Browse Forums Building A New House 1 May 15, 2011 3:09 pm Hi All, I have read various threads with much interest, particulary the Dechellis Homes threads. We have recently bought some land down south and have just decided to go with Dechellis Homes, after much consideration and comparing quotes from 4 other builders (AV Jennings, Homestead Homes, Fairmont Homes and Rendition Homes). We fell in love with the display homes at Aldinga Beach but unfortunately our land would not accommodate the designs, so we have customized the design taking the features we liked the most from the two display homes. Dechellis have been great with the process so far actually listening to what we wanted and coming up with an excellent end product, our own home design. I have found it difficult with other builders to actually get them to put an accurate quote and plan to what we had requested, if they got back at all! must be too hard if it is not off the plan. I hope the rest of the process is as smooth as this initial phase with Dechellis and just want the building to begin now!! Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 2May 15, 2011 7:02 pm welcome. i will follow your thread with much interest would love to see your plan, when are you due to start? Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 4May 15, 2011 7:55 pm Use a host such as Flickr,photobucket or imageshack (free sites) and after upgrading copy and paste the img link into your post here-if you use the forum search function there is a thread on How to Post Photos Deemaree Kyndylan Capers: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=46852 My blog: http://www.sufficientlysufficient.blogspot.com/ Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 5Jun 09, 2011 9:15 pm IWe signed up with Dechellis a couple of weeks ago and are just waiting for the engineers report to come back. Getting a little nervous as the footing report appears to be such a lottery.
We are currently in the process of moving out of our home and taking a rental property, which we have managed to get next door to our block, I think this is a good thing!! Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 6Jun 10, 2011 4:28 pm i like your plan, its very different thats great that you will be next door! our final price was the same as the quote for the house and also the footings Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 7Jun 10, 2011 8:10 pm I know we changed the plan quite alot as our land only goes back 28 metres so we could not fit the Wild Orchid design on there which we really liked. So we decided to take parts from the Wild orchid and the Mclaren. We loved the wild orchid ensuite bathroom. We are looking forward to getting the colour selections done we have already tried to incorporate most of the things into our initial quote, upgrading quite alot of things already such as doors, ceiling height, cornices, kitchen applicances bench top, cupboards etc.... but I am sure there will be some extras to add, only a few more I hope on our tight budget! At least wit the rental we can just throw the furniture over the fence after ( maybe not literally!) Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 8Jun 10, 2011 9:14 pm I'm amazed that you were able to get a rental next door - we have had trouble finding a rental in the area of our block that's suitable (finally got one today ) I love the bedroom/robe/ensuite set-up. I was trying to work out some of the other areas - media/lounge at the front, alfresco side-back and family/games along the back? https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=43937&start=0 Bought a block in Golden Grove - Jan 2011 Finally finished our design, Mar 2012, *yay* Signed with ADH council consent June 12 Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 9Jun 10, 2011 9:24 pm We are building in Aldinga Beach and their is plenty available, just really fortunate that the company we bought the land from also rented the property next door, so he let us know straight away! With regards to the layout and rooms- We have a storage room leading from the garage which is all shelved. ( we wanted plenty of storage and have done the same with the WIR making them a reasonable size) The alfresco is at the side back and a rumpus room at the rear attached to the alfresco with a separate lounge at the front , hope that makes sense! We took along while drawing up the plan ourselves to get the dimensions just right, as we wanted to leave enough room in the rear garden to eventually have a swimming pool and still leaving enough space down the side for the alfresco area and getting some sun light which will be north facing. Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 10Jun 15, 2011 5:49 pm Hey RichSA! We built our own design with Dechellis which started off like the Wild Orchid. We too liked their ensuite! Have a look at our plan to see what we did with the ensuite. We have the same pieces but rearranged to get the bath under a larger window as we wanted some more natural light. Also, just check your plan to see if there is a light in the ensuite toliet section as we missed this and find it quite dark even though we have lots of natural light. Although you might be ok as you have the window in the toilet whereas ours is on an internal wall. Good luck and I will follow with interest. We have been in 6 months now. ------------------------------------------------------ Handover: 14 December 2010 Current: Putting in plants! My View thread: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=38242&hilit=dechellis+magill Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 11Jun 18, 2011 9:22 am Thanks for the advice Robbie. We got our house plans back today but they have missed quite a lot of detail off which we requested. We will have to go back to the drawing board with them! The good news is I checked our land yesterday and they have done the bore logs so hopefully will get the price on the footings soon, that is my biggest fear. Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 13Aug 04, 2011 2:16 pm Hi RichSA - how are things going? We are also building (and renting) in AB and are almost at completion!! Love your plan! For info on our build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=43093 Built the McLaren by Dechellis - slab down 22 Feb - handover 30 Aug 2011 - and gardens finished 9 Dec 2012!! Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 14Aug 30, 2011 7:11 pm Hi Mclaren. Unfortunetly the past two months have been a little stressful. The design of the house on the first two drafts by dechellis was completely wrong (22 mistakes on the first). We decided then to change our design slightly and have now put the alfresco onto the back of the house and get rid of the rumpus room. Two more attempts later and they got there! however each change took them 2 weeks to complete! and they still tried to put their own slant on the design eg, we did not want windows in the rear bedrooms going down to ground level as we have young children. At first they put up resistance to this stating it would 'not look good'. We then had the issue of waiting for a contract price. It has been over 4 weeks now. We were told that we are now 3rd in the queue for a contract price, however I chased this up again on friday and have now found out that it has not even got though council approval yet!! They suggested I bother the council now rather than pester them! not very impressed. I am now waiting in limbo for the council approval and then the contract price. I am a little concerned about this as our footing report showed H-D soil and top soil compacted which I cant locate a compaction certificate for! Any way I hope there will be a positive outcome in the next couple of weeks or I may be changing builder! I am over the process already! Your house looks fantastic congratulations Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 15Aug 30, 2011 11:11 pm Hi RichSA - welcome! We're building a custom design through Dechellis too. It took us 5 months to get our plans through the council just for planning approval. It can feel like forever and unfortunately there is nothing the builder can do about it. Don't give up. Every builder you go through is going to have a hiccup now and then, just remember why you chose them in the beginning. Once you've got your approvals and you've been given your final selection date.....word of advice (which wasn't known to me prior to my selections)... some of the suppliers you visit won't give you a price up front of what you are upgrading to - they leave this until your final selection appointment, which you're expected to sign for on the day. To avoid unknown costs, make two selections - one from within the range you're allowed, one that is your "wish list". Then if you are given a price for a "wish list" item and it comes in way above your budget, at least you have another choice to fall back on. I've built with other companies before. I chose Dechellis because they have a great reputation and their finished product is very good for a competitive price. Don't be too concerned with the footings. Its one of those costs you can't do anything about. I think Aldinga is usually pretty good with the soil. Good luck... look forward to watching your progress Follow our build here https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=50266 Land settled - Nov 2010 Signed contracts - Jan 2011 Council app - May 2011 Site scrape - 24 Nov 2011! Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 16Aug 31, 2011 10:31 am Yes .. feeling your pain. The waiting is the worse thing It took them 10 weeks to give us the correct plan which we hadn't changed from the display, but they had put it around the wrong way (needed to be flipped) and they had the garage on the boundary which was not allowed on our block and they would have known. If it helps our footings came in at $22,000. Hope you get some good news soon .... For info on our build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=43093 Built the McLaren by Dechellis - slab down 22 Feb - handover 30 Aug 2011 - and gardens finished 9 Dec 2012!! Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 17Aug 31, 2011 11:29 am hang in there from our first quote with our new sales guy (we swapped our sales person, which wasted a few months - but we were not in a rush at that early stage) so from the first serious quote to getting the contract with final price was 6-7 months. we had to wait 6 weeks for our final selection appointment, but they started 2 weeks after that. i agree about picking back up items, but i was so on top of them and said we need the price for the above standard so we can figure out our whole budget and finalise the amount with the bank BEFORE final selection appointment. and they were actually really good, i got a price really quick a couple days after we went to italia ceramics, and it happens it was cheaper than i thought, so at least we knew we could spend on other items Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 18Aug 31, 2011 6:01 pm Thanks for all the really good advice. I will certainly ensure I pick a back up at selections as we unfortuntely have a limited budget It is a pity they don't give the itemized prices to begin with I will hopefully have some good news soon and keep you all updated. I really want to stay with Dechellis, fingers crossed. Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 19Oct 05, 2011 2:24 pm Any news? For info on our build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=43093 Built the McLaren by Dechellis - slab down 22 Feb - handover 30 Aug 2011 - and gardens finished 9 Dec 2012!! Re: Dechellis Homes- own design 20Oct 30, 2011 10:25 am Sorry for the long delay....Good news got our final selections done this week. Now pressed the "go button" for build!!! Feels like it has taken forever.... 5 months anyway!! We got almost everything we wanted but trying to stay within a budget was a little testing at times. Only $2k over so pretty happy. Some experiences from the whole selections process- The selections process was not transparent at all. Had to ask several times to get pricing, which I thought was a reasonable request to ensure we knew what we were spending. I found most of the selection places to be great but would not recommend going to the Laminex showroom, an absolute waste of time. They did not have a clue. We ended up going to the kitchen place after and changing everything because what we were told was standard turned out not to be!! One thing I had to get my head around was that I was pricing our selection items at RRP but the builder turned around to us several times and stated that they got discounts on the items, so we would not get the expected RRP sum back if we were to delete the item. A little frustrating, for example originally quoted for a bathroom sink RRP $380 changed the sink to another RRP $180 but would not give us the difference back, where is the incentive to change? Well cannot wait for the build to start now, give us a start date please Dechellis..... Hi Mofflepop, I would recommend finding a building designer to prepare plans, they should design to your specified budget. The benefit is you can tender the project out… 9 20432 Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74717 I would never build with Fowler homes. I built with them in 2021 and till date maintenance issues are pending. All their existing trades and businesses don't work with… 14 105617 |