Building with Homes by CMA - Ascot 260

Hi All,
we have just started the process of building our new home. We have purchased a corner block in Stone Ridge and starting to lock in house plans. We have decided to go with Homes by CMA as we really like the Ascot 260 design and they have an all inclusive package.

The thing that I loved best about CMA is that their display home is "what you see is what you get" with very minimal upgrades. The upgrades they have shown are all listed on a flyer with prices which weren't unreasonable.

I like to consider myself as a very organised person. I spreadsheet and plan and generally once I've made up my mind, it's made up! My husband on the other hand isn't the best with decision making.... *edit* he is much better at this now

The time line is looking something along the lines of this:

Land Registration: Nov 2016.
House Deposit and inclusions list sorted: 28 November 2016
Land settled: 20 December 2016
First plans received: 23 Dec 2016 (rework required)
Second plans received: 23 January (minor rework required)
Final Plan: 02 Feb 2017
Colour selection appointment: Thursday 2nd February
HIA: Thursday 2nd February
Signed Contracts and Plans sent to Broker & valuation ordered: 9th-13th February 2017
QBCC Build insurance paid by CMA: 09 Feb 2017
Stockland covenant approval: 13 Feb 2017
Plans sent to Council: 14 Feb 2017
Initial valuation satisfactory & application submitted to financier: 16 Feb 2017
Unconditional finance approval: 23 Feb 2017 and paperwork signed and returned 2nd March 2017
Council Approval received: 14 March 2017
Letter of commencement from the bank received (FINALLY): Monday 3 April 2017
Site Supervisor (S) Assigned: Tuesday 4 April

SITE WORKS COMMENCE
Site Scrape: 13 April 2017
Piers: 19 April 2017
Drainage: 20 April 2017


April 27th - Stage 1 : Slab
May 5th - Stage 2 : Frame
June 6th - Stage 3 : Enclosed and officially locked out
June 23 - Stage 4 : Fixing completed
11th August - Stage 5 : Est PCI Date provided
1st September - Handover

18 week build

Any suggestions or handy advice that can be given would be greatly appreciated in regards to being prepared and making the process as smooth as possible.

I just wanted to drop by and wish you well for your build.
As you know, we have the same builder, and I've really enjoyed my interactions with them so far.
I look forward to watching your build progress!
My land hasn't been registered yet, that happens in Jan/Feb so I hope my build will start in March. That'd mean a June/July completion for me, all things going well...
Look forward to seeing your colour selections!

It's funny you say colour selections. I think we must have had the same dreams. We really liked most the colours in the display home so if we can't decide on what we like, we might stick with something similar just because we know it works. Like you said, your not stuck with it forever and can evolve over time.

We don't want it too dark so it's dreary but absolutely do no want it blinding white either. Sometimes I wish they wouldn't give you so much choice!

Although our land is registered, with Christmas and what not, we will probably be looking at the same build time as you. We have submitted our initial plans to be drafted and made a good start on the electrical so just waiting to hear back from P with the details we need to get the final approval for building loan.

P said there is a double story CMA going in over the road and a single story with skillion roof going in around the corner from our block as well. It will be interesting to see the progress of all of them.

So we received notification that our land is finally registered and have been issued a street number. Kind of makes everything that little bit more real! Settlement on the land is scheduled for the 20th, hopefully the conveyancer has all their ducks lined up to settle this before the shut down period. This will start of the new year with an exciting new adventure - building our dream home!

We have only made minor alterations to the plan. Created a walk through from the garage through the laundry. Moved the sink in the butlers pantry under the window and added shelves to both sides. Turned the formal lounge into a media room with sliding doors. Moving the study wall out as much as possible to maximize the space. Some pillars will be added on the outside on either side of the kitchen splash back window to satisfy the design essentials of stone ridge. Adding a 8.5m slab (no roof or tiles) outside the laundry so my husband has himself an outside airbrush studio right outside the roller door to the garage.

The next dilemma we have is the clothes line! Who would have thought it would be such an issue. Design essential rules state that it cannot be visible from the secondary street. As the rules also state that secondary street fencing can only be 1.5m high, it limits every single option to have your clothesline near the laundry - like all normal people would do! So if I want my clothesline put outside, it needs to be around near the master bedroom - 10,000km from the laundry!! It's just not practical. So we are requesting to have it erected in the garage near the roller door. We always planned to have some sort of wet weather clothes line in there anyways. It just means that it will be mounted properly by the builders initially and we don't have to locate studs and all that jazz to do it ourselves. Eventually I will be getting a hills hoist and I will be putting it wherever I bloody well like!

Another thing we added was a drain in the laundry. Apparently they aren't stock standard anymore. I thought that was weird as it's a wet area. I'm getting one because it takes great skill to flood your laundry and I've done it 3 times now!

Hopefully I hear back from P the salesman today regarding a few more questions I have - how much for an additional tap out the back, how much for dimmers in the media, how much to get the his and her WIR on separate light switches!

So much to think about!!

Ps, word of warning: a giant corner block seems great in theory but it also means A LOT of fencing and even more turf!!

Hahaha your block is AMAZING! So big! But yes that's a lot of fencing, and a lot of mowing.
I very very very almost went with a huge 570m2 corner block, only to afford that much land I needed to go further out. After paying my land deposit and then sitting and thinking on it for a few weeks, plus reviewing the actual street once it had been finished and seeing they had put a stormwater drain precisely where my driveway needed to go so that I could get optimal block siting for my house, I backed out of the block. It was just too far away (north of Caboolture) and I couldn't face the extra driving time.

Don't take my word as gospel, but I'm looking at my inclusions list now, and:
The outside tap was $150 (I'm getting 3 outside taps too)
Dimmers are $90 each (I'm getting 2)
I didn't split any lighting circuits in any strange manner, but I was VERY custom on mine, and just drew the circuits in that I wanted, and there's no charges on my inclusions list for that...

We def have the same salesman He's great!

I'm so envious of your big house. I absolutely don't need that much room, it's just me, and I wanted the smallest mortgage possible. But I'd LOVE a proper butler's pantry, and a separate laundry. Next time! They're both on my wishlist for next time

For picking your colours, can I give you one tip? I went to every housing display village within an hour's drive.
In every house I liked things in, whether it was colours, furnishings, flooring, design features, outdoor stuff, whatever... I took pics on my mobile.

I ended up taking over a thousand photos in a 3 month period.

The closer I got to colour selection day, the more I found myself gravitating towards particular colours. I knew I liked grey walls, I knew I liked white kitchens, I knew I liked wood-look laminate cupboards in the bathrooms, I knew what kind of front doors I was attracted to...

I spent an afternoon one day on my laptop, I downloaded every house photo onto Dropbox and split them all into themed folders (e.g. bedrooms, lounge, bathroom, walk-in wardrobe designs, kitchens, etc). Then I went through and deleted all the ones I wasn't so keen on anymore.

The ones leftover absolutely had a theme. EG all the bathroom sinks I liked were all square or rectangular. All the shower niche tiles were small and had something glittery or shiny in them. All the outside pics of roofs and garage doors were similar colours etc etc etc

So on colour picking day all I had to do was look at my options, and flick through the appropriate photo album in Dropbox, and what I wanted was made pretty clear made it all so much simpler. I had envisioned spending 45 mins picking the kitchen cupboards. In reality, it took me maybe 2 mins.

I was in and out in under 90 mins total, which was a surprise to both me and P!

Look forward to moving forwards with you in a very similar timeframe!

Oh don't get me wrong, we absolutely don't need that much space either. It's just me, husband, dog and 2 cats. But it was the entertaining area that sold us. And having separate study and laundry so you don't have to take a room. When they did the sitting on the block (flipped to the orig), we knew it was meant to be, ha ha. It's perfect there! And the yard on the right overlooks an 'eco corridor' - kind of like a park with no access, just trees.

The house we just sold was an old school 70's 2 story so husband is super excited at having a pantry he can stick more than his arm in and not having stairs!!

They really are reasonable with their inclusion prices. The problem is we are at max finance just on the quote - that doesn't include the $8000 in turf (on top of the allowance). It does include the $4900 fencing which is on top of allowance. The most expensive upgrade after the fencing is the render to the back. We plan on spending a lot of time out there so the bag and paint just won't cut it. Especially when the pool goes in (5yr plan)

I will need to start making folders in my iCloud. Work isn't so keen on Dropbox and that is full of my uni stuff. We pretty much know what we want though. It's very similar to all your stuff. P mentioned they were waiting on new carpet swatches for the standard range, do you know if that was available yet?

I believe I may need to start renting rooms out once we move in to fund this crazy plan!

I'm considering a pool down the side in the future too, and like you will want the outside fully rendered then, but I figure I can render and re-paint when/if that happens Your block size will be perfect for a pool area though, no skinny little lap pool down the side of the house for you OUCH at your turf cost! can you not DIY that for less?

I'm looking forward to receiving my large paint swatches next week, will be good to see the colours in larger blocks than just the little postage stamp sized ones I've seen until now. Starting to wonder if I shouldn't have spent more time looking at paint colours earlier - it wasn't until colour appointment that I found out that though the base paints will all be Solver, I can choose any brand's tint that I like... so I could have had a Dulux grey for example. If I'd known that in advance I'd have probably had a better look at paint colours and stuck my head in some threads here.

There were no carpet swatches available for my day, sorry. I upgraded to the better range, since I've only got 3 rooms with carpet it was only a $300 upgrade and both the quality and the colours were nicer so I think it was worth it. I wasn't going to upgrade, but I was umming and ahhing over the carpet tiles he had, and couldn't decide. Once he priced up the upgrade cost, I looked at the other range and picked my colour in maybe 15 seconds flat.

Hahaha at getting a boarder in... you'll get the pool faster!

The plan is for the pool out the back of the house off the alfresco so it flows straight out of the house and into the pool! That's the plan anyways.

Yeah I think we will do the turf ourself. It can be done over time. Originally we told P to use the allowance just to do the front (as per Stone Ridge Design Essentials) and we will do the back ourselves....eventually. (Dogs like dirt, right...). I think we might just tell him to credit us back the allowance and we will do it all ourselves. Possibly considering the same for the fencing... but it's 123 lineal mt of fencing and that's a lot of damn holes!

So let me get this right... the undercoat is solver and then you can pretty much pick any top coats? I was looking at Dulux as well - when I say looking, I went to bunnings and grabbed one of everything on the colour wall!

I got an email this morning from P who gave me the same numbers as you for the tap and dimmer. Putting the WIR on separate switches at no cost. He also said our first drafts should be available on Wednesday which is ready because land settlement is Tuesday! I know what Santa is getting me this year.....Dirt! 716m2 of glorious dirt!

I don't think that's quite right. I'm pretty sure they will use Solver paints for everything, but that they can technically tint them any way you ask them.

EG use Solver paint as the "base" but they can put 4 drops of colour A and 6 drops of colour B and 18 drops of colour C to mix it to a Dulux shade of powder blue instead of the Solver shade of powder blue.

At least I *think* that's how it works...

And now, haha, after talking about your pool, I've been investamagating... and have discovered shippingcontainerpools.com.au - which would fit perfectly down the side of my house, and fit perfectly into my budget, and wouldn't need fencing...

Ah yes, that sounds like something P may have mentioned at some stage actually when I said about it the colour of the display home walls.

We were looking at shipping container for storage of our stuff and ideas of what we could do with it after if we bought one instead of rented. Some people are so creative! And the shipping containers weren't anywhere near as expensive as I thought they would be

So after living the debt free life for a very short time of 22 days, Santa came early and our land has finally settled!

Hopefully P comes through with the first plan today. He did tell me it should be available today so fingers crossed! Plenty of time to mull over it during the festive season

Exciting times ahead!

Yaaaaaaaaay! That's fabulous news

I went to him with a bunch of Q's on Monday and haven't had a response yet... and now, after reading more blogs on here, I have more Q's! hahaha he's gonna hate me this week!

Ha ha, i went through a post about "things not to forget" yesterday and I have so many more questions as well.

I have been reviewing colours and what not over the last few days. Hopefully we should have some firm ideas when we visit the show room - When ever that will be. I'm hoping they will have the new one opened by the time our turn comes around.

Soooo

The soil report and contour survey has come back. It has come back as a H1 (which is OK because they allow for this in the build without the extra cost). P states that the report is requesting 800-1000mm piers but thinks if we get a soil compaction certificate from Stockland then we won't need to do this. I sure hope that if we do this, and they say ok, we aren't risking foundation issues in the future.....

So because we have a HUGE block, we need a lot of fencing - 123 lineal metres to be precise. The block to our left is slightly higher. Turns out it will need to be retained before we fence. We were quoted for 1 sleeper high @ $419 ($19/m). It has come back and turns out we need 2 sleepers high - that jumps to $90/m!!!! So we either ride it out and hope the neighbour retains their property for stability before we have to.... They have a build to boundary and plan to have their garage on the boundary so I can only cross my fingers and hope they are all sorted and ready to go when we are - and they retain when the slab is laid! The additional $2,200 for retaining isn't really something that I would prefer to sacrifice upgrades for.

P mentions that retaining ownership is a grey area in QLD..... so the people on the left (i would think) would have more interest in securing their foundations so they should be responsible (in my eyes).

Ohhhhhh it's all so hard sometimes!

Still patiently waiting for plans.... Seems that i am not a patient person

Hahaha I also have ZERO patience!
I haven't had a reply to the emails I sent him on Monday either, so I think he's just a bit snowed under at the moment.

When are you hoping to start building? Like, if the land is now yours, you've got to get plans approved now - first by the estate and then by council - is the hope to get all that sorted by Jan and start in Feb?

This is the plan!

I have had a phone call and a couple of emails this week. But I think it's cause I'm hassling. It was 4 weeks ago we draw up initial plans (white out and red pen, lol) and we aren't changing anything from the standard apart from adding 2 doors, extending a wall and rearranging the furniture/shelving in 2 rooms. P did say the draftsman had 4 townhouse complex which took longer than expected. I'm just hoping to get them by COB today cause he goes on holidays til the 9th and that's dragging it out 6weeks from initial draft. I'd like to have the Christmas break to mull over things.

It's an 18 week build so I don't want to start any later than first or second week of feb - making hand over mid june. I just need to not be too consumed with the house while I'm supposed to be focusing on work and school too. In my final year and FT work and FT study doesn't leave too much more time for unnecessary worry and stress

Omg!!! House plans have arrived!!!

So we have our first copy of our first draft. We have til 9th Jan when the salesman comes back to work. So this is what we have:



Visualization!







Exciting times ahead!