Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Apr 01, 2012 7:50 pm I have been stalking everyone else's build threads and wasn't going to make my own... but the pre-contract waiting is killing me so I thought I'd share some pictures with you all as a bit of an outlet for my excitement! We have owned our land for a good nine months now but had quite a delay after we decided to dump our first builder out of pure frustration after five months of back and fourth with them and STILL not getting to contract. Despite the delay we are very happy with the outcome, because we have found Sekesui house and are now building a "project home" that we LOVE and is 40m2 bigger than the custom designed home we were planning with the smaller builder... for not alot more money! The first house we designed was a nice house, but I looked at the plans and thought "this is all we can afford". I look at our new plans and I just LOVE them and am so thrilled with what we are getting and can't believe that this is going to be our house So... less text, more pics, right? We have a semi-rural block... I won't identify the location or even the state for privacy reasons, but if you recognise it because you live in the area too please feel free to send me a PM Our block looks like this (taken from the back corner, looking to the street): [new pics further down] And here are our plans, elevations and contours. The big square in the back corner is the husbands ridiculously large shed. [new pics further down] Because we have quite a bit of elevation and a large set-back, our deck will be facing the street rather than the back of the block. The deck and the front of the house will be elevated over 4m above street level so we will be able to plant some screening trees along the front fenceline that will make our house very private from the street without blocking our views. I can't wait to be sitting back and relaxing on that deck! Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 2Apr 01, 2012 7:57 pm Congratulations Ribbon! What size block are you building on? And which way is North? You're right too...that shed does look enormous! We are also building on land, and have our alfresco at the front of the house, it faces north and will be great to sit out there, I can't wait either! When is your build expected to start? I look forward to seeing it develop Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 3Apr 01, 2012 9:39 pm Thanks greenfish! Looking at the contour plan, north is on the bottom left corner. Or looking at the house plan, north is in the top right corner. It was too costly for us to orient the house to face north directly because it would then take up the maximum possible fall on the block. I think we should still get alot of north sun through the windows following the corners along the front of the house though. I had a look at your blog. Your house looks amazing! We are hoping to start construction in June. The block is just over 3000m2 Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 4Apr 02, 2012 8:17 am Ribbon I had a look at your blog. Your house looks amazing! Thanks, hopefully it turns out that way, its a bit scary doing your own design. Scared I will walk in and hate the space! lol Having the front verandah in that north corner will stop a lot of the sun from coming in, but your theatre room is bound to be a warm one with the other windows still. I can understand you wanting to make the most of your views rather than facing north, we were very lucky with our block, north is where the best outlook is June will be here before you know it, that's not far away at all, I know all to well how anxious you will be feeling right now for it to get started already though We waited 10 months before ours finally got started too Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 5Aug 11, 2012 1:37 pm We are finally making some progress on this build. I have posted elsewhere on the site that we have been very unhappy with the service provided by Sekisui House since getting our first tender and paying our deposit back in January (particularly our salesperson). Despite making it very clear we needed the build to progress quickly to contract and to be in before Christmas we didn't get to contract until mid June! We now won't be in our house until perhaps April-May 2013 and are particularly unhappy about the prospect of living in our very temporary rented accommodation after December when we will have a newborn baby, no air conditioning, no room for family to visit us, and paying rent plus a mortgage whilst also being on maternity leave because of the delay we will also enjoy the privilege of paying $1,500 to extend our building covenants. Over two weeks after signing contracts we were finally handed over to a new "Customer Care" person, and she has been absolutely fantastic - knowledgeable and I believe genuinely doing her best to get the process moving as quickly as possible. Our plans were submitted for approval at the start of August, and we are expecting to get approval at the start of October with the contract stating the build will start within 14 days of that date. Our block Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Our plans and elevations Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ This only shows the back 3/4 of our block. The front 1/4 and the road is to the left. Our house will be 45m back from the front boundary, and well behind all of the other houses in the block photo. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ We have also over the past six weeks been struggling with our finance application. There have been four valuations (soon to be a fifth). The first two were land only (and obviously not correct for a construction loan), the second two have come in under value. I have finally been able to see the second two valuations and it looks like they have both been completely bungled. The valuation says our house size is 155m2 when it is actually 205m2. The picture on the valuation report is not a picture of our block, it is someone elses block! Another semi-rural location double the distance from the city and with much lower land values has been used as apparently "comparable". Hopefully we will get it sorted soon At least it is not causing us any delay as we are still at least six weeks away from obtaining planning permission. Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 6Aug 11, 2012 1:38 pm Hubby is quite insistent of having a huge man shed which he will put together as an owner builder. This shed has caused no ends of problems for me as it is large enough to require planning approval. I deal with legislation and government processes every day, so navigating the planning system wasn't too difficult for me but we had quite a saga getting appropriate plans for the application. The shed kit company advertises "council ready" and "site specific" plans but refused to mark the shed on our contour plan or draw in building envelopes etc. as required by our council. Just getting them to give us the elevations in 1:100 rather than the initial 1:200 so that I could edit the documents myself was like pulling teeth. After much swearing in learning how to use the open source paint style program Inkscape I managed to modify the plans, work out excavations, finished floor levels etc, draw building envelopes myself and we now have planning permission, conditional on a few bits and pieces. Most of which are annoying and unnecessary like having a traffic management plan. The most difficult being approval from municipal services of our driveway location. Man shed plans Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Municipal services want our cross-over to be on the opposite side of the block to the driveway shown on the plans, meaning the driveway will be 15m+ longer (and therefore more expensive) and we will be shining our car headlights into SIX other houses as we drive up and down it (as opposed to none if we can put it where we want it). I've pointed these issues out to them and we are now waiting to hear back. I will ask for a formal review / appeal of the decision if it isn't in our favour. Hopefully it won't come to that because it is a condition of our contract that we have the driveway base in before Sekisui House takes over the site and I think I might spontaneously combust if there are any more delays from here. Someone tell me this will all be worth it in the end? I have already decided we are never, ever building again Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 7Aug 11, 2012 5:17 pm Ribbon, It will all be worth it in the end! If it is any help, you also do recover from any setbacks. When building my first house, the builder went bankrupt, which meant I had to find a new builder - one who would take on a partially completed house! I knew I had recovered from this when I started to think about building again. I know, some people just never learn, do they? It does seem to be rather silly to have a longer driveway than needed, particularly if using it has the possibility to disturb so many people. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you to get the right outcome. Great plan too. Variegated Variegated Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 8Aug 12, 2012 9:33 am Sorry to hear about all your stresses ribbon. We also had issues with the council regarding our driveway. There was already one in situ but they decided they wanted it relocated - to a spot right on a corner which also included chopping down quite a few natives to do so. We brought the environment officer into it which helped greatly as he didn't want any trees cut down. We had to cut a few back (not on our property on the nature strip so council owned) bit it finally got approved. Sometimes I think council just argue things for the sake of it. Good luck with getting your permits through smoothly Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 9Aug 20, 2012 9:02 pm Thanks for your replies V and GF Happy to report that we now have endorsement to put our driveway in the sensible location that we want it. After some jumping up and down on my part, valuation #5 should have hopefully happened today. Turns out I started the comedy of errors that has led to seven weeks of delay in our finance by only sending our new contract without the new plans to our broker. Instead of asking me for the plans our broker's assistant assumed we were paying $40,000 more to build the old house with a new builder and sent off the plans from our last build... plans that were over six months old and had a different builders name written on them The bank contributed to the delays by ordering land only valuations the valuer then also did another two valuations on the wrong contract and plans And of course no one picked up along the way they were using the wrong plans until the fourth valuation was sent to me! Fingers crossed we get it sorted out this week. We also met with our building manager and site supervisor on site today. They both seemed like good people who were quite willing to work with us regarding the siteworks and other bits and bobs we are doing before site handover so that was really positive Oh and the man shed continues to cause problems. I don't want to talk about it Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 10Aug 22, 2012 6:22 pm 5th valuation lucky - we now have our formal construction loan approval! Not too many boxes left to tick before building now Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 12Aug 23, 2012 10:53 am Wow just saw in the news that the first builder we were going to go with late last year (but withdrew prior to contract as we lost confidence in their competence) is going into administration. We were so incredibly upset at the time to have lost our deposit and the time we spent on our custom plans, but were happy in the end after we found a much better plan and much more professional service (though still slow and far from perfect) with Sekisui House. Very very lucky to have dodged that bullet. Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 14Oct 12, 2012 6:56 pm WE HAVE PLANNING PERMISSION!!! Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 15Oct 13, 2012 2:56 pm Woo hoo!! Congratulations that is so exciting!!!!! Re: Ribbon's build - Sekesui House Meridian 16Nov 11, 2012 11:49 am A few more hurdles since my last post... the building approval was issued really quickly (a week) after our planning permission came through but our bank is HOPELESS and only "settled" our loan and gave their ok to commence on Thursday after much head>wall action on our part. So we are a month out from having obtained planning permission and still no sign of Sekisui House taking over the site. Under the contract they have three weeks from all permissions and bank ok date to start, so hopefully we will see some action from them soon. There has been some action from us though. We have had our own earthworker come on site and set up the whole block ready for things to be built. We are very thankful Sekisui House has been willing to work with us in arranging this bit ourselves, as the nature of the cut/fill and proximity of the house pad / garage pad / driveway all meant it would have been impossible for us to try and cut the driveway and garage site without also doing the house. We did have a tricky site with fall in two directions so we have ended up with very big cuts in the back left corner of the garage and house pads and very big fills in the front right corner. We hit alot of rock in the house cut - thank goodness we organised this bit ourselves so we could have some control over the additional costs instead of waiting for the dreaded "rock excavation" variation from the builder I think we also saved ourselves weeks of time as our earthworker had much bigger machinery (in anticipation of the big job!) than I think the builder would have been using. The site is cut into thirds - the big front yard will just be a grassy area, then up to the house site, then up again to the shed site. The land rises up again at the back boundary to the reserve area. Just breaking ground Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Front yard Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ House pad - Middle step up Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Shed pad - Final step up Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ The formwork for the slab for the garage is done. Concrete pour is scheduled for Wednesday Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Hubby has also been out and built our front and side fence! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ And finally a picture from the front of the block. The land does slope to the right but I was also holding the camera a bit wonky in this one Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Our Sekisui House Meridian - some pretty serious site wo 17Nov 30, 2012 1:57 pm We have piers! And just in time... we scraped in with only three days to spare before our building commencement covenant (which has been extended multiple times) expired. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ There has been a bit more drama in the build prior to site start after Sekisui House tried to raise a $4.5k variation against us for increased construction costs due to the time that has elapsed since we paid our initial deposit back in January. I have tried to be very patient and move past the frustration we have continued to feel from the service we received from them and the delays in the pre-contract phase and this variation was just waving a red flag at a bull. I hate to be "that" customer but I just completely lost it with them. I have alot of expertise with contracts and there is nothing in our building contract that would allow them to increase the contract price so the variation was not legally supported, never mind the moral concerns. I issued a dispute notice under the contract and we ended up resolving it by agreeing to let them square off the variation to zero, which meant in effect we paid an additional ~$1.5k because we were due to receive a credit from our bushfire provisional. I'm still not happy about it, but we are just exhausted by the process and wanted to see our house start. Which it has - and I am feeling much better about no longer being at the mercy of their paperwork / drafting / estimating areas. Our site supervisor and customer service officer have been great to deal with so far and I feel like they are both very competent so I have a pretty positive outlook from here. We are currently sorting out one final issue hanging over from the drafting process - we discovered that instead of drawing connections to the actual sewerage boundary connection marked by the surveyor the drafting department has drawn in a new sewerage boundary connection that doesn't exist, and not allowed for the extra cost of having the utilities company install a new one. I'm sure this one will be resolved without too much drama, other than the inevitable argument about who is going to pay for it. We are waiting on a quote from the utilities company hopefully the new connection won't be too expensive. Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Our Sekisui House Meridian - piers! 18Dec 05, 2012 3:27 pm Oh dear Ribbon what a lot of drama, just what you when pregnant! Release the pregnancy hormones on them I say! However how good is that view! Jem's Custom build - viewtopic.php?f=31&t=58630 Re: Our Sekisui House Meridian - piers! 19Dec 07, 2012 10:03 pm Thanks Jem! We do love it. I grew up in the country with lots of dry flat farmland so living in the mountains surrounded by pine forest feels really exotic and special to me Here is the latest - a pic of our drainage completed and waiting to be inspected on Tuesday. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Weather permitting, our slab is scheduled to be poured Wednesday next week Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 Re: Our Sekisui House Meridian - drainage 20Dec 12, 2012 5:24 am Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 We are discussing plans with Meridian homes and it is shaping up nicely. Anyone has any experience to share? Have gone through forums but no recent feedback or experience found. 0 4772 of course there are legal avenues. You've already mentioned it. Sue them. I find it odd that lawyers wouldnt be willing to take on the case, given CCT evidence and… 1 23764 1 11004 |