Building new home with Great Living Homes in Port Coogee WA

Hi everyone.

We have just started construction on a new two story home in Port Coogee WA with Great Living Homes. This is our 2nd home we have built with Great Living Homes (GLH). The present house we live in was built by GLH in 2012.

We love building and the opportunity to buy land in Port Coogee was too tempting for me back in early 2012 when the market was flat. So I got the land at a good price with some nice incentives. At present Port Coogee is a hive of activity, huge development with one of WA largest marinas.

The basics of our home are a Two Storey, flat roofed home 460sqm in size with a concrete pool & spa. 5 bedrooms, 2 of them are master suits with full ensuites. A 3rd bedroom also has a joint ensuite that we intend to use as a kids bedroom/nursery. 4 bathrooms in total. Large open living area upstairs, so upstairs living. The main kitchen is upstairs, we have a 2nd smaller kitchen downstairs and outside kitchen in the alfresco area.

We designed this house to make the house as big as possible on our block of land keeping enough room for a 9m pool across the back with a 2x2m spa. We may have some ocean views as we are the highest block in the Omeo release at Port Coogee, but we are one row behind the front beach houses. Approximately 100m from Coogee Beach.

For those not familiar with Port Coogee you can have a look here http://www.portcoogee.com.au/

Some history. We did buy the block end of 2011 and settled early 2012. It took us some time to organise plans and get our finances in order to start the build. We made our first payment to the builder from the bank on 8th of August 2014. The concrete pool and spa commenced construction about 2 weeks ago and finished end of last week. We needed this done first as access issues might have been a problem after construction if others build around us at the same time.

This week all the ground works, plumbing and the slab went down yesterday. So all up very fast progress. I was expecting nothing to really happen until middle end of September about 6 weeks after our first payment was made. Instead the concrete pool and spa have been installed and this could have delayed everything if not for the quick work of Quality Dolphin Pools which completed the works while the builder was ramping up to do the slab. So everything worked out well and done quickly. So instead of starting construction now, we have the slab down and pool in the ground, very pleased.

If progress continues like this the house could be built much faster then I expected. Due to its size I was expecting an 18 month build from slab down. We may end up being close to finished in 12-15 months at this speed. Early days yet though, but promising early signs.

Some Photos.

Our block of land in 2012.

Earth works, sand pad and ground compaction only a few weeks ago.



Pool and Spa being dug.



Steel and shape of pool coming together. Nice shot of the tradesman hard at work...opps.



Concrete pool is in. Thursday 11th of September



Concrete spa



Concrete slab down, yesterday 18th of September





That is the total progress up to now. More updates to follow once we start brickworks.

That's going to be a lot of house! Port Coogee is a very nice spot, our builder has their only display home down there so we've been a few times. Looking forward to following your build

Hi. Thanks.

I had a read through your build, appears to be going quickly.

We also had kids after be bought our land. Twins. So that put a delay on the build due to the wife being off work for a year, hard to get the finance while only one of us working. All got done in the end though. Plus we had only just moved into our new home, then the twins arrived 2 months later. It has taken us a year to finish of this place while also organising for this new construction. Luckily my wife and I enjoy the construction process, otherwise it would be just to much.

Added some photos to the first post.

Nice spot. Going to be a massive house!

If you don't mind me asking, who is doing your pool and how have you found them?

Quality Dolphin Pools. I picked them as I liked the designs they offered of us.

Very easy to deal with, when we needed the work done they got in and did it quickly on short notice.

Building a concrete pool and spa is not cheap, but having watched the amount of work, steel and concrete used I can understand why. Plus we got the design we wanted, no fibreglass pool would work in this area or at least be a lot smaller.

I have attached a few pictures of what it will look like when finished. Ours wont have any plants and only one 2m waterfall in the middle of the pool. It is also longer then in this drawing. We went as close to retaining walls as allowed by using thicker concrete walls and double steel in the concrete. Very strong.

Exciting times ahead! Agree, it's a great spot, I take my weekly walk through there to check out all the gorgeous houses under construction.

3 Kitchens. You must love entertaining! or cleaning

Hope everything continues at a great pace for you and I look forward to following your journey!

The outside Kitchen is more a built in BBQ with rang hood, sink, cupboards and bench space with a place for a fridge.

The 2nd kitchen downstairs is just inside from the Alfresco so it can be used to cook food for any outside entertainment as well. It is a full kitchen, stove, oven, dishwasher, fridge and so on. Has about 14 cupboards. Not a big kitchen but functional and is attached to another living/dining area that leads out to the alfresco.

The main reason for a 2nd kitchen downstairs is I am forward planning. Downstairs has a 2nd main bedroom and ensuite plus 2 other bedrooms and another bathroom plus theatre room. So when down stairs, no need to go upstairs to cook food, drinks and so on. If we have guests or family stay with us they have a kitchen to use. When kids are older they can use downstairs and leave us oldies upstairs in peace and quiet. That's the plan, not sure it will work like that though.

It is a great area, cant wait to live there. If we are lucky we might be moving in towards the end of 2015, but a lot needs to go right and to plan for that to happen.

Posting to following. Sounds like it is going to be pretty damn impressive

HI there. I like your renderings. May I ask how they were done?

They were provided by the pool company on what we told them we wanted and supplied plans. Quality Dolphin Pools.

Almost another month has gone by and we have had a lot of activity at the site.

Soak wells installed the week after the slab was laid down. Noticed some electrical work to get it ready for the metre box.

Bricks arrived first week of October, about 12,000 of them. Over the last few weeks, window frames, door frames, lots of small steel and large steel beams delivered. Bricklayers shed dropped off and temporary electrical power installed.

So it now looks like everything is almost ready for the Bricklayers to come and do the next stage, a lot of materials at site now. The only delay is bricklayers, in high demand at present due to large volume of construction in Perth. Hopefully they start over the next week or so, look forward to walking through the layout of the ground floor.

This is the site after soak wells installed.



Bricks being delivered.



Site as of today.





Hopefully I will have some more pictures soon with the bricks going up.

Hi, glad I found your post, looking forward to following your build. We too have a block in Port Coogee we plan to build on shortly!

Hi. Great.

Will you create a thread here so we can follow your build?

Our brick works just started today so hopefully in a week or so I can show some picture of all the walls and rooms going up for the ground floor. Will take about 2-3 weeks to do all the bricks, 12,000 of them to lay. Nice pay day for the brickies.

Yep, I plan to start a thread when we are a little bit closer to starting. Still nutting out some design issues with the plan.

That is a LOT of bricks!!

Great Living was on our shortlist. Do you have house plans to post? I love your pool/spa plans. Great progress so far.

Hi Mike, do you have any new pictures.
We are still in process of design but i want to go flat roof or roof terrace. Our house will be on Lullworth terrace.