Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Building our first home - the search continues! 21Jun 25, 2013 1:22 pm We were at check plan stage and almost ready to go to council when we got our money back but i guess it all depends on the builder As animal said, if your already that disappointed with the builder and not desperate to build i would get out before you get in too deep. Re: Building our first home - the search continues! 22Jun 25, 2013 1:35 pm So sorry to hear that you're having such a rough time of it! As animal and BradS have indicated, if it's like this now (like it was with ours) better to cut and run now... Best decision we made, but it was tough to do it. Wishing you all the best, no matter what you decide to do Thread: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=66299 Slab: 16/6/14 Frame: 4/7/14 Roof: 22/7/14 Lock Up: 20/8/14 Fixing: 26/8/14 PCI: 9/10/14 Handover: 20/10/14 Re: Building our first home - the search continues! 23Jul 12, 2013 10:00 am Thought it was time for another update! we eventually received a tender, and there were issues with almost every point. I sent a very clear and detailed email raising the issues and our guy was going to sit down with the estimator and drafty to sort it out. A week later than it was supposed to take I got a revised tender. It didn't address the points I raised, not even explaining why all quoted credits for deletions had dropped considerably. In addition we have been asking since day 1 about the allowance for the electrical and even after including it in almost every email to them, they are yet to provide a figure. He promised me on Wednesday afternoon that he would get it to me first thing yesterday and still nothing. It shouldn't be hard, he keeps telling me it's the same amount they would pay any other sparky to do the job, you'd think that would be easy to find out. We are so disappointed by this whole process, and are seriously considering cutting our losses again. He said himself you can't expect nothing to go wrong when building a house, it's how it's dealt with that makes the difference. Seems to be that they deal with it by putting it off, and being anything but transparent. Despite te actual plan coming together ok, the alarm bells are certainly ringing. Re: Building our first home - the search continues! 24Jul 12, 2013 10:16 am Sorry to hear staceyd. I love the comment on its how its dealt with that makes the difference..... clearly they need to take some of their own advice hey If you have paid a deposit already, prety sure i recall reading somewhere that you have, i would politely ask for it back and tell them you wont draw any unwanted attention to them if they do refund it. If they dont you will go through the appropriate channels to ensure you do get it back Re: Building our first home - the search continues! 25Jul 12, 2013 10:37 am Hi staceyd To introduce myself, I live in Melbourne's west, a first-home buyer, and am currently waiting for my loan documents to arrive before I hand over my balance of the deposit for land. We would like to start building if not before the end of the year, at the start of the year when everyone gets back from holidays. I am a few months behind from you were I just started researching on plans, since I know the land dimensions I have to play with. Reading through this post, I feel for you so much. It's what I've been thinking, so many horror stories, and you hope you're not one of them but it happens anyway - seems there's more horrors than dream come trues! I also had the sTHREE from Eight Homes as one of my first choices. The design is so compact and cozy! I loved it, but after doing the detailed costing and having had to add an additional $60K++ on top of base price, I thought might as well look at other builders who seem to have a higher base price but because they already have more inclusions. I also loved a design from Simonds but again, horror stories. I agree with everyone else, $1,000 is $1,000, I believe it's worth the fight to try and get it back. If you don't feel 100% now, the whole experience might just continue to get worse. Try and remember this will be a home for a while, it's personal to you and you're the one paying for it. These builders can't be lax or control us just because we are more naive perhaps than some. I wish you all the very best and I can't wait to hear that things are starting to look up and that you actually end up loving every moment of the build, not just trying to catch all the falling pieces around you because the builders keep dropping the ball. --- Re: Building our first home - the search continues! 26Jul 17, 2013 1:53 pm So we finally have figures for my other half to do the elec and solar hot water through his work. They are either really unorganised or trying to rip us off... They are claiming the SHW is $2800 less a $1300 rebate so are offering us $1500. But some of the rebates ended at the end of May so the rebate would actually only be about $700 for the system they are installing. We were going to do one twice the size and that gave us around the $1300. And they are so unclear on what the electrical includes. Below I've copied directly from the tender. Do you think it is just the actual wiring of the house, or temp perm power/trenching etc as well? To me it looks like just the actual house and none of the other stuff, but other half says thats stupid as they would then need multiple certificates etc. And the amount quoted is doable for just wiring but is really light on if it includes everything else. Note Only:Electrical wiring including wiring for future fibre optic installation. Client/s to undertake all electrical works as per electrical plan in the contract. *** to raise a purchase order based on the requirements in the electrical plan. Client/s to agree to purchase order amount. No extra charge will be accepted by *** for any additional works completed over the agreed amount. They are pushing us to give the go ahead for them to prepare contracts but my partner is not happy with the explanations given and wants more information, problem is, any request for information takes weeks. His gut is saying run, now that I've calmed down and had my say, mine is saying that maybe we should just get on with it and do all the things we can on our end ie. hire an independent inspector etc. And surely, working on site himself, if my partner notices any problems with the build, he should be able to get it sorted with the ss with minimal fuss? I get the feeling that we're going to have this trouble with anyone in our price bracket - seeing as he wants to do a big chunk of the work himself, and builders would obviously prefer to keep it all in house to keep it easy (and more profitable). I can't see anyone bending over backwards to make that easy, and if they do, we probably couldn't afford to build with them anyway! Re: Building our first home - the search continues! 27Jul 17, 2013 7:31 pm You say your partner will be onsite himself, why cant you do the owner builder thing? I am an absolute mongrel customer. If i am paying someone to do something for me i expect it ALL to be on the table from day one and i expect it to be perfect. Give me the run around and dont answer my questions and rightly or wrongly, i feel like you are trying to rip me off. If i was you i would listen to your partner and cut your losses. But thats just me Re: Building our first home - the search continues! 28Jul 17, 2013 9:25 pm I second BradS. No matter what your budget, that's money I'm sure you worked really hard for.. If they seem to be ripping you off, they don't deserve your hard earned stash. --- Re: Building our first home - the search continues! 29Jul 18, 2013 9:36 am bank finance is why we can't owner build, we'd need to get to that 40% deposit limit. plus we'd have to refinance our land too as our bank don't lend to ob's. I have arranged for the building manager to call him today and run through his concerns to help him make up his mind. i hope they do actually call him! Re: Building our first home - Questions about doing own work 30Jul 30, 2013 2:13 pm Time for another update and some Q's too... Building manager and my partner finally spoke today and he seems pretty good to deal with. Despite what the sales guy from the original company said, according to the building manager we deal directly with them once contracts are signed. This is a little concerning as I feel that now our "builder" (sales guy) has been promising things he has no way of delivering seeing as he won't even be involved. Also, quick question - we're doing the electrical. Reason being that as a sparky, its a good chance for my other half to add some value to the house without it costing us much extra. We've now been told that they want a copy of the electrical plan and will raise any differences from the standard plan as variations. I'm really bummed, it kind of defeats the purpose of doing it. If they're going to be charging us eg $100 per extra light, and they'll only pay $20 or $40 or whatever per extra light then we're still getting well and truly bent over Same with the solar hot water - We were getting that done through his work so that we could upgrade to a bigger better system for much less, however now they want that as a variation that they can charge us for too. Is that normal? It seems to just be really unfair. Re: Building our first home -Contracts signed 32Aug 22, 2013 5:49 pm I'm so happy for you staceyd. Glad everything has been resolved and contracts signed. What's next? Have they given you a timeline? Re: Building our first home -Contracts signed 33Aug 22, 2013 9:20 pm Thanks lucinda! Selections appointment should be in the next couple of weeks, then it's just waiting on developer assessment panel approval and a building permit. So nice to have a good update for once! Re: Building our first home -Contracts signed 34Aug 27, 2013 11:07 am Hi Stacey, It sounds like we are building in the same area. What a nightmare you guys have had getting to this point. It's such a tough time trying to navigate your way through it all and being road locked by builders most of the time with what you can and can't do. I hope it all runs smoother from here on in, you've more than had your fair share of drama! Re: Building our first home -Contracts signed 35Aug 28, 2013 12:42 pm Thanks Oshani. I just had a look at your blog and I think you're right - you're about 3 blocks from us by the looks of it! We have selections Monday morning. The appointment was only arranged yesterday and I've got a busy week, so not much time to stress about colours, will have to save it until we get there. We struggle to agree on things like that, so it might be a looong day. Re: Building our first home -Contracts signed 36Aug 28, 2013 12:50 pm All the best for your selections! Hope the right choices jump out at you and everyone agrees. Re: Building our first home -Contracts signed 37Sep 03, 2013 1:52 pm Selections are done - and weren't as painful as I expected. We did the lot in a touch over 3 hrs We didn't upgrade much at all, so its not that exciting! Brick - Austral fawn Roof tile - coal dust (a very dark grey/black), standard profile Gutters - monument Downpipes - monument Fascia - surfmist garage - surfmist (with the narrow lined profile, instead of the squares or rectangles) render to the portico will be done after handover but some light colour, to tie in with the surfmist front door - monument windows - dune (I got my white windows but they were even more stark than the surfmist and just didn't work with anything inside or out so we chose something to blend more with the bricks than pop out) Inside we went with warm greys, slightly warmer in the wet areas. Kitchen (we have wood "effect" laminate here and I loathe it, I didn't want the kitchen to look like it was trying to be something its not, so I went for colours that are obviously laminex if that makes sense. We can always spruce it up with stone benchtops in a few years if I really want to.) Base cupboards and kickers - pearl grey Overheads - polar white Benchtops - moose Splashback - (its actually a window splashback) but around that we just have a white gloss tile Bathrooms Cupboards - natural white Benchtop - stipple smoke And we have a slightly warmer off white floor tile that is continuing into the showers etc. We went with Haymes polar bear for the paint, but we'll likely repaint it to get something a bit more hardwearing than a 2 coat spray, seeing as we have 4 boys, so I'm thinking that colour will change. We only upgraded one step up with bathroom fittings, interior door handles and front door handle and got a double bowl sink instead of 1 1/2 in the kitchen, but as we're doing our own elec, we'll be adding extras there too. A couple of minor issues with the $$ of the variation that came back to us today but hopefully we'll get that sorted out and move on to the next step! Now we just have to start looking at flooring a bit more seriously, and I need to lock in some kitchen appliances too! I'm pretty excited that I can start shopping now! Re: Building our first home -selections selected! 38Sep 03, 2013 9:17 pm Like your selections. We chose stipple smoke for our bathroom/ensuite cabinetry and moose for our laundry cabinetry Custom downslope build Build thread viewtopic.php?f=31&t=61873 Blog http://www.buildingroyalmanor.blogspot.com.au Re: Building our first home -selections selected! 39Sep 07, 2013 8:33 am Thanks Home Angels. I'll have to stalk your thread to check it out the stipple smoke and moose in action! The couple issues from the variation raised due to our upgrades are now fixed - even better than we anticipated (we got out kitchen tile upgrade for free) so its full steam ahead now Its nice to be making some progress. We've second guessed a fair bit though, but its done now so no point worrying about it now... Re: Building our first home -selections selected! 40Nov 13, 2013 2:15 pm Thought it might be time for an update.... I have nothing to really update though! Apparently we were due to start last week, then I got emailed chasing variations that we returned a couple of months ago, no building work started and we are still yet to hear anything more. I emailed chasing it up with our sales guy (seeing as we haven't been handed over to the company who build yet) late last night. This morning I received a lovely email from a complete stranger who is also building with the same company we are, our sales guy had forwarded him my email for some reason? The sales guy is extremely lucky that the email didn't contain anything sensitive or he'd be in a world of pain right about now... I was already grumpy about the false start dates! On the upside, the email did confirm what someone else had told us, that once the building company takes over from the sales company we'll have a much better experience! In other "kind of" updates, I've fallen in love with the falcon 900mm professional fx oven which is on sale for another week and a half so if we agree on it I might be buying my oven soon! Yay! I think we've decided to go bamboo flooring throughout the house, and I have reupholstered a simple little mid century chair for one the kids rooms, or perhaps a desk in the playroom or something? I used danish oil for the timber and a textured dark blue cotton and its come up a treat. I'm even thinking of upholstering the toybox to match! STEFF62 Framing should be fine, but he will only be able to nail the baseplates in, I wouldnt think you can dynabolt them after 24 hours. My question is, how is he… 1 5857 8 9901 Houses have been framed on floor joists since settlement, chipboard flooring is only around for 50 years or so, so why would it not be satisfactory? However exercise skill… 3 16836 |