Hickinbotham "Coast Estate" Seaford Rise

Hi All

My wife and I are building our dream home in the "Coast Estate" in Seaford Rise. it will be our second home but our first build. We have decided to build a modified version of the "Torino" with Hickinbotham. Our house has officially been released to construction though nothing has started yet.

Just wondering if anyone else out there is building at the "Coast" or if anyone is currently or has recently built with Hickinbotham and has some experiences to share.

Cheers

hello there,

we are not building down that way but up in the barossa but we are building with hickies.
we are about to actually start the build phase too, our land is being released to us/settlement next friday.

i like your house design(well the unmodified version looks good on the website) very similar to ours but slightly bigger, we are building the chandler alfresco. if we can ever afford it i want to build the iverness alfresco.

if you type in hickinbotham into the search area on this forum a thread from a few years ago will pop up that you can have a read through but it isnt active anymore.

h

Hi, we are building with Hickinbotham at Bluestone - Mt Barker. A slightly modified Harrington Alfresco.
I have built with Hickies before... 9 years ago. Built the Wentworth.
All in all, positive experience, a few delays (but that was mainly council) and a nasty footings surprise, but that's all a distant memory now!
From all accounts they're standard has gotten better since then, so I think you should have a positive experience

We were VERY close to signing with Fairmont this time, but Hickies offered us more... So, here I go again!

Hi Hachy

Thanks for your reply. We too love the Inverness Alfresco. We based our modifications in our Torino on the Inverness. We added the Alfresco between the Dining and the Games and added a store and pantry. I think if our block was big enough we would have chosen the Inverness.

I love your Chandler Alfresco it is very similar to the Preston which we had also considered.

We went by our block yesterday and a portable toilet has been delivered so hopefully that means some work should start soon.

How have you found Hickinbotham so far? Most of our experiences have been good. Our colour selection appointment was great. We had a pretty clear vision on the style we wanted. I have to say it has been a pretty slow experience we signed in September and construction is only just beginning now but I am not very patient i guess.

When i get a few minutes I will have a proper read through your thread. I had a quick glance at your pictures, your colour selections are great and similar to ours

Cheers

Hi DavCar, we are building with Statesman so same company but are only up to colour selections, but will be following your build

we havent found them too bad to deal with.
our sales consultant was great but we did come across one we didnt think too much of!!
wow i thought ours was slow, we signed november and we are only now getting to the actual build side of things.
we live about 6hrs from our build so we cant just pop in the car and drive to our block to check what is going on.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply, we have visited the Bluestone estate a few times now. It seems like a really nice spot. Hickinbotham have the Torino on display there which is what we are building and it is styled really similar to what we have chosen. i'm pretty sure the sales guy there is getting sick of us.

You must be keen to be building again, i'm not sure I would have the patience to do it again. We too were very close to building with Fairmont we would have chosen the "Granada". We initially wanted a piece of land in the new Woodcroft estate which is owned by Fairmont, but would have had to wait too long and luckily we didn't hold out because blocks cost about $100,000 more than we wanted to spend and would have had to compromise on our house.

How far along are you with your build now?

Cheers

Hi Davelle,

I think the colour selections has been the best part of this whole process so far. We had Sarah as our consultant and she was great. We had a pretty good idea on what we wanted, we must have read through the colour selections book thousands of times.

Have you been to the Selections Center yet? we found that really helpful. It sucks not getting any prices until the appointment though. It is really easy to get carried away, we probably spent more than we thought we were going to.

If there is anything you want to know about selections I would be happy to try and help

Our sales guy was really good too he may have been the reason we signed with Hickinbotham. Our Colour Consultant was really good too. I find that whenever you ring the office you always speak to someone different and they are really slow to get back to you but I guess all in all they have been ok.

It must be hard being so far away from your block. We are only half hour away from ours and I know that when building starts I am going to want to be there most evenings

Thought I would post a few photos for anyone interested.

We drove past the block on Saturday. A portable toilet had been delivered, hopefully this means footings will start this week.

Who would have thought a portable toilet could be so exciting?

Sad huh?

Thank You, we quite like it up that way. We were initially heading for Aldinga Beach, but we found that land was just too small and the price wasnt small to match

We just went up for a drive (we live quite central to Adelaide now) to see the new display village and happened to wander in to the land sales office... We were just won over completely. We didnt need to be on a particular side of town, our family all live north anyway, so South or Hills was going to still be at least an hour away from them regardless, but Mt Barker has wound up being closer to work for us both anyway. Its funny how things work out.
Woodcroft did look good, but as you said the $$ and wait wouldnt have worked out.
The Grenada is a nice design, we were going on The Whitmore split, except minus the split.

I dont know about keen... more just time elapsed amnesia from last time!
Look, it wasnt bad, and everything is easier 2nd time round. I was 20 years old, not even, back then... no money, no clue, banks were chucking money at you... things went wrong as far as the build, mainly footings, but that was pretty unforseeable. They hit a black soil or reactive soil and footings went from a $7,000 allowance to $28k final price. Wasnt easy finding an extra $21,000 when already on a pretty tight budget to begin with! And just general my lack of understanding as to what PC items meant on a building contract! I only wish a forum such as this was around then.... So much helpful info and support for 1st time builders, a lot of my concern and worries would have been alieviated.

But, having said that, the house was lovely, no issues with the actual build... They were a bit slow to get back to you with certain things when you called, but they are all the same, so you'll cop that no matter where you go, unless you pay big $$ for a boutique builder.... but I was happy with them overall. Great value for money and a really nice home at the end.

You do get more bang for your buck, it is exciting and fun (at times) and you get to be creative at least a little bit.... there is some satisfcation with seeing that empty plot of land turn into a house, then a home and see all your plans on paper come to "life". I am much more excited and feel much more prepared this time around, so i'm going to try and enjoy it more...

I like the Torino, very nice place! I think you picked well... I love the wallpaper in the back room of that display! But the colours are very nice indeed.
Mario is the consultant up there, he's lovely, so i'm sure he isnt bothered!

We are only at contract stage at this point, our land wont settle till the end of December

But we are busy getting ideas and getting things in to place so we dont waste much time past the end of december!

Hi DavCar13 - Im not building with Hickinbotham but just thought Id say Hi and follow along
Great colour choices...look forward to seeing it all come together

Hey,great plans!

I noticed on your plans there is a note that states "3 Capped off light points future pendants",can you elaborate on this please as im playing with our elec plan ATM for our up coming selection

cheers

your selections look good, yay somebody who has chosen same carpet as us.

Hey Thanks,

We love the Adelaide MK 2. That floor plan is what made us decide to sell up and build in the first place, then we decided that we wanted to build the Ashville but couldn't find a block wide enough.

We wanted to put pendants over the kitchen bench and during our selections appointment we were informed that we had to have our own electrician put them in but they could put the wiring in place.

Where are you building? if there is anything else you want to know don't hesitate

Cheers

Hi Taylor22,

Thankyou we look forward to it coming together too if that day ever comes.

I had a look through your photos, your colour selections are great and my wife and I absolutely love your bathroom. It must be nice to be in your new home decorating and adding your own touches I look forward to that point.

Thanks for following hopefully I have something to new to post soon

Cheers

Thanks Hachy we are happy with our choices. We found are carpet in Solomons much nicer than the options Hickinbotham had and surprisingly cheaper

Hi DavCar13, we're building with Hickinbotham. Mostly all good so far. What are your kitchen cupboard and benchtop selections? I had in mind exactly what I wanted but outside Hickie's range. Don't have the money to redo after handover so I'm having a hard time knowing what to select now. I'd like dark cabinets but I'm not too keen on plain white Laminex.

Hi Lucinda

It's a tough choice, we went into selections thinking one thing and came out with something different. Our cabinets are going to be Eggar Hacienda Black it has a textured finish and our Benchtop is Essastone New Crystal Salt.

When i re did our kitchen in our old home we went with gloss white doors and a glossy black marble laminate top. it looked good when it was done it was just so hard to keep clean.

I haven't really had much chance to read your thread yet, are you up too your selections appointment yet? if you haven't already i highly recommend going to the Selections Centre there are a heap more choices than what is in the book

Cheers