Our Build with Homegroup WA

Hi and welcome to our journey building our second home.

Our first house we built just before we were married, almost 8 years ago. A lot has changed since then. We have 4 beautiful children and have grown out of our old place so time to upgrade! We put our old house on the market and sold it a few months ago and are now living with my parents until we build again.

We purchased a block as soon as we found one suitable. We bought in Aspiri estate in Piara Waters. We wanted a decent sized block. Easier said than done when the majority of blocks these days are 400sqm average. We managed to bag our selfs a lovely block at 614sqm which is perfect size for us. We were going to keep hold of this block and save as much a possible until we felt we could start building. So now is the time!

We have been looking around at building companies and house designs for what seems like an eternity now. Our requirements for our home were

4 bedrooms - decent size as 2 of the kids will need to share and main bed to have a nice bathroom incl double shower and bath
2 bathrooms
study
theatre
activity room with a store room attactched
alfresco
kitchen with scullery or large pantry

Now i would have thought this was quite an easy thing to achieve, but I found that most companies had either the activity or study, not both. We found a few designs with all, but the house size was very small and we needed something decent in size that was within our budget. It was also at this time we decided to try and find a company that were including things such as air con, stone bench tops, high ceilings and a few luxury extras. As I see it, Aircon is a necessity in Australia so to have it included in the house price was wise.

We finally found a company that was inc all the things we wanted and the house on display was nice too. It certainly wasn't the layout I was envisioning but nice nonetheless.

Now for those of you that have built before I'm sure you imagine the high spec of a show home and that almost none of the over the top fancy things are included with what you get in your new home. But we were surprised to see a lot of the fixtures/tapware/shower heads etc were all good quality, nice designed stuff. So we started working on our design.

The building company we are working with is home group WA. Now I haven't heard of anyone I know that has built with them, so we are a bit unsure of how they will be through the process. I normally like to go with someone I have heard good reviews from, a recommendation is always a great thing, but not to be in this case.

So we set to work with HGWA. Our consultant was great from the start, very helpful, very knowledgeable and seemed to care about our home which is great. He showed us the base design which was slightly smaller and slightly different to the show home we were in but the closest they had.



He then showed us the promotion plan that had been drawn up already, adding a 1200 wide door, high ceilings in the entrance, kitchen had been made bigger to reflect the show homes kitchen.

The first thing we asked him to change was the size. He cut a line across the plan and extended the house out. We also added a store area to the side of the garage. In total we added around an extra 50sqm to the home.

We then decided to upgrade the base ens bathroom to the one that was in the display home, and add a bath in.



He drew up our first draft. Still a lot of changes to be made. This was going to be harder than I first thought!

By adding the larger bathroom, we had lost our study. I wanted the study in the house so we had to find a way to put it back without loosing too much area in our bedroom or living area. Few other minor changes, shelving for the store room and changing door position, changing around the scullery, and we wanted to add a half height wall to our alfresco so we could make an outdoor kitchen and have it like an extra room almost. So back he went to get the draftsman to draw up the changes. This is what came back.



So our study was added back in, but in turn our bathroom had been shrunk and non existent WIR was not good. Other than that, we were starting to get closer to our design.

At this point, the consultant we had been dealing with had to go away and said we could continue our drawing of plans with a colleague of his. We met with his colleague, he was also very nice and helpful. He informed us he usually does more of the drawing side of the process which was great as he had many great ideas and drew them up there and then for us.

He put everything in that we wanted and suggested a corner window to the front room so we had some feature to our front door/entrance way. This is what design came back.



Much better! The WIR had been made bigger, ens was back, study was in, store room was right. We added a window and cupboard to the scullery, extended the children's bathroom out to the eaves to make it larger.

This was almost as we wanted it. We had a couple more small tweeks, the corner window hadn't yet been added and I wanted to centre up some of the windows in the lounge, study and activity. Our plan was then sent into costing.

We received our costing and as we suspected we were quite over budget. We knew we had a little bit of money up our sleeves but wanted to keep as much aside as possible so we had some money to finish off the home.

We didn't expect to have flooring and carpet included but it was, so that was a cost we no longer had. We had them delete out our paving as we wanted to get aggregate done. The other big cost we had was double wall oven in the kitchen. With 4 kids, I don't really like the idea of ovens that are under the bench height and a single oven just won't cut it for the amount I cook/bake.

It was getting close to the point where we sign up. One more thing I requested as I guess a sweetener for us in the deal was that they included stone bench tops throughout for us. I didn't want stone in the kitchen and then laminate in the scullery so Lee said he would see if he can get it all included and fix the last few changes and then have us come in to look over and sign our contracts.

We are meeting with him tomorrow and I will update what happens after that....

Thanks for sharing your plan process...we're potentially doing a similar thing with HGWA so good to see the planning process in detail (and seeing where you get extras thrown in as well). Look forward to following your build.

Lovely plan! We were almost going to sign up with Lee but decided on a double storey and went with a different builder - he was absolutely prompt and helpful though!!

welcome to the homegroupwa family

following your build ............... love your plan it all flows very nicely

Your plan is really similar to
Ours (besides study and games room) following your journey


Mon

So we have signed, paid our deposit and sorting final bank stuff and away we go!

Posting to follow
We are also building with HGWA.

So exciting bdalby!!!! Can't wait to follow your build!!!


Mon

We are building with Home Group as well. So far they have been great Your house plans look fantastic. I love that you have added in a store room, it is a great idea

Also building with HGWA based off the same design as yourself
Love your plan for the kitchen area just like the display in golden bay

Posting to follow. Plan looks lovely!

Haven't updated here for a while, as not much is happening at this stage. Finances and signing documents is mostly what has been happening. We did however have our tile and laminate meeting on Wednesday so here is an update on that.

My husband and i ended up spending a lot more on our build than originally expected which has left us with limited funds for pre-start and upgrades so one of the compromises was to stick with the HGWA tiles, rather than going to one of the tile shops, as i knew i would want to upgrade it all, if the options were there. We did have a look in crosby tiles, but wasn't overly in love with anything there anyway. Im quite boring and neutral with my colour schemes so i wasn't fussed on borders etc.
We also wanted to try and work into our budget to have the bathroom, ens and toilets tiled floor to ceiling.
We have requested a quote on this to be given to us at pre-start.

So for our kitchen, i wanted a grey top, white cupboards, white splash back, and originally grey floor tiles. Now HGWA only had a white, light brown, dark brown or charcoal tile. Definitely didn't want to go with the browns and charcoal was way too dark so our only option was the light tile. We went with the Concrete grey top for kitchen and scullery, Laminex polar white cupboards, and the Gloss white small subway tiles 100x300.



Now we don't have a door between our scullery and laundry so we have also asked to have the living area tiles to flow through the laundry too so it matches. but I'm having a different bench top and cupboards.
i went with the Oyster White stone bench, And the Formica Ash Woodline for the cupboards. I chose to have the large 300x450 gloss white tiles in the laundry for skirting etc.



I wanted our ens and children's bathroom to match. Slightly different to laundry but again very neutral.
Having the cotton white stone benches. The floor tile is a grey 300x300, which in our main bathroom will flow up one of the walls. The rest of the walls will be the large 300x450 tiles but in the matt white.
We chose Formica Sarum strand for our cupboards.





Im not very confident ever in my choices, I'm so indecisive so really hoping they look ok. The consultant we had was Alison and she was lovely to work with. Really helpful, had great suggestions and knew what she was talking about in regards to a few positioning of tiles to match heights of bath tiles etc around the room.
Putting up these pics has made me realise i didn't take very good pictures of them but I'm sure you get the idea... white white and a bit of grey

Love your selections I am the same and went with all colours that were neutral it will all go lovely together I love the choices

Those colour choices are fantastic! I love neutral colours at least you can add other colours with decor and change it up over time - we went with whites and greys and creams

Thanks Natalie92 and Mandy+steve, its always a bit daunting to know if you have made the right choice or not with these things!

I love your colours too! We went black/white/grey. Neutral is good

Posting to follow

Thanks kellie_87! My hubby wanted more colour and texture but I think u can overdo it! Much better to hold back a little and then add colour and texture with accessories! ?

Just booked in our prestart meeting for Jan 13th! So excited!

We are also going with grey but more charcoal and white in the bathrooms and white and more white in the kitchen. We are just going into construction. Love your choices. Posting to follow your build.