Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jun 27, 2012 5:59 pm Hello
So my partner and I of 4 years have started to build The Coventry by GoodLife Homes. We are first home buyers/builders. I have been looking at building a house for the past 18 months though it is really has only been in the past 6 months that I have been more serious as I had just started a well-paying job in the Pilbara mines. The available land at the time of purchase was very slim. Most of them were very big blocks close to arterial roads or small blocks with no rear access lane. Then there was a smallish block with a rear access lane with street parking out the front and overlooking a small park. I was quite surprised that no one had purchased it yet. It had been on sale for quite some time as it was titled and houses either side of it had been built and people were living in it. I am starting this thread as I want to document my experience building my first house and as a central place to ask questions and receive comments. This is also going to be a place where I can rant about the issues I am having with the builder and building a house in general. I initially looked at 5m wide homes built by Homebuyers Centre. I even viewed the Ellenbrook display homes. At this time they were still trying to get all the details out so all the answers I had seemed to go unanswered and took a couple days to get a response. This seemed to go back and forth for about 2 weeks. The sales rep Dean was probably the most informed and helpful rep I have met. My partner thought the house was too small as it was a 2x1x1 but I was only looking at the incredibly small price tag (250k), for the sake of owning my own bit of land. Ten metre wide blocks were the next step up and I was thoroughly disappointed that we would be spending another 100k. Looking back now I wish I could get a 15 or 17 metre wide block or go double storey on this block but I think this is a good compromise for the budget. I am even designing my dream house in Google Sketchup8 (I have already drawn the Coventry with all the furniture). The Coventry is a great design, it has all the rooms I need well into the future. I looked at many plans over the internet and only found a couple that I liked. The main reason for choosing the Coventry was the second and third bedroom size. You could fit a double or queen bed into it as with the other you cannot. The only problem I see with this design is that the main bedroom is 3.8x3m. Having a King or Queen bed in that size room means there is only about 75cm of space between the end of the bed and the wall. There isn’t enough room for any furniture. The other issue, as with all designs I have seen, is that the garage is listed at 5.99x5.95m. The sales rep should immediately ask you if you want to increase this size as this would be mostly overlooked by first home builders. Being on a 10m wide block our planning guidelines requires 4m of courtyard width meaning that our garage cannot be any wider (we have about 20mm spare). I only realised the length of the garage was 5.65m internally once we got the detailed plans. I have increased this by 0.5m for a variation cost of $900. Where we are at now is council approval for the building license. Our garage is going to be set on the boundary which requires the neighbours fence to be torn down and replaced with the brick wall of my garage. Goodlife sent out standardised forms for the permission, to which they declined. It is now up to me as owners to get this permission or amend the drawings so that the garage is 150mm away from the boundary (It is all ready 30mm from the boundary). The neighbour has two dogs and no garden beds. I am assured that there will be tempory fence put up for the two to four weeks it takes for the wall to be put up and the only time the construction crew will enter thier property is to take down the fence. The colour of the brick is the same as thier house so I cannot see any reason for them to deny this request. Signed Up For Land & Building:17/3/12 Unconditional Finance Approval:16/5/12 Building Contracts:21/5/12 Prestart:28/6/12 Settlement:6/7/12 Building License:21/8/12 Site Scrape:7/9/12 Foundation Work:10/9/12 Slab:11/9/12 Bricks & Window Frames Delivered: 28/9/12 Brickwork Started: 15/10/12 Finished: 23/10/12 Roof Carpentry Started: 1/11/12 Finished: 5/11/12 Electrical PreLay: 7/11/12 Plumbing PreLay: 8/11/12 Roof Cover: 16/11/12 Plaster Grey Float: 28/11/12 Ceilings:5/12/12 Plaster White Coat:7/12/12 Cornices: 14/12/12 Doors: 20/12/12 Painting (1st Coat): 11/1/12 Cabinets: 15/1/12 Tiling: 17/1/12 Tiling Finished: 7/2/12 Grano: 11/2/12 Shower Screen & Rail: 11/2/12 Carpets: 14/2/12 Window Coverings: 20/2/12 1st PCI: 27/2/12 Site Clean: Paving: Garage Door: Painting (2nd Coat): Maintaince: 2nd PCI: 21/3/12 Handover: Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 2Jul 27, 2012 4:55 pm Welcome to the forum Tracer! Looking forward to your journey. So it sounds like a parapet wall has to be approved...is that right? Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 3Aug 11, 2012 1:56 pm Where are you building? I'm building Goodlife's Bravo in Butler. We signed contracts in end of June and have had prestart but now nothing seems to be happening? I still havent gt the final variation yet. GOODLIFE - Bravo - BUTLER http://getmistyfied.blogspot.com.au Display 20/02/2012 PPA 01/04/12 Prestart: 25/07/12 Settlement: 31/07/2012 Contracts:August Slab 19/11/12 BRICKS 10/11/12 Roof 16/01/13 Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 4Aug 23, 2012 6:59 pm Treeseachanger Welcome to the forum Tracer! Looking forward to your journey. So it sounds like a parapet wall has to be approved...is that right? Well arent I truly a First Home Buyer and arent Goodlife truly taking advantage of that. After going through numerous changes to our sales rep and getting misinformation from all of them we finally have it sorted. First of all I spoke to my sales rep on the procedure of building this wall. Then I went and spoke to the owner of the house next door. Once I explained to him how is was going to built and everything he agreed on a couple of conditions; 1. That his dogs weren't going to get loose and 2. The brick pavers he put down wouldnt get broken. Both reasonable conditions and easily rectified by having dog proof fencing or extra meshing at the bottom of the fence and if any bricks were broken I would fix them up when my paving gets done. Then i email my sales rep my findings and off the work I pop for another 2 weeks. After not receiving an email back for 2 weeks I tried calling the HQ to be informed that he has quit. I arrange a meeting with the new sales rep to discuss this and his defence was, "ah Ha, you've signed drawing that says you are responsible for the fencing coming down". After discussions with my partner on the extent of the work I would personally have to carry out or pay someone extra to do the work, coupled with the risk that if something does go wrong with the property next door I, not the builder, is liable we decided that it would be best to make the garage 120mm smaller. Had I known that 5 weeks ago I would have just made it smaller on the spot but at least I know I tried my hardest to get what I want. We also parked both our cars in a garage that is 5.95x5.65, only 8cm bigger than what our garage was orignally going to be and our cars fitted easily width ways and just enough room to walk behind my car. So glad I extended the garage by 480mm. turtleschell Where are you building? I'm building Goodlife's Bravo in Butler. We signed contracts in end of June and have had prestart but now nothing seems to be happening? I still havent gt the final variation yet. We are building in Banksia Grove. We signed contracts in May and had prestart in June. We have had trouble with finance (Goodlife not having the contracts in time) and had to extend the finance date by 3 weeks. Settlement was in June. They wouldnt put in the plans to the council until we had the title confirmation letter. Once we did it took just under 3 weeks for a building license. Another major hurdle I have had to overcome is the amount of rubbish on our site. When we first signed for the land we got them to remove about 10-15t of sand that had piled up from surrounding jobs. Since then a few builders have dumped more sand, probably only 500kg, which doesnt bother me too much as it is quite clean sand and will be easy to remove. What is a problem is the amount of broken bricks and other rubbish left on the plot by mostly the neighbouring houses. I have found steel reinforcing mesh, paint can tins, silicone tubes and cement. I tried raking it out but after 5 hours and only getting through 50m^2 (that will make up my front yard anyway) I decided to call it quits and hope that it is clean enough for siteworks or else I am looking at more delays. All this rubbish is in the top 50mm and most that is left is broken bricks and tiles. Is this such a big problem? I cant find any information on what actually happens in the preslab siteworks stage. So that is where we are now. Awaiting dates from the schelduling department, to which we should hear from them on Monday. From what I can gather on these forums is that siteworks should commence in 2 weeks and should last for 2 weeks and then the slab is poured. From an intial estimate of moving in in Janurary we are now looking at the end of March. Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 5Aug 23, 2012 11:46 pm Hi tracer!! We are also building on a lot in an already established area (+6 years) and had the same issues with trash. We even had a mattress dumped there!!! There was lots of build rubble and even big lumps of concrete. I was also very concerned about this however our siteworks involved a sandpaper so they scraped the rubble into a pile and put in clean sand. It actually looked like hardly anything once they were done. and as of yet we have had no charge for extra waste disposal. Maybe take some photos and ask your builder if they will be scraping site back? Jen Building with HomeGroupWA (started as Scott Park Homes ) - Grand Wisteria Check out my Build Thread!! Time line on P1. Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 6Aug 24, 2012 12:00 am obviously you had Prestart already? How did you go? What upgrades did you do? Annoying about the rubbish! I'm pretty sure site scrape is part of the provisional costs. GOODLIFE - Bravo - BUTLER http://getmistyfied.blogspot.com.au Display 20/02/2012 PPA 01/04/12 Prestart: 25/07/12 Settlement: 31/07/2012 Contracts:August Slab 19/11/12 BRICKS 10/11/12 Roof 16/01/13 Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 7Aug 27, 2012 8:26 pm turtleschell obviously you had Prestart already? How did you go? What upgrades did you do? Annoying about the rubbish! I'm pretty sure site scrape is part of the provisional costs. Yes I have had Prestart. They wanted me to have the colour meeting and prestart on different days. This was very impratical as my partner had just started a new job and taking one day off was hard enough. Trying to book it on the same day was harder than I thought it would of been, they just didnt want us to do it and didnt give us a reason why it had to be on different days. They even thought of one of us not attending one of the meetings! Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and not getting to choose the colours! Yeah right. It went pretty well. We knew what we wanted and I made a list of all the things I wanted at prestart. As for colours we went with sandstone floor tiles, grey/brown wet areas floor tiles, white wet area wall tiles, white splashback, brown cabinets and white benchtops. As for extras (I dont have the sheet on me) we went for overhead cabinets in the kitchen and laundry, changing the rangehood to a slideout(that cost a fortune), laundry tub to a full cabinet, upgraded underlay and carpet, soft close drawers, changed the shelf and rail wardrobes to double mirror sliding doors (they are 1750mm wide) in bed 2 & 3 and heaps more electrical points. All up about $6k in extras. There was a lot more that I wanted to do like full height tiling in at least the ensuite and more luxury type items but this is a small house in a cheap area and I didnt want to over capitalise. Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 9Aug 28, 2012 3:22 pm 6k is pretty good, I went by myself to both meetings with both my kids (2.5yo and 8week old) and spent about 12k. How much did your mirrored sliding wardrobe doors cost? I'm gonna add these after handover. GOODLIFE - Bravo - BUTLER http://getmistyfied.blogspot.com.au Display 20/02/2012 PPA 01/04/12 Prestart: 25/07/12 Settlement: 31/07/2012 Contracts:August Slab 19/11/12 BRICKS 10/11/12 Roof 16/01/13 Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 10Aug 29, 2012 8:16 pm jlil Hi Tracer How much did they charge you for the soft close drawers? Cheers J They were $250 for a bank of drawers and $250 for every cabinet. Seemed a bit excessive for cabinets so we just got them for the drawers. Might be able to do the cabinets after handover. turtleschell 6k is pretty good, I went by myself to both meetings with both my kids (2.5yo and 8week old) and spent about 12k. How much did your mirrored sliding wardrobe doors cost? I'm gonna add these after handover. Im not sure really. We first upgraded from standard shelf and rail to enclosed door. That set us back $300 each room. Then we went to double mirror sliding doors and that was around $750 each on top of the $300. I forgot to ask if we get that $300 back or is it part of the cost. I think going from standard to double will be ~$1000. Again I dont have the sheet on me at the moment and will update with the right figure soon. Site Scrape and Toilet 11Sep 07, 2012 6:08 pm Google Sketchup 12Sep 07, 2012 6:13 pm Slab Down 13Sep 11, 2012 1:53 pm Footings and Mesh went down yesterday with the slab going down this morning. Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 14Sep 23, 2012 8:23 pm Window frames have arrived in the past week. Bricks should arrive on the 27th. Drainage has been put in. When they did it they damaged the slab. I have emailed the builder and they have assured me that it is cosmetic damage and not to worry about it. They also said this might occur when the bricks gets delivered. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ What do you think? Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 15Sep 27, 2012 9:56 am So in the past two days they have put in temporary power, got rid of all the excess sand from laying the footings, added a gemmill homes construction sign on the front fence and delivered a storage shed. That cracking I mentioned earlier is worse than I expected. It is wider than the 90mm brick that will be placed over it meaning the carpet will be layed over this chip. I will mention it to the builder and see what they say. maybe it will just get filled after the bricks have gone up. The slab scrape got rid of the top 50mm on average all the way around the house. This means that it got rid of most of the rubbish that was around the surface from the neighbouring build. This would of been great to know beforehand. Hopefully the bricks arrive today. Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 16Oct 02, 2012 4:50 pm Had bricks arrive on the 28th. A day late but it had been raining for the past two days. No progress as it was a public holiday on Monday. Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 17Nov 04, 2012 10:52 pm Show some pics of your bricks! You must have a roof by now?? PICS! GOODLIFE - Bravo - BUTLER http://getmistyfied.blogspot.com.au Display 20/02/2012 PPA 01/04/12 Prestart: 25/07/12 Settlement: 31/07/2012 Contracts:August Slab 19/11/12 BRICKS 10/11/12 Roof 16/01/13 Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 18Nov 29, 2012 2:31 pm turtleschell 6k is pretty good, I went by myself to both meetings with both my kids (2.5yo and 8week old) and spent about 12k. How much did your mirrored sliding wardrobe doors cost? I'm gonna add these after handover. So originally we went for the single metal door frames on the single robes. For both bed 2 & 3 this cost us $583. This was part of our intial contract. In our prestart we then changed both to the double with mirror doors and that cost $1571. I dont know if that is extra/ on top of the $583 or if we got credited. We changed from 930mm robes to 1750mm. this changed the position of the robe wall which would be a hard task to do afterwards. Unless you already have double robes. Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 19Nov 29, 2012 2:33 pm jlil Hi Tracer How much did they charge you for the soft close drawers? Cheers J $247 for just the 4 bank of drawers. I can see that you can get soft closing hinges from bunnings or ikea for about $20 a pair. Way cheaper than the $250 a pair they were going to charge us. Re: Coventry by GoodLife Homes 20Nov 29, 2012 2:48 pm turtleschell obviously you had Prestart already? How did you go? What upgrades did you do? Annoying about the rubbish! I'm pretty sure site scrape is part of the provisional costs. They wanted to charge $2k+ for stormwater disposal. This was running a pipe all the way around the house to two big drainage pits. Very professional but I opted to do it myself. Just going to run some piping to a soakwell from Bunnings. There are six of them to do at ~$50 a pop. I've heard that the yellow sand is actually quite good at drainage. It rained a bit over the weekend and you could see the water moved the sand around the area of the downpipes but it wasnt very destructive. The colour specialist suggested to go with 400x100 tiles for our splashback. They looked good so we did. This cost us $14 which we didnt know about at the colour meeting. Extended the splashback up to the overhead cupboards. The tiles go all the way around the benchtop in the kitchen. I thought it was just going to go on the same wall as the cooktop. Extra tiles were $350. Overhead cupboards were $1300. They wanted to charge us $700 for going with 450x450 tiles. So we went with standard 330x330 tiles. Upgrade carpet to the next range was $1000. Upgraded underlay was $400. Upgraded the laundry from standard metal basin to 800mm wide cabinet. Matches with kitchen. $550. Overheard cupboards to match were $400. A whole heap of extra electrical points totaling about $600. Probably should have done a bit more. Upgraded toilets $250. Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74701 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 105533 Hi there! Putting the feelers out there for those who have (or almost) built with Arli homes! Interested in your experiences who've built from their stock home designs… 0 23481 |