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Hi all I though I'd start my own thread to take advantage of the wealth of knowledge this forum has to offer.
We are getting close to signing up with Ross North to build our new home once we demolish the existing one.
We have a custom design that 3 builders have priced. RN ticks all our boxes and has a good reputation so it looks like we will be going with them.My question is, how perfect do we want to get the quote before we pay the deposit and sign the PPA? I'll attach the floor plan and welcome your comments.
Congratulations on your upcoming build! The plan looks very functional, but may be a bit dark. Which was is North? I have a couple of suggestions:
You may need to think about how to position your main living area to capture natural sunlight. You have a huge alfresco window but the alfresco shades it all so it will be quite dark inside. Natural light will make the biggest impact on how your new home feels.
The roof lines on this plan aren't very clean. There are a lot of narrow roof planes and unnecessary extra valleys and ridges. So if, for example you wanted to add a skylight above your study nook you couldn't. I think the roof can be easily simplified with some minor adjustments.
I would suggest getting the plans as perfect as you can before signing anything. The second you sign you lose all your bargaining power. Any changes post sign-up should be cosmetic prestart selections only.
Some things I suggest you include in your specifications before sign-up are:
- electrical downlights package
- internal wall painting
- ceiling height tiling to showers.
These items have huge markups in prestart but can be negotiated down a lot as part of a package.
Good luck!
Good looking plan. We had Ross North in our sights as well, however never got a price from them in the end.
I agree that you should get as much as you can put in the initial plan at contract stage, rather than doing it at Pre-Start. Some of our changes/upgrades were surprisingly affordable and others just blew us away when it came to what our builder quoted. I think if we ever build again, which is unlikely, I'd go into the whole process much wiser.
Are you organising your own demolition? We found the process quite easy and most of the builders we were dealing with had little interest in doing the demolition, except for the fact they could make a tidy mark-up on the price of it.
Hi amileka, Thanks for your comments and advice
Aflresco is north, entry door to the south.
The other 2 builders had detailed a sky light in computer nook. I like the idea of a sky light but dont really like how they finish in the ceiling.
One design challenge we had was maximising the width of the block thought that middle section and that's how we ended up with the computer nook.
Good looking plan. We had Ross North in our sights as well, however never got a price from them in the end.
I agree that you should get as much as you can put in the initial plan at contract stage, rather than doing it at Pre-Start. Some of our changes/upgrades were surprisingly affordable and others just blew us away when it came to what our builder quoted. I think if we ever build again, which is unlikely, I'd go into the whole process much wiser.
Are you organising your own demolition? We found the process quite easy and most of the builders we were dealing with had little interest in doing the demolition, except for the fact they could make a tidy mark-up on the price of it.
Hi thme, Thanks. I'm hoping to draw on the "what I would do better next time" tips that members of this forum have.
Yes we will be organising the demolition. As you say builders aren't reallt interested and have actually had builders suggest we organise it ourselves. I'm not sure who we will be going with yet but we have quotes from majority of the demo contractors.
We went through Vinsan, but did get quotes from a few. The prices were all very similar, however some charge extra for disconnection of services and make you organise it yourself (ie Atco gas, etc). Vinsan included it in the price and did all the forms for us. They were the cheapest by about $100 and their wait time was only 8 weeks.
The big thing we got caught out on was the power dome conversion. $4,900 (!)
The plan looks good.
a couple of things I would suggest that you need to consider are:
1. increase your entry by at least 200mm to get extra room to move, the drawings are at brick level and don't often translate to end product. Same goes for your pass between the garage and the entry to the living area. It will be quite dark in that area so you need to address this either by widening the passage or windows/skylights
2. There's a little bit of dead space in alfresco, if budget allows it, increase the width to align with kitchen windows. Keep just glass windows or increase stacker to let the natural light come in. (We did this with our place and it is the best thing ever, we get so much of natural light in the house during day).
thme we also have a quote from Vinsan and they are looking like a good option. We are aware of the power conversion costs and we are lucky (well in this instance) to have the power on our side of the street.
Thanks for your comments jpmontoya. We would like to make our entry 1500mm however we are tight to the boundary on the right hand side (east) and on the left hand side (west) we are saving space for our caravan. Ill put up a floor plan that shows the boundaries. We have some room that we can steal from the computer nook so I will take your advice and adjust that section of passage to 1500mm.
We have pushed the aflresco as far west as possible as you will see in the attached.
I have taken on board the comments from this forum, and have added a highlight window in the theatre.
I agree with widening the entry. You need a minimum of 1400 width in an entry to not feel cramped. You won't feel the difference when parking your caravan, but you definitely will when you're walking through a tight, narrow corridor.