Knockdown and building Henley's Talise Q2 - We have keys!

Hi all,

Surprise surprise.... HH giving us false hope of when they might begin work on our site. they are now saying it will be longer than 2nd week of may as there is a hold up with the council.


getting ready for a bumpy ride.....

Thats not good Trudy,

Don't worry too much, we were held up by the Gas company not capping the pipe properly, i also argued with H for a while due to a storage shed we had on the site that they said i had to move and i said i didn't..( i was right in the end ) all in all it held us up by 3 weeks ( which H claimed as a Job hold ).

I met the Sit Super today and he told me the slab will be poured Monday 4 days earlier than first organised..

It all happens pretty quickly when they get going..so chin up Trudy

G

Look forward to seeing your house go up. I've always wondered what a Talise looks like lol. Very silly that they don't have it up anywhere!

We've had a really smooth ride so far with Henley. We seemed to time it all really well. I think we put the deposit down on the house in October, then had colours later that week. Think we had to wait about a month or so for Tender then contracts were December/Jan. They ended up being ready just after the land was and then we were on site by the end of Jan... Wow has it really been going for 4 months already? :\

We found most of the Cat 1 stuff to be pretty good in there as well. We couldn't justify Colourbond either though. Just a bit too pricey! I think the main upgrades we did were structural. We went a cat 3(Maybe) brick, but all our costs were in making the Grand Living, Pointy Alfresco and Refrigerated Air Con (Coudln't go evap with the double...would only do downstairs, and what's the point lol)

Anyway, hope you start soon

Twiggy,

You are not the only one wondering what a Talise will look like!

Still waiting for the permits. We can't wait for the slab, to have something even if it's just some concrete to call home.

Yours has come along quickly, some great pics.

Chatz

Hey


So our current living arrangement has become extremely dicey and unfortunately, not as ideal as expected. looks like we are in for yet another move, and all out stuff is in storage at the moment! Um, yeah, its not fun. We don't even have the permit from the council yet to build on an easement at the back. HH said they would start building 2 weeks after they have confirmation from the council.

Thanx Twiggy... yes we did a lot of our stuff with cat 1 choices. we went with cat 6 bricks though, and upgraded the kitchen quite a bit as that was the just the most important thing to me! but yes, everythign in bathrooms was cat 1 and i was very pleased with the choices ... just wish I had gone with a rectangular floor tile for the bathroom now as I have seen so many lovely ones since signing our contract. We're having square tiles ... but thats OK. very minor. at this point in time, just a roof adn a floor would be amazing.

G - thx for your confidence boost, and well done with the shed debacle! ... some people! they will just try to make your life difficult wont they?

hubby said to me last night... since it looks like we are going to be homeless soon... maybe setting up camp on our block could be a good idea. gotta love his sense of humour.

so...

permits are all in and site start is in roughly 2 - 3 weeks.
Hmmm.... I think I have heard this before.

Trudy

Hi Trudy

Mrs Chatz here.....I do remember meeting you at Cosham. I'm just dying for someone, anyone to get their Talise or other Henley going!!!! We've had a rough couple of weeks but things are looking up. H applied to our council for a dispensation to have the garage wall at the boundary 3cm higher than allowed, for some technical reason I've forgotten. Council said no. And on the same day we heard about this we got a letter from the council requiring us to repair the crossover post-demo and pool installation. They'll do it for us for $800, meanwhile theyre hanging on to the full security deposit, and hey, we are building soon so why bother? So far, I've spoken to a couple of people and sent an email requesting that we wait till after the house has been built.......after a week I've had two automated responses acknowledging my email. Maddening.

Meanwhile, discussions with H about the garage wall revealed 3 options - move the house aross a metre (no that would be terrible), reduce the garage to the original size (not keen) or cut a further 10cm into the site and don't change anything else. Sounded ok, but the cost of getting rid of that 30 odd cubic meters of dirt would be what??? Got a call yesterday confirming that it would be about $1500-$2000 extra. I said just do it, build the bloody thing!!! So now the plan is to have the permit ok and the file to construction by the end of that month with a view to starting in June. I am really really anxious to get going, I want to be in by Christmas but I probably need a reality check on that! David's In the US at the moment so not here to bring me back ti earth when I start working out what leave I'll take over christmas to move in. There's a massive two storey Porter Davis going up around the corner from our place - the demo was done after ours and it's bricking is nearly done.

On the bright side, all our finance is organized. Hopefully you will start in 2-3 weeks as planned and we won't be too far behind!

Mrs Chatz!

What great news you guys will be starting soon too! I am just like you... absolutely crazy to get in before christmas.... but darl, i think its a long short for the both of us. realistically, i think we may be looking at jan/feb.
We also have to factor in an extra 4 - 5 weeks for laying bamboo flooring everything else e.g. air con and driveway can wait till after the floor and after we are inside!
What are you doing about air con? We are considering going refrigerated cooling coz this evap system is pretty silly... doesnt work half the time. we might have to apply to borrow a little more money at the time of moving in - to pay for this kinda stuff.

Hi Trudy
Sadly I think I have to agree with you, but there has to be a glimmer of hope to keep me going! We have included an evaporative cooling system in our contract, upgraded to a bigger unit than standard. We love evap cooling - had it in our old house and we're also installing junction boxes for ceiling fans in the bedrooms. I really like having windows open! If we find that the evap system isn't enough we might consider a split system for the big living area at the back of the house - again, it's what we had in our old house, but only because our extension prevented the evap going right through!

Four to five weeks to install the flooring seems a lot, I dint know much about bamboo floors though other than they look fantastic. Will you need to be out of where you are living by a certain date? We are fortunate in that regard so delays won't stuff us around too much, other than emotionally! I have already told David that I'm in the house as soon as humanly possible, no blinds, no driveway, no furniture even - fed up with the flat. I keep reminding myself that it's cheap and convenient but argh!

Our contact person at Henley called me today with a couple of queries as she was getting our final drawings done. So hopefully things will happen. One of the questions was which end of the pool is the deep end an I can't for the life of me remember! I was onsite with the pool guys at 7am that day, David was away (of course) and I can't remember, I know I was surprised to be asked. I hope I was sensible and put it at the far end away from the house, which is what I told H today. I can't even nick around fo a look as it's all boarded over.

However long it takes we should both be in this time next year, well and truly settled in right?

Kate

MrsChatz,

If you look at the nearmap picture of when the pool is going in you can see that the deep end is on the west boundary. I still can't believe they took the picture on that day.

Chatz

Oh hello Chatz, nice to hear from you. I checked my phone photos of the hole and yes, that near map shot confirms it. So I made the right decision and told Henley the right thing. Isn't it the middle of the night where you are?
Mrs Chatz

Sleep is overrated

sorry to butt in on your Henley thread but we are also self employed and finding it very difficult to arrange finance, can I ask how and where you got it? I had organised a loan thru ANZ but time expired (long story) and now theyve changed their policies and wont look at us.

Hi Chatz and Mrs Chatz,

I drive past your block several times a week ( I recognise the pool sitting at the back and the house next door!). I'm always interested watching houses demolished and new ones go up in the general area (lived there for 40 years...), as there seem to be so many. I remember when yours came down, there's quite a few newies in the street! There was one house in your street that was demolished in 3 days at the same time as mine, but mine took about 3 weeks! I was constantly comparing it's 'progress' to mine!

As I'm in a similar area, it will be interesting following your journey and seeing if you have the same SS and Tradies that I had! I have a friend building with them currently in a similar area and they are having the same SS. Feel free to have a read through my blog and thread. I haven't mentioned any names (and I won't online), but if you have the same SS, I thought he was brilliant and very honest and professional.

Best wishes for a smooth, stress free build!

We have a building permit! We must be close to starting now, we can almost smell it.

Stormy, there can't be too many other house blocks that have a pool and nothing else There are lots of news houses in the street, most of them are double story houses. The frustrating build for us is a knockdown around the corner that occured after ours and last time I looked they were about to start on the bricks...

This thread is turning into a people building with Henley, starting about now. I am very happy with that, its going to be good to see how we all go. So who thinks I should change the topic to reflect that?

Chatz

Hi everyone

Lasttimehopefully - I feel your pain getting the loan organised. To be honest with you, it took us almost a year and a half to get it all finalised. We went with commonwealth (despite mortgage brokers' advice) as we were already banking with them and the woman at the bank was great to deal with. They have a lot of requirements for you to fulfil first... you have to have your business running for minimum 2 yrs and then 100000 other requirements too. Didn't help us that my hubby was also studying full time and working here and there when he could. Best of luck! if you have a good mortgage broker, USE THEM....because the amount of running around you will have to do is not worth anything.

Chatz - you're right, its turning into a henley thread! Sorry chatz, we've invaded your page. meanwhile, i know how exciting it is when you find out you have your permits! we received that phone call recently too. I have a ** suspicion our houses will start in the same week. it would probably make sense for henley to order very similar products at the same time too maybe?

Trudy x

Hello all my Henley "building about now" Girlfriends.., i hope you all don't mind me calling you my Girlfriends, i say that because when my wife asks me what i am up to on the computer, i tell her i am checking out whats happenning with the girls... i think i'm the only bloke thats posting anyway..

Chatz, you have a communal Henley build thread, that very cool and its also cool how we are all keeping an eye on each other.. and we all know that things happen for a reason and that these stages pass, easier said.. but all will all be fine, just believe that.

Haven't posted for a while.. been up in Sydney for work..not much doing on our block, what with all the rain and all the issues we had having the slab re-engineered ( because of soft spots ) anyway a variation of 5 grand later...

Good news is the concreters were on our block till nearly 6:00 tonight ( 19/05) so as they could get the slab done tomorrow..

All going well i'll have some candid snaps to post tomorrow..

XX
G

Hey Ger, Chatz sure isn't a girlfriend! You're making great progress (with your house), gives us all hope. I quite like the communal Henley thread idea.

MrsChatz

Ger1322, you go girlfriend! Don't listen to MrsChatz.

Heh I'm a dude too