Boutique Homes

Picked up the keys this morning. Will be moving in this weekend. Egad! There still needs to be a few things fixed - eg a power point needs to be moved, some data points need to be fitted off - but everything else looks pretty great.

After seeing the house again yesterday I'm much happier with the colours we've chosen. Even the front facade looks less anemic now that the garage door is on. The only thing I don't like are the cabinets in the en suite, but considering how many colours and fittings etc we had to choose in a few hours I think that's a pretty good strike rate.

Will post some pics once the floors are in as at the moment it still looks like a building site.

So overall I've been pretty happy with Boutique's service. Our site supervisor was terrific, nothing has been too much trouble for him (and he's going to organise his plumber to vent our rangehood externally). Let's hope their after sales care is just as good (although hopefully we won't need to contact them!).

Any updates from anyone else?

How much are they charging you to vent them ? Am meeting ss tomorrow

Not sure yet Wazza. I'll let you know as soon as I find out.

Hi guys! I am currently building with Boutique Homes too.
I wouldn't say I've had the best experience as I had multiple different consultants handle my file at contract stage which resulted in a lot of confusion and miscommunication.

The build process has been OK.. would have liked it to move a little faster. I go to my property every single day and there are some days where no work has been done even when my coordinator had advised that the plumber/electrician/etc is going to be there.

Just found out I have a change in supervisor.. mind you, I only found out because my coordinator had mentioned a different name and I was like "huh? who is that?''

My previous supervisor said he thinks we would be in by end of Feb.. that oviously hasn't happened. We're still at the tiling stage... and had a bit of an issue with the feature tiles being a different thickness to the wall tiles so that had set us back 2 weeks and is holding up any further work being carried out on the house which is frustrating! I don't know why they can't just get the plumber and electrician in to do other things in the mean time!

Can someone please tell me how many weeks from tiling did you guys then get the keys? Because I was told I'd be in by end of Feb, I went and ordered furniture (beds, fridge, sofas, tables) to be ready by early March and now I have to try and delay the delivery for as long as possible. But Im hoping I'd be in by end of March but given that I've now got a new supervisor who hasn't even called me to introduce himself.. and I'm sure he has to try and get on top of everything... I'll be lucky to even be in anytime soon!

Hi hypminoktiq! Which house are you building?

I agree Boutique's communication process could be better - we had a couple of consultants, one of whom made a truckload of mistakes in our addenda, so the second consultant spent a lot of time clearing it all up.

We've been really lucky having the one supervisor throughout the whole thing, and he was terrific (let's hope his follow-up service is just as good!). If you haven't heard from your supervisor soon you should definitely give him a call yourself. Although it would've been nice if he called you!

As for timing, our tiling was complete around Feb 5 and we got our keys today... so about a month? We could've had the keys last week, but the wrong front door was ordered so that held things up a bit.

Hi Genghis77!

We are building the Marseille 28 in west of Melbourne. And yourself?

yep the contract & addenda stage was a nightmare!! Things were missed and I had spent countless hours checking over them. My pre-start consultant rushed us through our entire colour selection appointment so we ended up doing the whole thing in 2 hours! I even went back to work because I had finished up early and it was a waste of annual leave to do nothing for the rest of the day. hehe

When they got to site.. things moved fairly quickly. Though I was only communicated of the Site start date ONE day before, so I agree that their communication process could be better!

I was told by my supervisor that once painting has been completed then the rest will move pretty quickly but I've got to say its slowed right down (they did hardly any work in the last 2 weeks!) and I do think it has something to do with my supervisor leaving and not caring anymore so that's frustrating!
Yes I may have to give my new supervisor a call but it would be nice if they even gave me his contact details. I'll give him until the end of this week to call

When did your Caesar bench tops, glass splashback, sinks, bath tub, toilet, shower screens go up? Was it soon after the tiling was done?

Also, were they happy for you to organise to have an independent inspector come out to the property prior to hand over? who did you use? I hadn't used one at all for any of the stages.. not sure why cause normally I'm all over those kinds of things so I need to make sure I do it for the final stage! did you have one come out for the other stages? did they find any issues?

oh wow you only just got the keys this morning! congratulations! I hope the moving part goes smoothly! please post photos up of your lovely new home once you've settled in!

hypminoktiq, we're building the Knightsbridge 26 (now obsolete) in Melbourne's outer east.

We don't have glass splashbacks, we've got tiles and so they were done when the bathrooms and laundry were. The bath tub went in earlyish I think. The stone bench tops and shower screens were only put in a week ago and the sinks were after that - so they would've been installed late last week. We had our final walk-through yesterday and the painter was still on site doing some touch-ups.

And as for the independent inspector, Boutique were more than happy to have one come through. In fact, yesterday our SS had our inspector's final report with him and had ticked off each item as they were done. We had these stages inspected: slab, frame, lock-up, completion. The defects that were found at each inspection were fairly minor and Boutique fixed every one. The final inspection report listed quite a lot of defects but most of them were just paint touch-ups.

On another note, we had our hard floors put in today and the installer completely buggered up our sliding doors. So disappointing when we haven't even moved in yet

Hmm. I just remembered we had landscaping and fencing allowances built into our contract and despite me asking our client liaison person ages ago (twice) about these, we haven't seen anything. I assumed we'd be given something with the keys but nope. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. That's not great, considering we're talking about a few thousand dollars. Plus these are things that are pretty urgent... well, the fencing is anyway.

Now I'm really hoping their post-build service is good!

Met our ss today our frame is almost up and he expects they will have it finished today with the windows in. Roof due to go on next week

Great stuff Wazza. How have you found your SS so far?

I have to say our SS has been amazing. Apparently the floor installer rang him this morning and was stressed because we weren't happy with the job he did (and if you saw what he did you wouldn't be happy either!). I was worried that to get the doors fixed we'd have to call in a chippie and have an argy bargy with the installer about it, but our SS said he'll have a look himself at the damage next Tuesday when the appliances go in and will fix it himself. This really impressed me - he's going above and beyond his job, considering we organised the floors ourselves and he is under no obligation to help us with stuff we do to the house post-handover.

Plus, Boutique will be depositing money into our account for the landscaping and fencing allowances which is excellent.

And Wazza, our SS's plumber is charging us $300 to get the rangehood vented externally. Not sure how much it would've cost if we got it done through Boutique as part of the build.

Oh, and here's a pic of the kitchen/living area with the timber floors in. I have to say that even though the installer botched the sliding doors (which you can't see here), I love the actual floorboards, even in the dirty state they're in at the moment.

Yes they look nice

What is the flooring? Looks great.

Bandha, they're engineered timber floors from Wild River Timber Company (http://www.wildrivertimber.com.au/). The colour is called Black Wash.

You know how people recommend taking a hairdryer or something to test all the power points at PCI? Follow their advice. Turns out only half the power points in our house work. The others set off the safety switch when we plug an appliance in. Ugh. Thankfully our SS will be in on Tuesday along with sparkies who will be finishing off other stuff up anyway.

Yeah ss is good I must say house kinda feels small with just the frame up

Hi guys and girls
We have fallen in love with the Riviera 33 and are currently looking for land. I found out today that the facade I like is an extra 44k aarrgghhh might have to change my mind on that

How are all of you finding Boutique so far? Would love the links to your blogs

Sarah

Genghis77 your floors are divine! They look absolutely wonderful as does your kitchen. My partner and I have looked at Wild River Timber and they do some top quality stuff. Great to see their product in your place. We have though chosen a different brand but same sort of style as WRT.

Staggers me, this stuff. Where did all the good tradies go?

Booked my contract signing for April 7 and my block finally looks ready (although still not titled), I can actually drive down the street on bitumen & park in front now - they've even put trees down the nature strip. There are lots of soil cores taken from the block, so good to see Boutique are getting busy.

Sarah - I had a similar reaction. I figure that a couple of trees & some paint will give the front some character, I'd rather spend the money on the inside.

Welcome Sarah,

I've found them to be quite good so far compared to the stories others seem to have, but then, I'm still in the early stages.Electrical appointment and Colour selections are coming up for me end in a couple of weeks so that should be interesting and I'm still waiting to hear back from them on a couple of other things, one thing I'd suggest is to get a copy of their entire price list of options _before_ the pre work contract signing, the thing that's puzzled me about this entire industry is that they seem to have almost everything backwards. You'd think they would let you know about all the options that can't be changed before you sign your PWC, or at least let you know about some of the package deals.. apparently not though.

Also really surprised that they don't cater for things like extra drainage and grey water systems which need to be put down for at slab pour.

Where abouts are you looking at land?