Brookfield home By Simonds

We are almost to start building with Simonds as we just received our building approval from council.

Tomorrow I will post our updated floor plan and out gallery selection.

We have chosen the Brookfield floor plan for 3 main reasons, first it was affordable, second master bedroom was at the back and third the width of the house fits perfectly in our small lot (438m2).

We have made several structural changes like:
- We are building under eaves (450mm) elevation C to get more space in master bathroom, WIR & WIP.
- We are swapping bed 4 location with living room. So now living room (future media room) is next to master room.
- We decided to make bigger the broom cabinet by moving the entry door to living room to the middle.
- In dining area elevation D we had a small window, so we are changing for a small sliding door.
- In master bedroom we are going with 2 small vertical windows like display home.
- In Kitchen area we are moving fridge 450mm towards elevation C to get a longer benchtop in the kitchen.
- In WIP we are getting a sliding door to get to the Alfresco.
- We have closed the access door to the Ensuite in elevation A and move it to elevation D, therefore the access to the Ensuite is through WIR.

It has been a crazy the last couple of weeks. We supposed to start our built in mid August but there were delays with so may variations and drawings (currently Version I ).

Our site was cut on the 23rd of August and slab was poured on the 30th, currently our house has frames up and next week it will have roof. I hope to be in before Christmas but I know it might be January, although mysimonds shows PCI on the 7th of December (fingers crossed ).

I forgot photos!

I am pretty sure this topic will be my built diary, for future references. .. LOL

Yesterday we went to do an inspection with our SS, he was really patient and answered all our questions. So far my experience has been really good with Simonds, I cannot complain about anything to be honest. I feel they want to deliver the best customer experience.

I am going to share our external gallery selection, and I have my hopes up is going to look good.

- Brick is Eclipse (very dark colour)
- Garage and weather boards is Surfmist (white)
- Fascia, gutter, window frames and downpipes is Monument
- Roof is Shale Grey
- Main door and posts is a brown colour

Here some photos.

Thanks for sharing Kika, I look forward to following your build

Thanks Ashleigh, I am so excited that I have to share my feelings. Pretty sure in a few years it will bring me a smile to read this.

I knew the roof will be done last Friday, so I couldn't avoid my self and drove there. I arrived around 5pm and was able to take some good photos.

Our front house has the Portland facade which was standard option. We are not thinking to render, however we might paint the roof cladding if we don't like the brown colour we chose at gallery. I keep my fingers crossed it will look nice but who knows, will see!

Wow, full steam ahead for you guys! That facade is so pretty, I love the little break in the roof.

Yes I think that is the reason we chose the Portland facade too. At the gallery appointment we decided to go with a brown colour but I am regretting that decision. I really hope it is going to look good otherwise we will have to paint it.

So on Wednesday I went to have a look and found that doors and windows have been delivered, yeah. I also saw that the rough ins of the electrical work have been done.

In the master ensuite we had an issue with the location of plumbing which our SS said would be rectified so it was. We don't have any idea about plumbing nor slab so I hope it has been done right, please see the last photo with before and after fix, would you be concerned?

My husband and I went to have a look to the build progress, he spent at least 1 hour reviewing all electrical connections 😎. When we did our gallery he was in charge of deciding electrical and NBN points, but now it seems that the location of the NBN box is not the best (garage close to entry door). I'll have to send a message to our SS trying to ask for a slightly change, will see how we go with this request (fingers crossed ).

Doors, windows and sliding doors have been installed. Hence, our house has been wrapped for this week to start with bricks and plaster board installation, we are so happy with the progress so far.

At the moment mysimonds shows that our estimated PCI is on the 1st of December.

We were told regarding NBN box that the NBN group will only put new build boxes in the garage, so Simonds set it up to be on an internal wall point. And so long as you have data points within the house it won't be an issue as Simonds should ensure the data cabling meets the NBN box. (We got a freebie data point + powerpoint as our CRC realised we had two data points on the NBN set up included, so now we can have two routers!)

The display homes for all builders you'll find have the NBN box on the internal side of the outer-wall to the garage, as the NBN crew don't want to put that much wiring in. It's a downside to building new compared to existing homes where they just tend to set it up where the current modem or phone is.

Thanks for the information JM1911A1 We were led to chose the garage but don't remember anything about NBN just doing installation in the garage. We chose elevation D in the garage really close to the entry door, but now we think we should have selected the living room area, any way if we can't change it then better at least to request a higher position (2mts).

The other thing is that we are just paying a basic NBN installation (excluding Hub) $460 which includes just 3 data points and 1 telephone point, so my husband wants to install extra data points but our SS won't allow us to do any installation until handover.

I gonna try tomorrow my luck again with our SS again.

I sent a SMS to our SS asking him if we could move the NBN location but he said no. However he agreed to talk to the electrician and put it at 2 mt high.

In a good note he said that next week we will have our lock up stage inspection which means bricks will be finished soon, this is so exciting 🤗🤗🤗 can't wait to take more photos.

We went on Saturday to see the build progress and found that bricks have been finalised and plaster has been started. We supposed to go into lockup stage this week, so right now I am waiting on SS call for doing a site visit.

Here some photos of our progress:

Loving the progress photo's. It looks fantastic and coming along fast.

Interesting to read about the NBN installation. We chose not to have ours done by Simonds. We'll get it done by NBN after the build.

Hi Bri1234, I have been reading about your build, has your setback issue been fixed? I hope so. My experience with Simonds has been great so far, no big issues until now.

I don't understand NBN yet, but I know we almost paid over a thousand for an NBN upgrade so I thought we did well chosing the $460 upgrade LOL. I didn't know we could have save money by doing ourselves after handover.

Hi Kika

We’re progressing, slowly, lol. Hoping to have an update in the next week or so.

With the NBN I think it depends on your build. Many new estates require you to get it done as part of the build. We’re doing a knock down rebuild in an established area so we had the choice.
We paid $310 to NBN Co to have the current NBN connection abolished and apparently that is also supposed to cover getting reconnected to the new house.

Yes, I guess we had to paid NBN connection because it is a new estate. I will be following your build Bri1234.