Masterton Homes - The next thread 4.0

Gilly - you have such patience I hope it's all done by Xmas for you x
Villinaliters - that is terrible !
Ren- it all looks stunning !!! Won't be long now !

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!!! Sounds like you have been extremely busy, and will be for a while to come! How fantastic to be waking up every day in your gorgeous new home. I am a little jealous, but I know our time will come. Looking forward to seeing the pics when you are able. Enjoy every moment!!

Christmas not looking likely. SS said this week that PCI is usually 12 weeks from when the roof goes on. Roof is (hopefully) going on this week, 12 weeks from this Friday will be 19/12/14, and that's the day that M shutdown for a months holiday. And we all know that moving in is probably about a month or more after PCI, which in our case, taking into account M's holidays, will take us to mid to late February. At least I have a bit more time to de-clutter and clean before putting our house on the market!

As our build is expected to go beyond the contract period, M will/should end up paying us the $50 per day for failing to complete our house in due time. Whilst I know that they don't pay this whilst they are holidays, would anyone know does the payment stop when we get to PCI or at keys handover?

Did anyone get contract reviewed by a solicitor before signing - is there any point if Masterton don't let you change any of it?

PCI moved forward to today!!!!!
Flags ready!

Haha.


www.villinaatvoyager.blogspot.com.au

Woohoo!!! Good luck!!!!

Hi everybody! I have stalked this forum for a while now lol and have found it to be a huge help and have loved seeing how everybody is progressing! My partner and i are building the villina 28 and have just been council approved! I am wondering how long from this point am i likely to see a start? Hoping we see something before Christmas. We were told we would  be at lockup stage by christmas, but had some neighbour issues and delays in council so am thinking this is probably not likely now! Thanks

Hi Shell90, and welcome to the forum!! Theres quite a few Villina builders on here (and lots of pics) so I'm sure you'll find lots of great info. Every situation/build is different, but in our case, once we got out of council, M had about another month worth of behind the scenes type paperwork before getting out of the preconstruction phase. Then the 20 (working) day countdown starts, where they organise the SS, fence, port-a-loo, all the basics to get things started. By the end of the 20 days, you should see some action start on your block. First they will scrape it (removing all the grass/weeds/etc), then they will excavate it if it isn't already a flat block. Then the slab, and so on. Hope this gives you a bit of an idea of what the next steps will be! Where are you building?

Thanks Gillym. I have seen some pictures. They all look great! I cant wait to finally see our choices all come together. I hope the rest of our pre construction phase goes something like yours! Im starting to become a little impatient and just want to see some action! I think just seeing the port-a-loo arrive will excite me haha! We are building in the Port Stephens area near Newcastle. How about you? What colours have you chosen outside?

Oh, whatever you do, don't wish that your build timeline goes like ours!! The month of paperwork is about the only thing that I mentioned that actually worked for us...... everything else has taken longer than we have been told, and longer than it seems that everyone else has experienced! The timeline I mentioned was how things "should" go..... not how things have happened for us! A brief overview of our delayed build.... We got our Council approval last December, just as M went on holidays for a month. Then it took till the end of Feb till we got out of pre-construction, then 20 days past with loo & fence arriving, but nothing else. In April, we had massive rain, and our block was deemed too wet for what seemed like ages. It took till July to get the slab. Now, 9 months after Council approval, we have brickwork done, but are still waiting on the roof. Hopefully this week. But not all builds have our delays. Another poster on this forum got out of pre-construction 2 days before us, and they moved into the home last week. I know that it will all happen, and good things come to those who wait...... so I'm expecting lots of good things!

As to more details about our home....... we are building the Overture in Gerringong (South Coast NSW). We have Cement bricks (a stone sort of colour), Barramundi roof, & Monument gutters. Fascias, downpipes & garage door will be Surfmist. How about your colours...... what have you chosen? Port Stephens is a lovely area!

Ahh i see! That sounds terrible!! Its such a long process already its frustrating that delays drag it out even longer!! We have had a couple of delays during the first stages just regarding plans, it took 6 weeks to move our house back 1m and then the neighbours behind our block complained to council so that was another 5 week delay, but that is nothing compared to your experience! But as you've said, good things come to those who wait! It will all be worth it in the end!

Your colours sound lovely! We are having a colourbond roof in monument, our gutters are also monument. Fascia, downpipes and garage door will be dune. We chose mild steel bricks and also a feature brick in expresso which is a blueish/dark grey colour!

Shell90, welcome! After we got our council approval, it took a month to come out of pre-construction and then another 10 days for site scrape.
Renee, how did it go? Waiting to see lots of pics ... Good luck.

PCI went well. Some paint to touch up, gyprock and cornices to straighten. Also the mirror in our powder room is really high. I have asked SS to look at having it lowered. He thinks it will be a big job as they will break the mirror taking it off but it is just below my shoulder height and my 8 year old (easily mistaken for a 6 year old) has no chance of using the mirror.
The round red stickers my SS was using are everywhere. My house has chicken pox.

Entry


WIP (sink to be added)


Stairs



Clean ensuite


Different colours from the downlights. I like the middle, hubby likes the bottom. I think I will win this one.


www.villinaatvoyager.blogspot.com.au

Renee your house is looking great the ensuite tiles you selected look beautiful can't wait until I need to go and select colours .

Renee, it is looking great! Was the upgrade to the corner bath expensive? How long until handover?

Hi Redbrick
could you please tell me what tiles you have in the ensuite and also the exhaust fan does it have a separate ON switch .
Your house is beautiful. Congratulations

Cello_Collaroy - did you sort out the tiling to the ceiling issue? I think we had ours in the tender but we discussed our options with the tiling company and we believed that was the be all end all.

fingalbrad - hope your dings and chips were fixed by M. Fantastic news regarding handover. Good luck!!

shobha - M are wanting to charge us over $9k for delays and they took 100 days to complete CDC. I thought it was meant to be quicker than going through council but alas, they can't calculate the roof height of buildings it seems. We don't deny that we were also at fault and caused delays but the fact that they can hit you with a fee with no warning is really pathetic. Our sales guy would always warn us. Go figure.

MelMel - we haven't started construction yet. House was flattened earlier this month. Just signed off on electricals yesterday.

Villinaeliters - recessed to me means that it's flush but then again, knowing M is could mean a few cms into the wall. I had a little chuckle about your comment regarding the big doors not fitting into the little doorways. We also went with the 2340 sized doors as we have higher ceilings all round. They must just not think outside the square and just go with the template?? That's horrible about your window debacle and would really peeve me off. Wow, things companies do...

ckingo74 - we're installing our own appliances except for the Baumatic 900mm underbench oven. We also noticed the Smeg appliances and when we questioned our $9k fee increase, if it would include the updated appliances, we were flatly told no!! Apparently the price hike is for build price only. They're definitely not consistent as our colours rep showed us all the current items and told us what we signed up for wasn't valid any more *shrug*

GillyM - you must have a LOT of patience with all those delays you're experiencing. I was seriously thinking of writing a list of suggestions where M could improve themselves starting with the pre construction process. The first item on the list would be "give ample warning of impending fee increase especially if M have been the cause of the initial delays, which in turn has a cascading effect and screws with the 90 days due date".

Ren1979 - nice pics. I especially love your wall tiles in the bathroom near the spa bath and your kitchen looks great.

Pikey - fantastic stuff happening your way

shell90 - welcome to the forum


Where have people been sourcing their pendant lights?

PS That took half the morning to catch up on the goss but it's been great. I've missed coming here!

wow, redwynne, you certainly have had a busy morning catching up! I really think that 90 days is completely inadequate in a lot of cases. We were very lucky to not get charged as we made it in pretty close to the 90 days (can't remember the exact number, but I know our preconstruction lady said she would have to do a count back to see if we would be charged), and that was with a pretty quick council approval (only 3 weeks). There must be a lot of people who end up paying more, not because of things they may have done to delay the process, but things that are outside of their control (ie: council). And $9000 is a pretty big hit to the already stretched budget. Theres just so many things that keep adding on (costwise) to get to the finished home that we are all looking forward to....... certainly don't need to be giving it away!
Yes, I am a fairly patient person (luckily!). I just figure that jumping up and down at our SS or at M in general will probably only p*** them off and won't help in the long run. This time next year, we'll be in our gorgeous new home and all the delays will be a dim, dark memory.
We got our pendant lights for the kitchen from Beacon Lighting. I looked around a lot online first. When you find what you like, then you can see who stocks it...... saves lots of driving all over the place looking through light shops!

Redwynne the answer is recessed means recessed into the brickwork but not flush (ours is attached to the timber frame) - or so my SS tells me - and still not sure why it cost over $400 to get it done - should be a discount (as they have less brickwork to do. If not "recessed" I think that it gets attached after the bricks go on. A lot of money for about a 15cm gain!

Door heights we hope are being addressed - someone forget to communicate something somewhere! Funnily enough when the SS pulled up our colours schedule (which has door heights) - he had 2 versions - one a PDF or word document - which had all wrong heights (eg all doors 2040) - and one which was the scanned and signed version we sent back in - all 2340!!! Makes me a bit worried that every other choice on my colours document might not be getting through to the right people ...

Re our "window-gate" issue .... still waiting for a resolution, hopefully today???

hi everyone, just wanted to introduce myself. I have been stalking this forum for a while and have finally decided to become a member. We are also building a modified version of the Villina 32 - seems to be a popular choice! We love our layout and cannot wait for things to start happening. A bit of background - we love our house now and love our position, but with two girls now we feel our original little red brick home is just too small. We have played with the idea of building a new home many times but have never really followed through - until now! When we went out to Oran Park we fell in love with the Villina and after discussions with a lovely sales guy at Warwick Farm, building our dream home didn't seem as scary as what we first thought. We took the plunge and paid the initial $3900 to M on the 1st of March. After many, many variations and just as many draft plans, we were finally happy with everything and signed contracts on the 13th of June. That's where our story has stopped! We are now into the 101th day of the 90 day validation period, and M has yet to submit our plans to council. We have been more than patient, but our patience is starting to dwindle. One of the things keeping a smile on my face, is seeing all your beautiful homes come to life - some faster that others! I am hoping that all this waiting and frustration is all going to be worth it!