Building with Hall & Hart Homes

This looks like elyse 42, is that right?

I’m keen to know what people have done with 36/38....

The length is 19,550 and the width 12,110. Both dimensions are excluding the eaves which are quite large which makes the porch look grander and provide nice shade to the windows.

No this is the 38 as a base. We liked the layout of the 42 but preferred the price of the 38 It worked out much more economical to start with the 38 as a base and extend the width a bit and change things around internally. Of course the money I saved there I quickly spent on pretty lights...

Sing out if you want photo's of any particular rooms to help you get an idea of light and dimensions, I have heaps and am happy to share.

Would be great if you could take a few photos of the large open space from family end, kitchen and entry hall. I struggle a bit with the dining table in the traffic way and we are working on a design where we flip the kitchen island 90 degrees. It would also be great to know the actual dimensions of the rooms and particularly the garage.

Thanks a lot.

Hi MickeyDonald, do you remember the cost to add another set of drawers?

Hi Amanda_Ly, our drawers (9x) cost ~$1.5k. Imagine the cooktop bench/side, we have fridge on one end and a tall/high cabinet on the other. The stovetop is in the center. Left/right side would have 2 columns of 2 rows each, so that's 8x. The 9th drawer is under the oven since the oven has a small height (we chose the integrated stove/oven rather than the freestanding).
Hope this helps

The approx dimensions of the rooms are:
Family - 4890 x 3990 (that's to the edge of the theatre room wall)
Meals - 5430 x 4500
Kitchen - 4890 x 2800
Theatre - 3220 x 3990
Bed 5 - 3200 x 3810
Garage - 6070 x 5850
Alfresco - 3720 x 5950

To help me work out how the spaces would work and if I needed to change dimensions I measured our furniture (or things we planed to get) and made to scale drawing cut outs and then placed them in the rooms. So for the dining table I measured it with the chairs not being used and also fully seated with ten people to make sure both scenarios worked in the room. In retrospect I would have made the alfresco a bit larger but apart from that the rooms seem to be a good proportion to us.

It's hard to show the size of the room but these are taken near to each end. To get a sense of scale the windows in the first picture are each 2170 wide and the stairs are 2600 long.

Fab progress, kjane! I haven't logged on in a while so seeing your house come up like that has been a treat! Love the external colour scheme you've chosen. Can't wait to see the fit-outs!

We finally got DA approval last week after loads of issues regarding our stormwater. Council was being difficult and asked for an easement which our neighbour refused to allow. After some mods to our hydraulics plan and personal email from the engineer requesting an exemption, the plans finally got approved. We also got slugged with an additional $6.5k to raise overall levels in response to Council.

Despite all this time with council, we still haven't got our internal selections finalised - our quotes have been sitting with HH all this time despite a few emails to chase up. We're not too happy with this given the penalties we are facing since our tender has expired.

We're actually not too sure whether to continue with the build now given the fall in property prices and the risk of overcapitalisation.

Hi Zen, great to hear from you and sorry to hear you've had nothing but trouble from all sides. I totally get what you are saying about property prices, they certainly have dropped off. Building is an absolute money pit, to be honest I'm not sure I'd do it again now but we are totally too late to turn back now!

Everyone keeps warning us that the build is going to cost much more than we've budgeted for.

You seemed to have a fairly smooth journey through the build, did you face some unexpected costs or issues? We are emotionally invested with all the money and time spent so far but we're tempted to give it all up and just find a house that's already built rather than go through the pain of the actual build. HH have been ok but they are so slow and all the penalties are adding up and we're nowhere near done. It does feel like a huge money pit!

That’s great! Thank you.

Everything is going pretty smoothly and our build has stayed to the price. We didn't budget anywhere near enough for landscaping though so that is hurting thinking about that side of it. You don't happen to know a good but cheap landscaper/fencer do you? As we have moved to Australia we need to buy an entire house of furniture, linen and whitegoods and it's a big house to furnish!

I wonder why they are being slow? We started building 6 months after our first contact with them. I've noticed quite a few more builds so wonder if they have expanded and not keeping pace. We are onto our third SS as they have more builds in our area but the handovers have been Ok and we meet on site with the old and the new for a handover meeting and our neighbours tell me they see him there nearly everyday.

All the best with the decision making, totally get where you are coming from.

Hey kjane,

Wow your progress is looking great! Your family room looks very light and useful. Regarding landscaping, I would give Guy @ Yardscape a call to at least get a quote, he's done a great job for us, and his quotes were quite reasonable vs some others we received. Building is definitely not cheap, but as some of our friends have found, simply renovating can cost alot (or more) aswell. Hopefully your progress continues at a rapid pace

Thanks for the landscaping contact, I'll get in touch with them 😊

Oh I can imagine what a huge outlay is to be buying new for everything. Did you guys manage to get a rental ok?

I think HH have taken on lots of builds and going through teething issues with keeping up with all the admin. I remember one of the selling points they kept mentioning was the small number of projects per SS. Do you know how many projects your SS Is taking on at a time? We were driving around the neighbourhood and noticed another HH build near Ryde East primary school, it looks like a Sienna from the frames so we'll be keeping an eye on it with interest.

We're waiting for final budget from HH and we'll see what impact the falling market value of our property will have on financing. Surprisingly, we didn't get knocked back from council on basix, I was quite sure we would need to do solar panels to meet the basix requirements. Unless basix is another process after council approval...??

For us, the increase in builds hasn't had an impact on how much we see or have contact from our SS. We changed to a new one as Ryde is the biggest growth area for them so they have split the area and now have two SS for the area. One handles the North part and the other South. Our neighbours say that he is there everyday and we have email an/or phone contact with him a couple of times per week. Our new one has the initials JR and seems to be quite particular with details. We have a walk through tomorrow that he suggested and our last one was only about a week ago. At that walk through he wasn't happy with how the alfresco ceiling was done saying it would look better visually if it was done another way and he discussed it with us, so yesterday the carpenters came back and re did it all and from looking over the fence it does look much nicer. I was impressed that the old way it was done was compliant and what was on our plans but he was focussed on it looking great too.

All kitchen and bathrooms were done this week and tiling starts next week.

That's great that that you didn't need to add anything else on for BASIX, we needed to add it to get approval.

Managed to get a rental near the house and school so I drop by the house twice a day!

That's wonderful, your SS sounds like he has great attention to detail and focused on doing what's right for your home rather than what's convenient. I went to the H&H build nearby to check who the SS is, initials are RB so I must be on the other side of the Ryde split. Hope he is just as good as your one!

Any pics of your kitchen and bathroom? Can't wait to see how your tile combinations look in real life!

We are getting all the ends tied up to get the construction certificate - which means changes to landscape plans and getting an arborist engaged (yet another tree to be preserved!). Also going to council today to pay all the fees and deposit. The council person on the phone scared me when he said we might need multiple credit cards to pay the fees and deposits....

We're looking for a rental nearby now. It's all happening....!

Hi guys, we are in the contract stage. Any thoughts on what to keep an eye on?

Thanks in advance for your help

Hi MickeyDonald. Since you're in the contract stage, we recommend you to check the minimum requirements of a Home Building Contract. These are: (1) Contractor's licence, (2) Statutory warranties, (3) Details of progress payments, (4) Contract Dispute Resolution, and (5) Termination provisions. And, hey don't forget that the contract must be accompanied by the Consumer Building Guide. Well, these are just of the few things to look out for but would greatly prepare you with possible problems in the future as the project starts. You can read it more here: https://www.contractsspecialist.com.au/home-building-contract-sydney/

If you want, I can book you a free consultation with our lawyer to fully help you. But the reviews above is pretty good so wishing you all luck!