. And I imagine with teh 10 month time line they should have given themselves enough room for any unforseen delays anyway. I'm sure they don't want to pay out late fees!

Am in shock atm. we've been told some really horrible news about our site costs. 45K! and worst still the sand pad the developer provided has to be removed as the sand is not suitable Possibly due to the rating they have given our block or maybe it was just crappy sand. who knows. so much for buying a block with a sand pad. Hmm developer has put sand pads on all the blocks in our small street of 5 so I am thinking anyone who buys here will be in the same boat. We did expect there will still be some proper sand pad work to be done but we certainly didn't expect to be told the sand pad on the block was so bad it has to be removed. It's going to cost us 11k to have it removed and replaced with suitable sand.

Hoping if nothing else we can have the sand removed to a lower part of the block we intended to fill anyway and at least save on sand disposal costs. arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
All this for a block rated S4. I'd hate to think what they would have said for an M rated block which is worse.

Our building super is trying to get hold of the engineers to see what they suggest. he even told hubby he might have to talk to the developer. We had been told 25-30 was average for the blocks around ours that were developed last year. 2 streets away. I had already told myself to expect anything up to 35k but 45 is a huge shock. that's my cork flooring. and more gone.