Tamara1975 - Moved in - A few pics :)

We bought a 985qm block a few months back. We haven't been able to get things started until our house sold. We put the house on the market in June (in a very quiet market) and we now have a contract on it which goes unconditional next friday (12th). We have been looking at different building companies for a few months and keep coming back to Coral homes Stradbroke 279. We have made a few changes and had to chop about half a metre out of the guts of the house to fit it on the block. We are waiting for our preliminary estimate to come back and will then pay the deposit. Fingers crossed all goes well.

Congrats Where are you building?

Must be a big house if you had to chop it down to fit a 985m block!! or is it an odd shape?

The house is quite long.

OMG it worked. LOL.

I have added the rough copy of our floor plan to our blog. Feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions. I can't work out how to load pics to this forum.

http://s799.photobucket.com/albums/yy28 ... oGFBWR.jpg

use the IMG code on the left on photobucket..copy and paste the code directly onto here
that is how you put pics on to threads.

I just saw your post to me on my thread, welcome to the forum and congrats on your bit of dirt and the plan. I like the bathroom and laundry all together esp with a pool. Easy access
you have a 5 bed home if you use the study..whaooao! you go, you mount girl!!
congrats!!

Love it, love the the setup of the bedrooms and activity at the back. I'm a big fan of activities that you can see from the living areas... easier to keep an eye on the kids

Your plan looks great. The only thing is that the main bathroom is at the back of the house, therefore if you have guests over they are walking into the kids area to use the bathroom? If this isn't a concern to you, then I wouldn't worry about it, but that would be the only thing that would annoy me. Oh and not having a door on the ensuite toilet too. But other than that, your plan looks really good!!

Kiwi, we love the fact that that the kids can comestraight from the pool and into the laundry. At the moment, they drip water through the house.
Rozzo, I agree. I like that the kids have their own area where we can keep an eye on them.
n&n02 - We aren't keen on our guests trapsing through the kids activity area. We didn put in an extra powder room in the hallway off the hallway that leads to the garage. We took it out because it was going to cost us $2000. If our estimate is OK we will put it back in.
We have got 2 cavity sliders going into the ensuite and wardrobe. Hubby is a shift worker and the shower wakes him up when he is sleeping. We have done the ensuite and wardrobe like that to cut out as much of the noise as possible.
I am at uni and love the fact that the study is away from the "hub" of the house. This plan seems to work for us. I can't wait to get started. I am just hoping there are no hiccups with our current house sale. It goes unconditional next friday.

We are also lookign at putting a tub int he garage too. I can't bear the thought of paintbrushes being rinsed or greasy hands from working on the car being cleaned in the laundry. I want to deck the laundry out with cabinets. I want to put a recess in the garage for the tub and hubbys beer fridge in the garage. Our "wish list" at this stage are hight ceilings, stone bench tops and of course the powder room.

We put our finishing touches to the plan today. We are still waiting for the preliminary estimate to come in.The guy at the display home is really busy. He has been really good to deal with and is on the same wave length as us, which we really like. We noticed that so many sales people from other companies didn't not listen to what we wanted. I am feeling excited. We will pay our deposit in the next few days. Fingers crossed that everything falls into place with our current house going unconditional on friday.

Our preliminary estimate came in and we are under budget at this stage. We managed to add in our ceasar stone bench tops and high ceilings and a heat pump which were all on our wish list. We also put a sliding door in our bedroom so we can build pergola and have our own outdoor retreat (spa pool would be nice). We have placed the house on the block and are able to have the "uglies" such as the garden shed and water tank out of sight. We are also able to keep the original size and not have to chop some out to make it fit.

Hi Rick and Tam,

Just had a look at your Blog and floor plan and position of the house on the land. We are building through Coral and I think you will have a relative easy time building with them as is possible when you go through the highs and lows of the building process.

I like the Stradbroke 279, we looked through the last show home in Hervey Bay which was a Stradbroke 279 and this made us consider Coral builders for our home.

I hope you do not mind me offering a few constructive comments about your proposed positioning of the house on the block, I am sure you will have considered all possibilities and believe what you have selected suits your needs but I would like to make my following thoughts.

I do not know if the council you are building with have different rules to Fraser Coast Council, but I do not believe your council will allow the building at Bed 4 to be over the sewer easement. My understanding is that there has to be a minimum or 1.5 mtr OMP (outer most projection) which are the gutters of the house. You may, as you said in your first post have to, "cut a metre or so out of the guts" I would have thought the rep at Coral would have made a comment on this.

I would seriously consider trying to put access to the outside area on the Southern boundary of the house from the family room, by having a sliding door installed, I think long term you will regret accessing this area only from the laundry or front door and having to walk around the ends of the house. Additional cost would be minimal if anything at all, by eliminating one or two of the narrow windows and brickwork, the cost would be similar to your existing quote.

I would also consider trying to move the main entrance from the end of the house to the front next to the garage doors. We originally had the entrance on our Portsea on the end (because that is the normal position when entering a standard rectangular block) and only changed the access to the garage from the front, but eventually decided having to walk around the end of the house to get in would eventually be a problem, especially for guests who do not know the layout, they will try to access by trying to get through your pool fence. Maybe some cutting and pasting to move the garage over to the left and the lounge dining to the right and try to put the entrance in between. (have a look at our plan compared to the original Portsea to see what we had to do to fit a corner block)

You are having a sliding door from the main bed out to a future courtyard or spar area. Good idea but I would remove the other window or replace with 2 tall skinny windows either side of the bed position otherwise I presume your bed head will be under/infront of the window shown.

Don't forget you will have to fence the pool area from the alfresco area and fit self closing gate(s). I would suggest moving the pool a little further away from the house and fully enclose the pool as a separate area otherwise you will have to go through 2 gates to get to the garden area to play ball games and other activities.

Remember these suggestions are just my observations from having to make our house fit our block. I hope all goes well with your build process.

I would prefer to have the living area windows facing north, and the alfresco facing south, for optimum solar-pasive orientation.

I agree you would want to have door access from the living area as PP said.

good luck with the sale!

Hi John and Marilyn. We like the idea of having a door out the other side of the family room. I can't believe we didn't think of that. LOL. It turns out there is no sewer easement up the back. We never had a disclosure plan when it was drawn up and it was working on an assumption. We forgot to erase it when we were placing the house. We aren't sure where we are putting the pool yet, so we drew it like that to put the piering in just in case.
I really like your plane. Can't wait to see your progeress!!

Leni, your reno's are stunning. Well done!! Hubby likes the orientation of the house because it is in a good position for the solar panels. LOL. One of the first thing he asked for was a copy of the roof line!! It was actually tricky finding a plan we liked to fit on our block.

Yay. Our house is unconditional!!

congrats!!!