Our First Home - Building with Valeco in Brookhaven Estate

Following along, I live 5 mins away from brookhaven

Thanks for following!
Oh really, we are currently living in Ormeau, so not far either (hence the weekly visits already lol)

Where abouts are you building?

Building in South Ripley, but grew up in Buccan for most of my life.

I'm currently living with the in-laws at bahrs scrub while our house gets finished!

Trust me the weekly visits will turn into daily ones haha it's addicting!

Hey guys, not much to update here! Still patiently waiting for land to register.. not long now (fingers crossed).

We went out this afternoon and found a road and curb! The little things that excite us!

The first lot of homes in the estate should be finished up, ready for move in by Christmas and we received an update that settlements for our release are looking at “very latest February”, I think this is to allow for Christmas.

It’s amazing how fast everything is happening.

such a pretty street. not too much longer to wait... xmas is basically already here.

Thanks gr8ly, there are large mountains to the left, hoping we can see those from our alfresco

How’s progress on your build?

you'll have to take a pic of your land... looks like a really nice area

apparently we should have a slab by the end of next week then i'll be able to post some pics finally

Hey guys,
Got an update on land registration today, due to the rain late last year, it has been pushed out to March.
Honestly the longer the better, gives us a chance to keep saving!

The developer is letting all of us access the site early prior to registration in order to get our soil tests completed. They just advised us that the builder would need to make an appointment etc..

Emailed Valeco 10 minutes after receiving the email to organise the soil testing, I also asked at what point will our plans be submitted to our covenant for design guideline approval.

I received an email back from Valeco not even 5 minutes later to inform me that soil testing has already taken place on our lot and that the results are on file, also that our plans have been approved by covenant.

I have asked for the soil testing report and also asked when this would have be done, but must of just missed them leaving the office as i haven’t received a reply.

Does this seem strange to any one else, that the soil testing was done prior to registration or before even letting us know, also that we had no idea and don’t even know the results or have not seen the report?

hey breebarter good to hear from you! - yeah i didn't mind to wait either, except our estate registered very quickly lol. Communication isn't their strong point, but yes soil testing normally happens before your land is registered... basically as soon as there is access to the land, they normally go out and test. Also probably to make sure we stick with them for the build.

They should have at least informed you that they had gone out and got the test done, and they should have released the soil results as soon as they had it.

Thanks for the insight gr8ly.
I just sound it so odd we didn’t even know about it, like when did all of this even happen? Lol

I hope this isn’t the start of the so called ‘stressful builds’ because everything has been relatively easy so far.

Hope everything with your build is progressing well!!

Apparently Valeco have an entire month off, so they stopped work on our build before xmas, and won't start again till the 22nd of Jan!! although their head office was open this week.

Our partially completed frame has just been sitting there

Aren’t they lucky!!

22nd of Jan, lucky we haven’t had too much rain lately, but they would have been better off not starting the frame until they knew they could finish it.

exactly!!! i mentioned that to them several times.

We received our soil set results this morning as requested by us.

Class S - slightly reactive, hit rock at 500mm but admin said this will not pose a problem during construction, super excited to not have to fork out any cash for rock removal, as we were told to budget for 5-8k

We've come to a bit of a dilemma though, we really want to change some things on our working drawings, but I'm nervous about to $500 admin fee per item.


items as follow:
- Change skirtings and trim gloss paint to white
- Change height of living room window
- Upgrade butlers pantry splash back to the same as kitchen splash back
- Remove blinds to master bedroom.
- Add tv outlet, GPO and data/modem outlet to other side of living room

Has anyone changed things after signing their last lot of full working drawings, did you get hit with $500 per item and has anyone had the electrician do cash jobs for them?

Not sure wether to just admit defeat and leave things how they are.

Yay for your soil test results!

We were potentially going to change:

• vanity grain pattern
• floor wastes to smart wastes
• kitchen benchtops
• bathroom benchtops

We were told it would be 4x $500 (so a per item charge) because "different purchase orders/processes that need to be followed up, cancelled, amended and so forth and drawings amended."

In the end we only changed our kitchen and bathroom benchtops. We argued this should only be 1x $500 as this wouldn't require a change on the drawings and would only be one purchase order amendment (Caesarstone) and they agreed to that.

So for your changes, I suppose it would depend on how many purchase orders there are and drawings to change. I would think it would be 5x $500 the following:
- Change skirtings and trim gloss paint to white (paint order = $500)
- Change height of living room window (window order/plans = $500)
- Upgrade butlers pantry splash back to the same as kitchen splash back (tiles order = $500)
- Remove blinds to master bedroom. (blinds order = $500)
- Add tv outlet, GPO and data/modem outlet to other side of living room (electrical order/plans = $500)


It really sucks that it's per item.

Class S is pretty much the best you could have gotten. Yay! we tried getting credit back considering they cover up to Class H.. but didnt work.. im sure they are saving money.

Yeah they will most likely charge per item, but removing blinds would be easy to do yourself, and i would get a electrician after handover for the rest..

If you think you will regret the other things down the track, then i would just pay the fees... Bit ridiculous that we had to decide on every item before they even break ground. There are definitely things i want to change to, but we are already spending too much - we had to draw the line somewhere.

Thanks guys!! I’ve been waiting to see what colours say.

We ended up asking for the following:
- change height of living room window
- add GPO to under living room window and move TV/modem outlet to under window.
- upgrade butlers pantry splash back tiles to match kitchen Carrara herringbone splash back tiles

This is the response we got:

“Hi Bree,
Please see the attached variation to sign and return.
As the administration fee of $500 PER ITEM generally applies, I can waive all fee’s strictly once for you if documents are signed and returned within the 24 hours.”

All that for $380, I’ll take it!

Made my day haha, winning!

We bought some furniture!












Also need to decide on a lounge by tomorrow, the below are what we have narrowed it down to, thinking on a dark grey,

Yaaaassssss!! That is SO awesome! Congrats! Haha

Oh man, I'm jealous of all your furniture shopping... hahaha

We're not doing any shopping until we've moved in. (I went to buy half price bathroom towels the other day and my partner told me not to.)

I have my heart set on a bunch of items that are super expensive (always the case). I'd love to get a new bed frame (ours is broken), a dining table for the alfresco, a coffee table and a console for the entry. Once we've moved in I will attempt to find cheaper alternatives, so long as the quality holds up. Otherwise I'll have to try to convince my partner they are worth investing in. (Now that we have our own house I think I'd rather start purchasing quality furniture that will last a lifetime as opposed to say, Ikea stuff.) Anyway, I won't take up your thread talking about all my dream items, hehe, I'll probably post about it in my thread at some point.

What store did you buy these from?

I agree that a dark grey couch would suit your home best. Not sure which style though.... maybe the last or second last one? I suppose it depends on the comfort and your preference.