Building the Santorini MK 2 by Masterton Homes

I thought since I could not find any topic on this Masterton Homes design, I'll start one up, in hope others who are planning or already have this design build can share their thoughts and feedback to everyone.

We are building in Forestville NSW.

Forum Video Blog Thread
http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=62833

Our Blog
http://santorinimk2.blogspot.com.au/

Nearly 4 weeks and still no initial tender or plans. So much for 2 to 3 weeks!

Does $15,000 sound right for demolition of a 3 bedroom fibro house? I got 2 quotes very close to this figure. Any comments?

I finally got the news that I will get my tender next week (I already had the revisions emailed) and followed by the plans 2-3 weeks after that. So we are looking mid to end of May for the process to start. Hopefully there will be minimal mistakes or none! so we can sign and submit to CDC.

For some reason they needed to upgrade the slab from 'M' Class to 'H' Class, costing extra $2,500. So I requested the soil test report to be emailed. Guess what? Few hours later I get an email informing me that my M sales rep will be asking the engineer if the upgrade is necessary. Amazing what can be achieved by showing that you know what you are talking about and ask them for evidence.

It has been over 6 weeks and we still have no initial plans from Masterton Homes. This is a bit disappointing since Masterton told us 4 weeks max.

I hope you get your plans soon. We paid our plan prep fee to Masterton on the 14.03.12 but we received our first draft set of plans on the 18.04.12 (approx 5 weeks all up).
We sent them back with our revisions within a day or 2 so we are back in the queue and its now almost 3 weeks again.

Hang in there. Its definitely worth the wait because when you see the drawings, it starts to all look in perspective and like its really happening

Will keep and eye on your thread (already watching your blog).

Thanks. I guess I have to get used to the timelines of the building industry. Coming from an IT & software engineering background, where things need to happen and delivered on time or it's your job, makes me a bit of too much of expectation from this industry.

7 weeks and waiting...

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t173/Inv_Inklet/Smilies/tappingfingers.gif

Just this morning I heard an advert on the radio about Masterton doing a special Mansion Package, Ducted Air-Con and free 12sqm alfresco. This was never mentioned or offered to us.

New we knew about the first two and already getting them, but not the FREE alfresco! So I emailed them and ask about it, "where is my share of the free 12sqm alfresco?"

I'll keep you posted..

Thats the offer we got. It was available lae last year. It all works out at around the same price through.
Just tell them what you want and they will comply.

Any time today we should receive our initial building plans. YEY!

A quick look at the plans and it all looks good! Only very few minor changes, mostly outside taps location, manhole location etc. Will go in detail over the weekend.

One major issue is the front setback, it is 10m! I was expecting 7m, like where the current house is and like our next door neighbour. I will need to chase it up. As it is dawn now, I have more front yard then back yard! lol.

Good stuff. Glad you got your plans. If they have ton redraw anything, expect to wait a few weeks again unfortunately.
Isnt it ridiculous that you cant position your own home where you want to on your own peice of land. I mean fair enough on the sides but the front! Its just not fair.

Well the council has Min of 6.5 meters, but CDC uses average of adjoining houses.
Unfortunately, the idiot next door built his house 12m back, and did not care, since he sold it to the current owner year after he built it. So now I have to take the average of 8.1m. I will try to move forward by 1m, to see if I can convince CDC.
I'll keep everyone posted on the result, hoping someone in the same situation can use the result, one way or the other.

Has anyone made a choice of using 2 different colours of bricks from the same range, from same brick supplier and pay $500 extra charge? M just informed me of this stupid extra cost. Does not make sense.
I mean not even $100 extra delivery charge I could maybe understand, but $500! WTF!

In my previous post I mentioned about a $500 charge to have 2 different colours of bricks, to enhance our facade, turns out it is the cost of getting 1 extra palette of bricks to make sure we have enough of each colour to finish the build. We will end up few extra bricks, but that is ok, I can see a nice BBQ or wood-fire oven on my alfresco

Thats good. Im also hoping to have a few left over bricks for a nice bbq too.
Hope your plans come around quickly

M delays and plans so well that contract sign off date is exactly on 90 days! No room to move...

Signed the contracts and paid 5% deposit this morning.

Now we wait for the CDC plans preparation and colour selection appointment for the next 3-4 weeks.

P.S. Finally, this morning, when I did the final plans sign-off, they had the right plans! After 4 times trying to correct the same issue...

Yay

Looks like a bit of planning and work ahead of us, as we decide on internal colours and any upgrades. Then, upstairs laminate timber flooring, Air-con, electrical & alarm.

I have a valuable check-list from this forum to guide us during this planning period. So a BIG thank you to all contributions and ideas.