New build - Adelaide Mk II, Statesman Homes

Hey all,
Since its my first post and all i should probably give a little background
Have been lurking around here for a while trawling through other peoples builds, and figured it was probably about time i got around to registering and starting my own thread!

My wife and I are in the process of building our first home.
Its our first time building, but second home - we did have a small 3 BR villa on a 300m2 block, but we are planning on starting a family in the next few years and were outgrowing it fairly quickly.
(We're both 26 atm, were living there for a little over 5 years)

We started looking for land in early January - not specifically to buy, but just to get a feel for what the pricing was like for when we did decide it was time to start building.
Then we discovered the Bluestone Estate in Mt. Barker, the blocks were all a decent size, and the price wasn't as extravagant as living in the suburb we were currently living.
The block we were looking at was 675 m2, and came with a $169,000 price tag; much cheaper than a block of equivalent size in Greenwith (our old suburb) which would have cost in the 300's

After looking around and talking to a few people, we fell in love with the Adelaide MK II from statesman homes.
Both of us prefer open plan living, and the design was pretty much everything we were looking for.

Everything seemed to be falling into place for us to move on it all now, rather than just planning for a future build - so from the time we enquired about the land, it was 5 weeks until we were out of our current house and it was on the Market! (slightly stressful trying to pick up your entire life moving only on weekends, knowing you have to be out of the house in 5 weeks!)

The house ended up selling for a respectable amount - enough to easily cover our current mortgage and give us some extra money to put back towards the new house.

Unfortunately early into the design of the new house the encumbrance manager came back with some bad news - telling us that the garage could not be on the side of the house that was shown on the plan. We ended up having to swap around BR1, robe, and ensuite with the Garage and end up with a house almost backward from the original design.
But on the upside - we liked the new design even more - probably the first and last time I'll be thankful for the construction guidelines :p


So our new floor plan became this:


a bit different to a 3 br build on a 300m2 block


Facade:




Downside to the new development - we signed for the land early January, and land settled last Friday; so it felt like an eternity of nothing happening towards our new home.
On the upside, it did give us time to move ahead with the planning side of things for the house - We had color selections ~2 weeks ago, and aside from all our upgrades costing a fair bit more than we had thought it was all fairly smooth.
Little frustrating, being told by them to visit the display homes / selections centre for ideas and color combinations, then actually getting there and being told that some of our selections had been discontinued - when they were still on display in the selections centre!

All up i think selections is costing us ~22,000 - and that's without most of the PC items.
We removed Air Conditioning, Carpet, floor tiles because the prices that they came back to us with were ridiculous - so they're tiling the wet areas only (an even that came back at an extra $1000 for the upgraded tile we chose - and the upgraded tile is only going in the ensuite and bathroom)

So far the experience has been pretty good - communication from Statesman / Hickinbotham has left alot to be desired but so far that is really the only complaint we have; they need to be chased up a fair bit to get answers for anything.
Other than that, everything is going fairly smoothly at the moment, here's to hoping it stays like that

Welcome to the forum and congrats on building a house.

I love your floor plan. You have so much space. Can you put up your colour selections as well?

We are also building with Statesman. We found their communication during pre-construction was almost non existent, and pre-construction was so slow. We bought land owned by the builder, and they took 8.5 months to subdivide it and settle it. Since being released to construction 1.5 weeks ago, communication has improved, and they are about ready to pour our slab.

Good luck with the build

Hi Havoc, welcome to Bluestone, look forward to watching yoru hosue grow, I love bluestone and can not wait to be living there!

Welcome to the forum The Adelaide is such a great plan

Hi Havoc, Good luck with your build, I hope it all goes smoothly for you!

Will be heading back to the selections centre on the weekend, just to take photos of all our chocies, as well as double check all the codes that our consultant has written on the paperwork, just to make sure that we get everything we have chosen.
Human error is one of those certanties in life which I'd like to try and avoid.

Would hate to have everything done, then realise the wrong color code / item code had been written down for something, so we're going to double check everything before we give them the final go ahead.


We've gotten back quotes for all the items we were waiting on - and holy hell!
Still amazes me how much some of the extras through the builder are.
I almost wonder if the builders don't actually like organising floor coverings / air conditioning, so they make it as expensive as they can to the point where it becomes worth the disruption to have people come in mid-build and install it all.
Eg. Air Conditioning - 14kw single phase, 6 zone 11 outlet - 13k from builder
20kw three phase, 9 zone 11 outles - 12k from a different A/C place.
(Both Daikin - just different models)


At least our Guess was nearly spot on about the total though, selections will set us back $23,000
but now there's a ton of stuff for us to organise after the build is finished too, we ended up taking out the perimeter path, driveway, A/C, carpet and tiling to th whole house
So the only area we are having tiled through the builder is the wet areas.

Now to sit back and wait for council approval...
(Has already been approved by the encumbrance manager, so at least that's something!)

I hope your council approval comes back soon.

They definately charge a lot for somethings. We left them to do most things - stormwater, perimeter concrete, carpet, and driveway, but took out the tiles when they increased the cost by 50% after colour selections (and we'd picked from the bronze range). The other stuff it just seemed simpler to get them to do it so that the house was mostly complete at handover and our finance company needed it all done before they'd consider the house was finished

Havoc, If your stormwater is only going to be around $2000 to get them to do it, GO FOR IT. Get the builder to do the stormwater if it's not to much.

We didn't even know that the builder could do the stormwater. We got a quote after handover and it was $2000 so we thought we would do it ourselves. It has taken hubby _forever_ to do it. For most other things I would say do it yourself after handover, it will be much cheaper. But try get them do the stormwater.

They're still doing the stormwater for sure!
There are some things that I'm willing to pay the extra for just because of how much of a pain it would be to try and organise it later!

Hi Havoc, where are you up to now? Have you got council approval yet?

Hi Havoc, Good luck with Statesman. We were also going to build with them in The Summit Mt Barker but after 3 mths with a not so helpful sales person and then another sales person told us they would have never built the house because we had made to many changes and they are a project builder. We decided to look elsewhere. But I do wish you good luck with you build. Not quite as far along as you but I will start my own thread once I have something to show.

Mrsroc, who are you building with now?

Hi carlswil, we are building with World Concept - Owner plans. Husband and kids just went to our block and we have holes. I'm excited about holes isn't that silly.

That's not silly, I completely understand. Anything that looks like progress is exciting.

Hi Havoc, My husband and I are looking at building the Adelaide Mk II with Statesman and came across your thread. Thanks for sharing your plan. We also might have to reverse the garage and main bedroom so it was good to know we are not the only ones. How are things going? Have they made a start with the building yet?

Hi Southbank. Whereabouts are you looking at building?

We have a block on hold at Southbank Estate, Sheidow Park. Just had a quick look at your thread. Congrats on moving in. Were you and your boyfriend happy with Statesmen and your finished house?

Thanks. We love our house. We have had no major issues with the house. A few minor problems but you're gonna get them with any build. Once our land settled, the process went pretty quickly - 5 months from land settlement to handover.

Good luck with your build.

Hi, I am new to this forum, but after reading some of the posts, find it really interesting! We are building a statesman home in the barossa, the adelaide mk 2, split design, but not split, and with a lot of changes! We are at the framework, windows stage, very exciting! This is the second house we have built, the first was 10 years ago with hickenbothams!
Wow, did we learn a lot, so HOPEFULLY this time we will do things a lot better. If you want me to post our plans let me know, it's a bit different!

Hi Grapevine. I would love to see your plans. We are currently thinking of either building the Adelaide Mk II or Hickinbothams Rochester (http://www.hickinbotham.com.au/page/con ... s_type/111). This will also be our second build the first one being completed in 2001.