Building a Sekisui house Now Holmesville

Oh I love that! It's quite similar in colour to the laminate we picked.

Huge wohoo moment today, council have already approved the removal of the trees, application only took 7 days. Getting so close to a start date now. CDC here we come.

Yey!!! Congrats

Great news!

Woohoo awesome news!

So if anyone wants some firewood. Let me know trees are coming down on the 12th March.

We gave away the old woodfire heater last weekend. Surely some people will wants to stock up woods for winter.

Thats my thought exactly.

List the firewood on Gumtree. If it's in small enough pieces for people to take it away easily (lift into car boot or onto trailer), it will be gone within a day.

Thats a fantastic idea thanks clintb.

Just don't want to put it through the chipper if people can use it.

One thing I forgot - make sure the pieces are small enough to be used in an actual fire place. These people collecting free firewood can't be bothered if they have to actually do some work to chop them down to size.

I had some pieces that were 40cm diameter by 20-30cm high and they sat there for a couple of weeks. As soon as I cut them in half and re-listed the new photo, they cleared out the next morning.

Lol clintb yep sounds like human nature at its best.

So we are continueing to move forward, we are expecting construction certificate and all final paperwork on Monday, then all we need is the Authority to commence don't know how long this takes or what it really involves would love it if someone could enlighten me. But all going to plan 4-6 weeks Sekisui will take over the site my estimate only.

Today hubby and I ventured to Sydney to look at tiles and... we have decided on our main tiles yay long time coming. Haven't ordered them unsure whether I should wait until I can properly measure the internals or trust the plans? We need to allow 10-12 weeks to come in as they are coming from spain, also need to find out if we can store them down there until after handover and driveway is complete. We are getting them from Kalafrana ceramics and found the owner very helpful. The tile also comes in an exterior tile which we will put in our alfresco.

This tile with paint colours



Tile with kitchen stone bench top, white cupboards and wood grain kick board of island bench




Just for fun tried to take photos of everything only to have my cat bandit photo bomb.

Love the tiles! Authority to commence should take no more than a week, just depends how quick your bank is! It's basically just a letter from the bank to the builder saying everything is in order and they can start building

Thanks KLB i didn't know whether it was a council thing or where the authrity came from. So hopefully 4 weeks at the most then. As I have been told that sekisui have 3 weeks to be on site once Authority certificate has been given.

The "Authority to Commence Construction" (ACC) is an internal Sekisui document which they send from one department to another. It basically says that they have finalised everything with the owner, authorities and internally with their design team and the house is now ready to start construction.

Check your contract though, because if it is like mine, the ACC has no bearing on the clock actually starting for your build.
Essentially, the days start counting as soon as:
a) you have provided all the necessary information from your end (proof of ownership, finance, demolition certificate etc etc), and
b) authority approvals have been received (typically DA and CC).

Sekisui will try to tell you that they can't start counting the days until they have issued themselves the ACC, but that's not in the contract at all - at least it wasn't in mine. So check yours to see what conditions have to be met for the days to start.

If the conditions to start have been met, then Sekisui have 20 days in which to start on site - although if they don't meet this timeframe, there is no penalty other than they have less days from the contractual period.
Eg, if they have 150 days to finish your job and they don't start until 30 days have gone (10 days more than the 20 days allowed), then they just have 140 days to finish instead.

Sekisui never told us we needed a demolition DA either. They seem pretty lacking of giving out information in this department. We honestly we surprised because we'd told them and discussed it SO many times and they'd not once told us they wouldn't actually be including it in the main DA. Anyway

So exciting! And as Clint said our contract was the same.

I love those tiles, gorgeous. We saw those and dreamt So excited to see it come together.

I will thoroughly read contract once i get it tomorrow.

I think the tiles is the number one aspect of building our house that I am looking forward to being completed. They are more then I initially wanted to spend, but justified it as it is one of the biggest choices. This is why kt has taken me 12 months of looking.

Clintb thank you for that information. Just need to finalise everything my end now in regards to finance and we are ready to move to site.

So after sending back the final variation and now just waiting for the finalisation of our loan we are getting closer to starting on site.

I am worried about a couple of things though, our driveway is rather narrow and is the only access to our block, sekisui have stated in the contract they will take no responsibility for any damage done to the driveway. Which will a very expensive job if we need to redo. Also the owner of the front house who we brought our block off has put a colorbond fence right at the edge of the driveway. We were never asked to contribute to this fence and why they would put the fence up when they know we are about to build is beyond me. I will not be paying for any damage to the fence thats for sure.

I also found out today that come the 1st of July sekisui house as we know it for residential construction will not exist and will be burbank homes. I confirmed this with my sales consultant at chisolm. However was guaranteed that although there was a name change that the contractors SS and other personel will remain the same. I have to admit I am still worried. Just hope the build continues without drama.

I'm in same boat with the new fence, the duplex neighbour has a new fence put in which we never pay for it as we previously had a good timber fence and as we are going to built a new house I don't see why we should put in a new fence. I have seen many building site with damaged fence. But he went ahead with new fence.

I wonder if it is only a name change, or did Burbank take over Sekisui, or did they merged.
I do hope every things run smoothly.


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