Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 61Nov 06, 2013 8:13 pm Complete custom, well not from imagination, it's a version of all these mixed in musgrave 21, mini hamilton, sapphire 19, coolum and daydream all in one, corner block so nothing suited what we liked. So happy it's all starting to come together. Just this one thing. It's all in emails and my husbands going round to ask bout it again tomorrow, handy living in same suburb as the sales office and our land. I dont have internet except on my phone till house is built so getting more pics up is hard but i'll post when I can. Hopefully gets sorted soon so at least we can sign before christmas. Fingers crossed.
Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 62Nov 07, 2013 6:41 am jenm - Wow! I had no idea Coral did complete custom builds - that is really cool. No wonder I had no idea which house it was based on. I'm impressed that you were able to come up with such a great design. I really like that there are no bedrooms at the front, and I especially like that you can see your awesome custom kitchen as you walk into the house. I checked out your inspiration photo for the kitchen - yours will be amazing! One suggestion though. Have you thought about flipping the laundry and putting the washing machine along the wall adjacent to the garage? If you want to do a load of washing at night, it may be less likely to disturb the person sleeping in Bed 4. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 63Nov 07, 2013 7:11 am I went out to the house yesterday, and our rough-ins for the plumbing and data have been completed, house has been wrapped in sarking, and our bricks are waiting patiently in the front yard for some mortar and brickies. We are meeting the electrician on site today to go over our electrical plan, so he can do his rough-ins. We are meeting him on site as we want to add some things, that we forgot/didn't think of during our electrical plan with Coral/Clipspec. We want to add some additional power points and outdoor lighting. We have also organised with our electrician to do the wiring for downlights throughout the home, so we can get him to install them after handover when our funds have replenished from the expected & unexpected items we will need at the end of the build, i.e fence, driveway, blinds, letterbox, flyscreen/security doors, turf, etc. Hopefully we don't forget anything. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 64Nov 07, 2013 9:26 am Had a pleasant surprise when I got to the house this morning to meet our sparky. Our Brickies were there and a delivery of sand had been dumped at the front of the house. Mr tyger-eye came with me and noticed we had solar panels - I never even saw them until he pointed them out, so goodness only knows how long they have been there. While we were there I received a call from our SS about an issue with our mortar. We had chosen flush (well, originally we had chosen ironed, but Coral said we couldn't have it as were were getting render to the front of the house). Apparently due to the coarseness of the sand that was delivered, we needed to have ironed joints so the finished product would look better and not "honeycomb-y". Yay - we're having ironed joints! Would like to note that where the render will be, the mortar will be flush, so it wont matter what it looks like. It has been a good day so far Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 65Nov 19, 2013 7:59 am Update - We are at the start of week 7 of our build, and we are amazed at the progress. Even though it has been raining most days since last week, there has still been activity at the house every single day. Stacker doors have been installed. House has been wrapped in sarking. Our bricks are almost completed - it has been slow going through the rain, but nonetheless, bricks have been laid everyday (with the exception of yesterday - it poured consistently all day), they probably would have been finished by now if it hadn't been raining. We have the solar panels on our roof for solar power and the solar hot water system. Rough-ins for the plumbing, gas, electrical and data have been completed. Wall & ceiling batts are in. Plasterboard and cornices have been completed. Mr tyger-eye invited his friend over to the house yesterday afternoon (who built with Coral last year), and he noticed that a couple of our windows have not been centered. The main bathroom window is too far to one side, and the toilet (adjacent to the main bathroom) window is the same - both not centered. Seeing as the bricks are now pretty much completed on that side of the house, I'm pretty sure we are going to have to suck it up. I doubt that Coral would pull down bricks to fix it. I just hope that it doesn't bother me when we're in. My other guess as to why they would have them slightly off centre would be so that the bricking looks neat from the outside i.e. no 1/4 or 3/4 cut bricks around the windows - only full and half-cut bricks. In that case, the off-centered windows wont bother me as much. I will be sure to check it out this afternoon. I have also noticed (now that the plasterboard is up) that one of our wall looks a bit wonky. It is the wall in our ensuite separating our shower and toilet. It is level, but there is a width variation of about 15mm between the rear of our shower cubicle and the front of our shower cubicle. It probably wouldn't have bothered me too much, but the tiles on the floor will probably show the variation. I'll be letting the SS know today. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 66Nov 25, 2013 12:16 pm Tiger-eye, Are you going to get your house checked by a private inspector at this stage or later? I say that because I read all threads from "thattime" who recommends to use one. I put his comment below: "I'd recommend those private inspections for anyone building. They spot issues a mile away and will tell you if anything you're concerned about is a problem or not. From there it's on the builder to ensure any defects are corrected. So there's no need to feel that something might get missed because you didn't see it or couldn't fix it personally. A very good service." On our side we are going to contact the one Eden Brae use in his contract (Tyrell or something like that) just to have an idea of the price and we'll decide form there. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 67Nov 25, 2013 1:45 pm It would be a great idea to get an inspection done at this point, but it isn't something that we have considered doing. We have been at the house every single day, documenting the process with photos and anything that looks like it isn't right has been reported straight away to our SS. He has always reported back with any action taken/needed, and it has always been fixed the next day. In saying that though, were are no experts and I would highly recommend to others that if there was anything about the build that you were uncomfortable with, then an inspection would be a great thing to have done. Some of the negative things that we have noticed have been things like: missing second whirly bird; hole not cut in sarking for first whirly bird; no framing for the coffered ceiling in entry. But, like I said, these have always been rectified the very next day. Other things that we have been checking are: load bearing walls in correct places using laminated timber for support; bracing; insulation installation; rooms are consistent in width and depth (we have found that there is a variation in width in our ensuite shower - the rear wall of shower adjacent to garage - is 7mm narrower than the front of the shower where the shower screen will be situated - we ascertained that the width variation wouldn't be an issue); we have been checking strut widths, and noggin heights; support in the roof cavity for extra weighted items i.e. air con unit and panel lift garage door; brickwork has expansion joins and weep holes. We are also very fortunate that my step-dad comes over every week to check out the building process. He has an incredible knowledge base in almost everything technical. He runs/owns a steel fabrication/manufacturing business, so he has quite a lot of experience up his sleeve. Once again, we are no experts, but it is just fortunate that we are able to visit the house every day and check on the progress. And if we weren't keeping to such a tight budget, we probably would have thought about organising an inspection. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 68Dec 02, 2013 1:11 pm We are now at lock up! Front door is on, and our internal garage door has been installed. It is now time to finally use our key that Coral gave us at the start of the build. Yippee. Our fit-out carpenter has been at the house nearly all week, putting in our architraves and skirting, and our Laundry now has all of the shelving in the cupboards. We have had a slight problem with miscommunication (not on our part) - our SS forgot to tell the carpenter to tack on the skirting in the areas where we will be installing our engineered timber flooring - it has been firmly (and I mean FIRMLY) fixed in place with glue and a nail gun. We have been assured that it will be sorted out shortly. We went out to the block. Sorry... house (shakes head) on Friday. We didn't expect much as it was raining quite heavily for most of the day. Our fit-out carpenter has been there last week, so we thought we'de find some more shelving etc. We were pleasantly surprised to find that our rendering had been completed on the front of the house. We went back on the weekend to have another look, and we discovered something else that wasn't quite right. The render should be located on the front elevation, as well as wrap around the sides to 1080mm (basically goes 1m on each side of the house from the front). When we measured it one side was rendered to 1080mm, and the other was rendered to 960mm (it's a big difference - when you're paying extra for it). It probably equates to around 0.5m2, but not sure what we were charged per m2. Our SS is going to look into it today. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 69Dec 04, 2013 10:41 am Went to the house yesterday - the render has been fixed, and the carpenter has finished all of his internal fit-out - skirting (issue fixed - tacked on where needed), architraves & shelving. Really hoping to see a kitchen there this afternoon. When we were deciding on paint colours, we ended up painting our chosen colours on large MDF sheets, so we could see the colour on a larger scale. We took those to the house yesterday and held them up to the walls to see what they would look like with the natural lighting at the house. We are very pleased with our choices, especially with our external choices for the render. Hope it looks as good when the house is painted. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 70Dec 07, 2013 6:28 pm Now things are getting a little bit more realistic, time for me to start my own topic (below) http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=68525 Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 71Feb 20, 2014 5:17 pm Tiger-eye Last news, we have changed our bricks to "Frost"... Vino range got more expensive than we were told first and we really like yours so no risk. Could you possibly confirm that you've got off-white mortar, it's not obvious from the photos. I'm wondering what would be the difference with normal mortar. By the way, how's the building going at the moment? Cheers. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 72Feb 21, 2014 4:57 am Hey, good choice We did get the off-white mortar with ironed joints. We didn't want the mortar to be a feature. This is a great link that explains the different mortar colours and joints. http://www.boral.com.au/bricks/mortar-matters.asp I have been so incredibly slack - I cant believe how long it has been since I last posted on our blog and this forum. I really should update, as we have reached the Practical Completion stage, had our walkthrough with our SS, and we are expecting our keys on the 28th of this month Our driveway should get poured next week, we have made our carpet and flooring selections (to be installed after handover) and today I'll be booking in our air-con guy to install the ducted air that we paid a deposit on in May 2013. How is your process going? Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 73Feb 21, 2014 4:41 pm [quote]we are expecting our keys on the 28th of this month /quote] Great news, cannot wait to check the result. Thanks for the mortar link, I've got a feedback from another "Frosty" with off-white so we may add it again. Tried to do a last cabinetry colour change yesterday but haven't got any answer today. It's may be too late as the building starts on 04/03... This because I finally found the ideal kitchen on Coral FB https://www.facebook.com/coralhomes/photos/a.355195224551775.80554.348581845213113/621380567933238/?type=1&theater It's gonna fit perfectly with our furnitures. But it can be too late... Ask the council if there is a chance of getting build over easement exemption. Sometimes easements are unused and 24cm is not all that much. Good luck. And yes any builder… 2 13771 In Qld it is a requirement that a builder must have a cost breakdown, for building a home to the same specification, with the same inclusions and the same finish. So ask… 1 4346 of course there are legal avenues. You've already mentioned it. Sue them. I find it odd that lawyers wouldnt be willing to take on the case, given CCT evidence and… 1 23777 |