Hello everybody.
Here is our timeline. The story is below
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TIMELINE:
Land Deposit Paid: 15 Oct 2011
House Deposit Paid: 10 Nov 2011
Land Titles Issued: 8 May 2012
HIS Signed: 17 May 2012
Loan Approved: 12 June 2012
Pre-Start: 13 & 25 June 2012
Land Settlement: 30 July 2012
Building Licence Issued: 3 August 2012
Final Plans Signed: 9 August 2012
Siteworks Began: 30 August 2012
Slab Down: 8 September 2012
Slab Inspection: 11 September 2012
Frames Delivered: 13 September 2012
Bricks Delivered: 19 September 2012
Brickwork Commences: 24 September 2012
Brickwork Concluded: 12 October 2012
Rendering: 17 October 2012
Site Clean-Up: 18 October 2012
Roof Components Delivered: 19-23 October 2012
Roof Installation Began: 26 October - 2 November 2012
Intelligent Home & Electrical: 6-12 November 2012
Colorbond Roof Installation: 12 November 2012
Plumbing: 15 November 2012
Corner Beading: 16 November 2012
Site Clean: 20 November 2012
Grey Float: 21-22 November 2012
Ceiling & Cornices Delivered: 26 November 2012
Ceiling & Cornices Installation: 27-28 November 2012
Plaster: 3-7 December 2012
Stacker Doors: 8 December 2012
Windows Glazing: 10 December 2012
Lock-Up: 14 December 2012
Kitchen, Laundry & Bathroom Cabinets: 14 December 2012
Internal and External Doors Installed: 14 December 2012
Ceiling Painted: 18 December 2012
Wet Areas Screeding & Waterproofing: 19-21 December 2012
Christmas Break: 22 December 2012 - 14 January 2013
During Christmas Break: Kitchen Benchtop Installed, Wet Area Tiling, Other Benchtops Delivered, Theatre Platform Installed
Back To Work: 14 January 2013
Garage Grano: 14 January 2013
Intelligent Homes Wiring: 18-21 January 2013
Solar HWS Installed: 21 January 2013
Oven Installed: 22 January 2013
GPOs, Light Switches Installation: 21-25 January 2013
Robes Sliding Doors Installed: 29 January 2013
External Cladding Delivered: 29 January 2013
Cupboards Refitted: 30 January 2013
External Cladding Installed: 5 February 2013
Garage Door Installed: 5 February 2013
Stone Benches Installed: 5 February 2013
Ensuite, Bathroom & Laundry Sinks Installed: 5 February 2013
Wet Area Tiling Finished: 5 February 2013
Tapware Installed: 6 February 2013
Cornices Installed: 7 February 2013
Hotplate Installed: 7 February 2013
Kitchen Splashback: 12 February 2013
Rangehood Installed: 13 February 2013
Final Plumbing: 13 February 2013
Fly Screens Delivered: 18 February 2013
Shower Screens: 19 February 2013
Final Electrical: 22 February 2013
Bathroom/Ensuite Mirrors: 26 February 2013
Clean-Up: 26 February 2013
Outside Render Painted: 1 March 2013
Sealant To All Benchtops: 5 March 2013
Door Furniture Installed: 7 March 2013
Flyscreens Installed: 11 March 2013
PCI: 7 March 2013
Handover: 27 March 2013
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After watching and following everyone elses constructions, I think it's time to start my own building thread. We're located in Perth in southern suburbs. So it's time to tell you a little story to begin with...
It all started last year (in October to be precise).
We looked at few estates in surrounding areas (with 30km) and found a block of land we liked so we put an initial deposit on it.
We wanted to get a block which didn't have titles issued, so it will give us extra time to get organised, find a builder and save some more money. So we chose the block that had titles due in June 2012.
Then the hardest bit began. We started to look at display homes and trying to choose the builder we'd like to go with.
After looking at multiple displays they all started to look pretty much the same that's when it got harder.
It's difficult to choose the house you like and the house you can afford. There were couple of houses we found very nice, however starting price was 1 million dollars... maybe for our next build when we win lotto and we'll be 105 years old
Decisions were very difficult to make: we narrowed it down to a few builders and excluded few others.
Builders like Homebuyers Center and Celebrations had something cheap in their build that you could feel as you walked into display home. Just didn't feel right. Plus their sales reps were really pushy and annoying. Been asked to leave my contact details at one of the homes and then I was getting calls from their sales people and mortgage brokers trying to get us in the door.
The others were neither here or there. Even some more expensive builders such as APG didn't really make a big impression on us. Of course there were Webb-Brown and Shelford that looked great but slightly out of our price range. Even though we were looking for the house that we're going to live in for a very long time and didn't want to move in 5 years, so we needed something that will make us somewhat happy.
Building cheaper house and then selling it and building again was out of the question. We didn't see us going through that process that many times in our lifetime (but of course who knows).
In the end we narrowed it down to Redink, Scott Park, Dale Alcock and Summit Homes. That's where the research began.
I must admit that if it wasn't for HomeOne forum our job would be a million times more difficult and more of hitting a piñata in the dark room.
Thanks to a lot of members on this forum that helped us select the builder and answered many of our annoying questions.
We looked into building with RedInk, but didn't find their designs to be suitable for us. Didn't really liked the long corridors behind the kitchen/living areas.
Scott Park didn't really grabbed our attention with their home designs. Dale Alcock had a few that looked ok but their price tag didn't really suited us. Even though they're including 32k worth of extra but actually it's all included in the initial price. You might think that you are getting 32k worth of goods for free but actually you are paying 32k more for the basic house design. That was the major thing that we had to look at: if it's too good to be true it probably is. Same with RedInk who had designs for 190k with everything under the sun included (aircon, floorings, paintings and other stuff). However, apparently it's all the cheap inclusions that you're getting with your promotional home and then they hit you with super priced upgrades.
The other thing we wanted to consider was the actual home. We have pretty poor imagination and couldn't really afford to build a home off the plan. It all happened one day when we saw one of the plans and got really excited (it was RedInk's home actually). When we got to the display home we found it to be completely different to what we have imagined. Our hopes and dreams were crushed. We didn't like anything in display home, even though we loved the plan, but in reality it didn't really looked like that, even pictures that were made by professionals looked better than the real thing. That was the turning point for us: the only way to go is to choose the display home. So we started to compare the display homes and trying to choose the one we liked from the moment we walked in.
Finally we found a display house that got us very excited and it was in our price range.
Sales rep was very confident in whatever he was doing and got us in the door.
At that stage our titles weren't issued so there was no pressure on the builder. We signed in November to secure the price and since then there was not much of contact from our sales rep. Finally we had an email in April with our initial plans. Since them of course we visited many more display homes to get some ideas and inspirations.
We wanted to change just a few things on our plans to reflect some of the little things we found in newer display homes.
So, now we're at the stage of "Anticipation"... We signed our building contacts, our land titles were issued and now we're awaiting on mortgage approval from the bank (thanks to our mortgage broker). The next step is pre-start meeting that were scheduled for middle of June.