Coral Homes Noosa 23 - Handover

Finally i can start my own build thread.
Not enough small house builds on this forum
Building a Noosa 23 - narrow block design from Coral Homes.

I will try and keep this up to date as things progress along with pictures - everyone loves pictures!

The process to date

As a first home buyer this entire process was one hell of a learning curve!
Initially began hunting for some land and house back in October 2013.
Had to quickly put a hold on a block of land as they were disappearing at an alarmingly fast rate. Luck i did - the next couple that walked in the door also wanted to put the block i just took on hold.
The land was not ready and wouldn't be until late March 2014. No problem - enough time to collect my thoughts and requirements for choosing a house.
With that i began builder hunting.

I spent the next four months dealing with a builder. I won't name them for their sake, but the incompetence of both the sales agent and head office led me to look elsewhere in January 2014. Decided to delete the rest of what i was going to say just in case. This experience was a great eye-opener to the world of building a house.

Eventually i settled on Coral Homes. The sales agent was brilliant when i began talking with them and prices felt more "right" compared to the first builder. It was a tough decision - Noosa 23 or Avoca 24. Price wise the Noosa was cheaper, but the Avoca appealed more to me. Eventually i settled on the Noosa23, on the exception that i would upgrade the ensuite as the included was just way too small. Reasons: four bedrooms compared to the three in the Avoca, kitchen/living layout was more modern and open compared to the Avoca and it was cheaper. The Avoca was a more traditional, rectangular house, where as the Noosa had corners that broke things up. The good for the Avoca: Large ensuite and larger bedrooms.

Today
It has been a long 7 months since i engaged Coral but i am close to being issued a job start date. Just awaiting some fixes the colour variation so i can sign, get the ACC form completed and then a job start date. Sadly i don't believe the build will be done in time for Christmas.

How would i rate coral thus far?
The sales agent was brilliant. Up front about costs, you ask for something and they add it to the quote or give you a price, they didn't forget things. No request was too far outside of the norm (IE plan changes).
Head office is another story. You will see mentioned that Coral is slow when it comes to head office. And they are. It has taken three months to get through head office from requesting tender to now. Will be four months by the time earthworks start. Coral work a bit different to other builders - other builders will start tender stage before land is registered and ready to go. Coral didn't want to request a tender until the land was registered and soil tests complete. Hallmark was able to get houses started within two weeks after the land was made available in the street. Two of those houses are already complete.
It is kind of frustrating to watch the weeks go by without anything happening and other builders are already completing there works.
That being said - head office respond within 24hours of emailing and are otherwise decent to deal with, so mainly the time frustrations would be my only complaint.

I took advantage of two of Coral's promotion at the time - colorbond roof for $999 (which they later made free... Sadly unless i was willing to accept a $1.6k base house price increase, they wouldn't provide it for free) and the free kitchen upgrade, which i am looking forward to!
The kitchen is a big focus in this house and as i enjoy cooking i decided to spend the extra.

Land;


Plans;





Electrical



More to come.

Colour and tile selection was completed a few weeks ago.
Total damage: around $21k

Tiles:
Total cost extra for tiles came in at $5900. More than expected. 80% of the cost was labour

Main floor tile (left): Alto Mocha, glazed rectified porcelain.
Bathroom/ens wall tiles (right): Super White, polished porcelain.
Ensuite will have 2100mm tiling to all walls. Sadly it was going to cost too much to do the bathroom as well, so standard tiling heights in the bathroom.
Ensuite recess tile (bottom far left): Mosaic Jive Jordan Grey. Bad sample but the only one they had left. Has some white colours in it as well.
Shower feature tile (bottom left,right): Alps Jerusalem Grey/Avorio. Two 50mm strips running down the shower.


Outdoor tiles. Photo really brings out the colours in it. It is a bit more modest without a flash.

External Colours:

Roof, gutters & fascia (top left): Colorbond Basalt
Window frames (middle left): Woodland Grey
Garage door (bottom left): Colorbond Caoba
Pier render (top right): Dulux Domino
Front render (bottom right): Dulux Natural White
Bricks: Boral Emerald (Horizon range).

Internal Colours:

Dulux Peppercorn Rent feature walls and media room. Beige Royal Half for all other walls. Skirtings in Beige Royal Qtr.


Laundry cabinets: Laminex Stipple Hemp.
Laundry benchtop: Formica Bark.


Kitchen island (top): Caesarstone Piatra Grey (this cost me a fair bit )
Kitchen back bench (middle): Caesarstone Osprey
Kitchen Cabinets (bottom): Laminex Warm White (gloss/silk finish)


Ensuite/bathroom benchtop (top): Caesarstone Walnut
Ensuite/bathroom cabinets (bottom): Laminex Licorice Linea

That should do it for now.

Posting to follow! We're looking at building a modified Noosa 29, bringing it down to about 25sq. Can't wait to see how your build goes. Are your floor tiles 600x600 - is the extra cost for laying this size?

Oh, I do like seeing all these Coral build threads

I really like the Noosa design. I think it's a great bang for your space - so to speak

I'm not looking forward to the HO delays, but at least with all the warnings that other Coral builders have been giving, I can't say I wasn't warned.

Holy guacamole that's a lot to spend in the tile/colour selection. Did you have any tiling allowance in your tender or quote? We've got a quote for basic tiling and carpeting, but I know we'll be doing at least a little upgrading there. The Piatra Grey looks more black than grey - I like it. We're looking at getting all benchtops in a black ceaserstone, but I have no idea what is included as standard. All these colour selections make me feel a little ill. DH and I aren't great at making decisions and I didn't realise just how many we'd have to make in regard to colouring alone - yikes!

We *almost* selected this design as well. The display home was really something I could see myself living in, and the finish quality of all coral displays is amazing. In the end we decided it didn't suit our block as the master and 2 bedrooms on the west side.

7 months (or even 3 months) to tender is a quite a while when you're paying interest on land and rent. Now I'm a little glad we struck them off our list.

Your colour selections are nice and earthy - comfortable and easy to clean.

The floor tiles will be 300x600. The extra cost is associated with them being rectified and porcelain. Takes more labour to lay them compared to normal tiles as they need to make sure it is flat or lipping will occur. It was around $45sqm extra to lay rectified porcelain tiles, hence most of the cost. Tile upgrades were only around $1000 of the $5900.


Yep, basic tiling and carpet was included in the quote, roughly it was $5k for tiling and $2k for carpet.
I upgraded to the porcelain rectified tiles thus doubling my tiling cost, and upgraded the carpet to the Platinum range for another $1.5k. To me, both were worth it. I really liked the porcelain tiles, they looked fantastic compared to the printed ceramic. Carpet i knew i was going to upgrade from the get-go. Even the colour consultant advised not to go with the Bronze range of carpet as it was pretty nasty stuff - the sort of stuff you put in rental homes.
The difference between Bronze and Platinum is night and day. Even between Gold and Platinum the difference was significant. Oh and i also upgraded the underlay from the standard 7mm foam (included in cost) to the 10mm, higher density foam for around $400. There were plastic underlays that were even more expensive, but thought the 10mm would be enough.


Tiling you can get away with paying no extra apart from the basic, if you find a tile you like in the ceramic range. To be honest i spent more than i was willing to on tiling, but decided to go the extra as replacing tiling at a later date isn't very easy or cost effective.

Coral's standard range for black caeserstone is Night Sky. Jet Black costs extra i believe, but its part of the classico range so shouldn't be too much. Piatra Grey is part of the supernatural range, the highest range, thus it should be the most expensive. My backup was Raven, but it is also extra and looks... interesting under different light types.
Once you sign the contract you will be given a colour selection book. It lists the standard range of colours to choose from. There are 11 standard colour ranges for Caeserstone available at no cost. You can ask your sales agent for a copy of the "Your Colour Guide" and they may give it to you so you can start planning. Not all sales agents might be willing to though.
I spent months before the colour selection looking at options, and still hadn't made my mind up when i went to do the selection. I believe i am happy with what i chose


Yes the time taken is a bit annoying. Luckily i am not paying rent right now so it wasn't too bad.

I was going for the earthy, cave style house. I wanted something warm and relaxing. Best way i can imagine it is like sitting in a cave with a fire going with a good book in hand. Lighting will be warm white to bring out the tones, furniture will be made of recycled hardwood (will be building my own - at least that is the plan) and pendant lights will be in a natural styling. Still working on the pendants; haven't been able to find anything suitable, or at least nothing under $1000 per light

Good luck with whomever you choose.

Fantastic information, thank you so much. I'll have to have a look around and see if I can get an idea of these ceserstone colours. My husband and I aren't very particular about things so hopefully we'll be fine with the standard selection for the kitchen, bathrooms and maybe tile selections. Carpet I'm certain we'll upgrade to at least gold and the underlay. I don't want crappy carpet and I've only heard bad things about the bronze range! I think I'll ask my sales guy for the "Your Colour Guide" next time I see him. Although, God knows when that will be!

This information and your pricing is really helpful so thank you for sharing it.

Great house design, good choice. It's similar to a base we chose before modifying evetything to suit the kitchen I wanted and get the best aspect from our land.
Apart from occasional long waits the build process is amazing. Were a few weeks away from completion and can't wait to move in.
Enjoy every day, it's a great feeling seeing your own brand new home comming together.

Hey Whzzz, how's it going? Have they given you a start date yet?

Not yet.

Fighting the bank.
They've had months to be sorted. Now that i have all my variations (colour, tiles, etc) complete and signed off, they want to do another valuation.
That was a week ago. Nothing yet.
And i had to change lenders as my old one decided to up-and move to another Branch, without telling me.

Not very happy with them right now.

How frustrating. We had our fair share of trouble with our bank, just to get pre approval. Nothing wrong with financials, it was because I'd never changed my name with the bank after I got married. It took them weeks to change my name on the account - a month all up just for them to say yep, they'd pre approve us. Drove me bonkers.

Bank stuff all signed off on.
ACC form completed and sent to the builder.

Now the builder tells me they need "approved documents"..
As far as i am aware they have everything they need so hopefully i should have a start date by this arvo, if not Monday next week.

Progress!

Site plan as well:


Not much breathing room, but could be worse.
Didn't want to do a zero-lot boundary as i like the idea of being able to get to my house from either side, and makes the land look bigger (to me).

Your setbacks are very generous. We have pretty big setbacks front and back

Small blocks of land - so this is the minimum allowed. Would of loved a larger block, but prices being as high as they are, had to settle for this. Not the smallest block though, there are a few 350sqm around and boy are they small!
I don't own the footpath area - that's council land, so I'm right on the minimum, 1.5m from garage wall and 5.5m for driveway.
It's a 450sqm block so not too large. Looks even smaller in person.

Sadly no start date yet. Approval for the loan from bank but the builder needs an authority to commence from the bank and the bank is playing hardball for some reason, requesting updated contracts and what not. Builder is sighing as well, apparently this isn't normal practice. Hopefully it can be issued today, so long as the lender is working today (they were away yesterday).

I'm jealous of your setbacks We're going to have dramas when we go to council I reckon.

Bugger about the bank. Have you spoken to anybody there about it? I know that's hard - when we were trying to talk to somebody about our pre approval/name change it was near impossible to find somebody who knew what was going on. I wonder what steps we will have to follow - we'll be paying cash (well, redraw on our current loan) up to 'enclosed' stage I think, but I guess they'll still have to follow the regular steps.

Hopefully all this rain will be out of the way by the time you get a start date

Looks like it will be. Had to send an annoying letter to the bank to get them to respond.

Now i am told i have to wait another two weeks for mortgage services to do whatever it is they do after they received the updated contract.
I am beyond not happy right now. Last house in the estate to go up, my builder is getting anxious. Been waiting since late April this year to get started, the entire process which should be a happy occasion has turned into a stress-fest and huge let down.

Time to go cool down.

In the mean time whilst i wait i thought i would mention the changes/additions made to the plan;

Structural:

- Brought the front entry door in by 460mm. Didn't particularly like having the front door in line with the garage.
- Added a nook to the feature wall next to the garage for hanging photos and what not.
- Converted the linen cupboard next to the WC into a benchtop with sliding doors. Will be used as storage.
- Converted the study nook near the master bedroom door into a linen cupboard.
- Increased the outdoor living area by 300mm, taking the 300mm out of the master bedroom. This was done to bring the master - bedroom door partially behind the linen cupboard so you arn't looking from the front door directly into the master bedroom.
- Took the Noosa25 Mk2 ensuite and put it in place of the original ensuite. This included increasing the length of the house by 600mm and taking it out under the eaves.
- Added a door to the garage.
- Changed the wood pantry shelves into melamine.

I also wished to push the flexi room out under the eaves but this was knocked back for structural reasons.

Start date has been provided: 15th of September.
Gives them 2.5 - 3 months before christmas to get going.

Doubt i will get in before, but i will hope!

That's only two weeks away 3 months isn't long to build a house though, I wouldn't hold your breath on being in before Christmas.