Our Cottage Block Build NOR, Perth WA- 2 Year Review &Tips

I have had the lawn checked... no beetles, bugs or fungus, what happened remains a mystery.

Thinking back however I remember that a few days before disaster struck, the neighbours had their annual termite spray and the fence was also sprayed for spiders. It was a very windy day and clouds of spray mist from the power sprayer was drifting over the fence towards our property, so much so I went inside the house to escape.
Could this be the cause of the problem? The pest company advertises that its sprays are eco friendly and I cant find anything "on the net" where any similar incidents have been reported as causing a problem with grass but the strange thing is that the only part of the lawn that was not affected was the strip right next to the fence which would have been sheltered from the wind and therefore wouldn't have been contaminated by the spray.
Fortunately the grass is starting to slowly recover and hopefully it will be back being lush and green again by the end of the growing season.
I have decided however if this situation occurs again next year I will replace the grass with artificial grass and end the problem once and for all.

I got our first proper account from Synergy since the installation of the 2.1 kw solar system and I was pleasantly surprised. We have used the air conditioning (evap) extensively during the summer heat wave but our overall usage has halved and minus the rebate, the usage charged for amounts to less than half our normal amount. Ok, its just the two of us and we are careful about conserving energy but we haven't changed our habits too much so a comparison is fair. We try to make sure we run the dishwasher and washing machine during the day which may make a slight difference.
I am a bit disappointed in the output though, its rated a 2.1 kw system however according to the stats on the inverter the output seldom rises above 1.7 kw but our rebate still amounted to over $44, add this to the free electricity you get from the system during daylight hours and overall I am really happy with my decision to invest in the system.

Have been in the artificial grass industry for about 10yrs now and have found the popularity of the products growing rapidly, especially with the ever decreasing size of blocks of land. There are new products on the market that are cooler on the feet in summer. If you go ahead make sure the installer secures the edges so that mutley can’t lift up grass, ther are a number of ways to do this depending on your budget. With regard to your dog doing his business on it. The no 2s are easy to pick up after drying a bit as grass does not grow up through it and urine will not stain it but I tell clients to give grass a hose every know and then if you haven’t had rain. Hope this helps a bit, if you have any other questions PM me

After a year in our newly built house it is a good time for reflection on the "hits and misses" we have encountered since handover. While we are generally happy with how things have panned out, there are a couple of things we definitely would have given more thought to before starting the building process.

Lets start with the Hits.
1) Our design is perfect for our lifestyle, we opted to sacrifice the "Theatre" for an open plan living area as its just the two of us and we don't need the privacy of a separate TV room.
2)The Plantation shutters we installed on the east facing front windows are great and not only do they do a good job keeping out the morning summer sun, they look classy.
3) The drop down patio blinds which enclose the alfresco have given us an extra room in summer as they keep out the flies and glare of the afternoon sun.
4) The installation of a sliding door from the third bedroom onto the alfresco gives the room a much larger feeling to the room with added benefit of extra light. This room is used as an office but all it needs for conversion into a bedroom is a security screen on the sliding door.
5) The mesh "Crimsafe" style security doors on the front door and sliding door from the dining area onto the alfresco. These were our saviour during the hot summer months as we could safely leave the front and rear doors open to get any breeze through flow and it is also perfect for the operation of the evap aircon system.
6) The evap aircon is definitely not as efficient as reverse cycle but it uses a fraction of the electricity of the other system and takes the edge off the heat bringing the temperature down to a liveable level. In our previous house we had a really good reverse cycle system which we could only afford to use sporadically on the hottest of days. Our first electricity bill after liberally using the reverse cycle system nearly gave me a heart attack.
7) Our solar system has halved our electricity bills and value added to the property. Definitely a winner.
8. Essastone bench and vanity tops are classy and more durable than we were led to believe.

There are many lesser things we are happy with but the above is a list of the more important improvements we have made.

Misses
1) The choice of brick paving. We chose the Cappucino paver with a Mocha border, the Cappie colour has faded to a dull grey and I now have a genuine hatred for the overall look of the paving, so much so I am seriously contemplating putting an "on the ground" deck over the alfresco paving.
2) We should have chosen a better grade oven and cooker/hotplate. The oven is a nightmare to clean and the cooker is not very good, all the control motifs and writing have come off even though no abrasives have been used. The range hood is OK but Technika equipment hasn't impressed me at all.
3) The drainage soak well in the garage (an Aussie Living innovation) is noisy during wet weather and creates a rumbling sound in the house.

Not Sure

1) Our Quick Step laminate floor. The floor is everything we could have asked for, easy to clean, looks great and has attracted very favourable comment....But.. I am paranoid about water spills and the resultant damage. All good so far but the water fear has dampened my enthusiasm somewhat.
2) Our claret coloured glass Splash-back behind our hotplate. Here again, its a "show stopper" its a feature of the kitchen and generally looks stunning, everyone who has visited us has remarked on how good it looks.... But... its a mission to clean and I tend to avoid using the rear plates on the hot plate to avoid the big clean up afterwards.

Wisdom in Retrospect

1) Learn a bit about house plans and how to read them.
2) Research your builder and visit a few reputable ones to see what they have to offer before committing to one.
3) Take any advice you can get and bring this advice into your decision making process. Not all advice is good but sometimes it just helps to crystalise your thoughts.
4) Make as many inclusions into the house as you can afford, sometimes the cost savings for exclusions like painting, flooring and tiling are not worth the time and effort of organising tradies, sourcing and buying materials etc.

Building our house was a roller coaster of emotions but it was exciting and hugely rewarding as we watched our home progress and I would happily do it again.

thanks for your post. I have taken a lot of good info from your post.

Thanks cupcakes, I am really happy that someone can benefit from my journey. I see yours is about to start so Good Luck and I hope that everything goes according to plan. As I mentioned, home building stirs many emotions, good and bad but in the end most bad memories are forgotten once you are in and settled in the house.

Thanks for sharing, that was a great read.

Ahh the benefit of hindsight hey. Good to see more positives than negatives though. We are also going the open plan no theatre thing, I hope we love it as much as you.

Thanks, I sincerely appreciate the feedback.
Good luck with your build, my comments to cupcake remain relevant.
I know Burns Beach well and it looks like you have a great position in a really great suburb.

No doubt about it, with hindsight you have 20/20 vision.
Open plan makes the whole house seem much bigger and is perfect for a smaller house although for families with large houses and a family a theatre room makes a lot of sense.

Totally agree with your last point about cost savings sometimes not being worth the effort and involvement and risk of outside tradesmen or tools and planning etc.
Wishing I had just paid for landscaping as soon as I moved in. Dealing with sand getting everywhere and my beautiful liquid limestone getting so badly stained from the dirt was not worth the terrible DIY that still isn't finished a year later.

Hi turtleschell,
I found the hardest thing about "after handover" finishing off is the coordination of the tradies to do the flooring, tiling, painting etc given the inability of most building companies to give a firm date for handover. Everyone that I have spoken to about this aspect agrees that the first problem is getting the PCI date and then a firm handover date, builders nearly always fall back on the 10 working day handover clause after PCI but often there is not much to do so this could be only 5 working days until you get your hands on the keys. Obviously the sooner you are in your new home the cheaper it will be in terms of rent saved.
In the meantime most people have to give notice to their landlords, book the tradies and hope that the estimated dates materialise. A friend of mine was given a provisional date for the handover, booked the flooring guys for the next day only to be told by the builders that the handover will only take place the following week. The flooring guys could only return two weeks later which put the whole process back and ended costing a lot of money in extra rent plus having to reschedule the painters and tilers.
Did the builders care??? Not a bit, once they have your money they don't give a stuff.
I definitely agree about getting the garden done asap, sand stains are a pain and they can ruin carpets and especially, as you have experienced, liquid limestone leaving marks which can last for years.
I am glad that all this stress about the building and landscaping is in the past for me although it was fun at the time.

We had our tentative PCI date pushed back 6 weeks and it's been a nightmare, we've finally had it today though, the only saving grace being we did everything through the builder so we didn't have as much to organise but still a pain the bum as we've been packing for the last 2 months. We can't really save on rent though as we are only giving our landlord the 4 week notice today but after all the previous delays we were too nervous to give our notice any earlier in case we got stuck.

Well, here we are two years and a couple of months since we moved into our new home and while we are happy with the end result, hindsight obviously provides us with some areas where we could have improved upon.

Firstly a couple of comments:-
Essastone is far more rugged than we first believed, we were made to believe that it needed to be treated with "kid gloves", this is far from the truth. We opted for the French Nougat Essa-stone for our bench-tops, these being kitchen bench and both bathroom vanities. So far we have spilled, to name a few, coffee, curry, red wine, tomato sauce, tea and a myriad of other things that stain badly, none of these have marked the surface which we clean with Spray 'n Wipe and a damp cloth, the top still looks new. I have put hot pots on it a couple of times without damaging it although I don't make a habit of this and use one of those racks we bought from Ikea for all the really hot stuff.

I was paranoid about the durability of the Quik-Step laminate we installed, not from wear and tear but from water damage. So far my fears have been groundless, while we haven't had a major water leak yet, we have had numerous water splashes and "liquid" accidents courtesy of my two year old grandson. These were wiped up quickly and there was no damage at all.

I wish we had:-
a) Spent the $2k extra for a Colourbond roof or alternatively insisted on a layer of plastic sheeting under the tiles as they do in other countries. The dust in the ceiling is hectic and if, like us, you use your ceiling void for extra storage, expect everything to end up under a thick layer of dust.

b) Installed solar panels from Day 1, we have a 2.1 kw system and it has cut our electricity bill in half. I should however have put in a bigger system, maybe 3kw or more.

c) With the solar energy sorted, I would have installed an electric cook top, gas is great but it is getting expensive.

d) I would have gone with a solar hot water system from the outset and eliminated our need for a gas connection. Our gas bill now is almost twice as much as our electricity bill.

e) I would have extended the "smart wiring" to include TV points in the spare bedrooms and maybe even one in the alfresco area. If you have a couple of people over to watch a game and you also want to BBQ, its nice to have a TV out there so you don't miss any of the action.

f) If you have an option DON'T plant stuff on your verge, unless you are an avid gardener (vast minority) weeding the verge is not going to happen too often, its a major hassle and the weeds look ugly and untidy. In our area this is Shire property, they prepare and plant the verge but we foot the water bill and we have to maintain it. We actually had the option of natural grass, plants or artificial grass, every "weed season" I mentally kick myself for not going the artificial grass route. If the verge strip can be paved, so much the better.

g) If any bathroom backs onto a bedroom, especially your en suite, look at getting an extra course of bricks laid on the dividing wall. Sound carries through the paper thin walls which can be annoying. You can hear the shower going, opening and closing of the vanity cupboards and flushing the toilet all carries through to the bedroom. A double course wall in this instance is an important addition in my mind.

When I was investigating solar systems, I was constantly told that the return on assets (ROI) was not too good and that it would take 5 or 6 years to break-even with this investment. Sound reasoning if you don't plan to stay in the house for more than a year or so or if you are disciplined enough to put extra money aside for your electricity bill. In my experience, most people will blow the money and struggle to pay the electricity bills every couple of months. We are here for the long haul and I thought that while I had the money, install the system as who knows how high the electricity tariff are going to go. So far my decision has been justified.

Apart from the usual "feathering" under the ceiling barge boards we are very happy with the Aussie living built house and we have had no structural or quality issues at all.So far, so good..

I really find your reviews and comments valuable JohnD...we are in the process of building our house now (bricks stage) and some of the points you have made are in our minds but we are not sure how to address them yet...but now we have your hindsight so that's great.

Will be going back to read the rest of your thread...

Thanks Hootie, I don't profess to know or be able to answer everything but I now have the benefit of experience. If there is anything you want to discuss in my thread or anything else you think I may be able to assist you, please don't hesitate to contact me.
I did hours of research on some things and one of the objectives of my thread is to pass this on to anyone who is interested. Glad to be able to help in anyway.

great stuff John. I don't know how you do this every year to the exact date!

I am retired deeps and have too much time on my hands..

Glad to hear you are still enjoying your house John!!

Much like you we are in a similar position, very happy with the house and many of our decisions but a few 'little' things we would do differently next time

Like you we have found even our almost white essay stone is pretty tough. We got rust on it, with some elbow grease I got it off with no damage!

Our verge wasn't done by the shire/developer so 18 months later it is still sand and weeds! So many other things to spend that money on. Solar and a wood burner are next two big purchases.