Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Oct 03, 2013 10:32 am Hi, We are new to building, new to blogging and new to posting on forums. For 2+ years we have been scouring these pages for inspiration and advice, and now we hope to be able to share our experiences as first time builders. We bought our block of land in February 2011, and were planning to start building on it mid-way through 2012. A spanner was thrown in the works when my wonderful boyfriend decided to upgrade his status from boyfriend to Fiance in September 2011. The wedding subsequently took up all of our time and finances in 2012, and so here we are, finally building our home in 2013. Our build starts tomorrow, and it is a very exciting time for us. We chose Coral Homes by chance. All of the Coral display homes we had been into looked old and dated, so we immediately crossed them off our list. It wasn't until Mr tyger-eye and I were having breakfast at Mcdonald's and reading the morning paper, that an ad for Coral Homes caught our attention. The floorplan we saw was for the Marcoola. We were excited. It looked modern, had a really good layout and we couldn't wait to go home and check it out on Coral's website. It was on our computer, that morning, when we found the Casuarina 30. Even better, we discovered that a display was opening up at Chisolm and the Casuarina was one of the houses on display! The rest is written in our history, and now will become part of our future. I hope to share some pics of our block, and colour selections with you, as soon as I figure out how Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 2Oct 03, 2013 11:36 am Haha Tyger-eye funny you mention the Marcoola cause we looked through that one at the estate we purchase our land at and like it too but initially crossed Coral homes off the list cause they gave us a huge catalogue and we immediately thought 'too expensive'! Looking forward to your build! Building with Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 Building Photos : http://s758.photobucket.com/user/zultbe ... 32%20Build Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 3Oct 06, 2013 9:26 pm I really wish that Mr tyger-eye and I had started being active on this forum a long time ago. Just having the opportunity to interact with the people that we have, has made me realise that we have missed out on some valuable advice specific to our build. It also would have been good to have asked about and shared some of our choices before they were set in stone. It is too late now though - we start on Tuesday We have made a couple of modifications to the standard floorplan Casuarina 30 Floorplan Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Our Modifications are:
Our Casuarina Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 4Oct 07, 2013 9:58 am Tiger-eye, Your floor plan looks terrific. You gonna have lots of space and a huge garage. We are also building with Coral but the size of our land is going to restrict our desire of space. We did choose our block for the location not for the size. But we like the layout of the Noosa 279 even if we need to sacrifice some space and backyard size. I'll post more details after our tender appointment which is this afternoon. Hope we are not going to forget some important stuff. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 6Oct 07, 2013 1:59 pm Sukarabikun - Thanks for the compliments. Our block was purchased for the location (read: price) and not size as well. It is just fortunate for us, that most blocks in our area are 1/4 acre (ours is slightly smaller). It would have been nice to be closer to the city, but as you get closer, the blocks get smaller and cost more $$$. We are very happy that is fits on the block - bought the block waaay before we had settled on a house design. I really like the Noosa as well. It is on display at Chisolm where ours is, it has a really nice feel when you walk in, and is so spacious. I really like the central kitchen and that the bedrooms are away from the main living areas off a hall (for privacy). I would recommend adding a floor-waste to the laundry - it is not included. I'm looking forward to seeing your floorplan and following your progress bgkdavis - I'll pass that info onto Mr tyger-eye. I know it wasn't in our contract, so I'll add it to the list of things to do after handover. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 7Oct 07, 2013 3:50 pm Tiger-eye - For the city do you mean Sydney or Newcastle? For us same issue (we are about 40mn drive from Sydney) but we are short walking distance from both school and high school for kids and that's the more important. Also 1/4 acres is double size of our land which is why we couldn't fit anything but the Noosa which we like the floor plan anyway. Initially we bought the land in order to build a double storey but got some budget restrictions and had to change our mind. Today was the signing of the tender, and looks like we have settled with something not too bad for both of us. Now just have to hope that the private certifier and the council would cut some more fees as we have already included all costly stuff such as drop edge beams, piering and H slab in the tender. This is our floor plan which shows the compromise between the standard facade design and the soffit level portico which we have finally chosen. I may add some renders to the pillar when we are in the house. http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/ac23 ... f30ecf.jpg Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 8Oct 07, 2013 9:12 pm Sukarabikun - Newcastle. I say city, but most people around here refer to Newcastle as "town". I think that is because we live on a rural property, and I duck into "town" to get milk/bread etc... That is very clever adding all of the costly stuff in the initial tender. We put H class slab in our tender as well, because we didn't want any nasty surprises. Lucky for us, we only needed S class (M class was included in base price, so we got a lovely unexpected credit). Mr tyger-eye & I love the changes that you've made. We especially like the change to the Rumpus/Activity room, and I like the inclusion of the sq set opening in the wall. Really like the double his n' hers walk-in robes. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 9Oct 08, 2013 6:00 am We are meeting with our SS this morning on site, and I'm not really sure what to expect. Feeling a bit excited - actually - a lot excited. Our soil is being turned today! On Friday the site was pegged out, but they were removed Friday afternoon. I was there with my step-dad removing the front fence (post & wire) when this young bloke came out from the surveyors office and removed the pegs - he wasn't happy with the placement of them. Sometime today the excavator will be on site , so I really hope the surveyor comes back before then to peg it out. He said he would make it his first job of the day - so we'll see. I'm just glad I was there when he removed them, otherwise it would have been a surprise this morning when they weren't there. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 10Oct 08, 2013 8:25 am Tyger-eye - We did have a TV antenna put in our first Tender but they wanted over $400 to do it. So DH scrapped that and he'll do it himself. We added 2 more TV points in ours. One in the media room and one in the master bedroom. I would have loved a sliding door in the master I have visions of adding a deck with a spa out there lol. But DH won't have a bar of it. Did they start the excavations? Building with Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 Building Photos : http://s758.photobucket.com/user/zultbe ... 32%20Build Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 11Oct 08, 2013 9:32 am It took us forever to decide on our colours. We wanted a fairly neutral palette, and spent hours browsing the internet in search of colour schemes that we both really liked, in the hope of replicating them somewhat. Coral has advised us that our internal doors, architraves & skirting will be painted in Dulux water-based gloss. They have provided a warning that this paint type may turn yellow if we select a white colour. After reading this in our colour schedule, we asked our friend - who also built with Coral - and had all of his white gloss paint had turned yellow. We then went back to the display home and checked out their paint. We checked the cavity sliders - and they were noticeably yellow. It seems that if the paint doesn't get a lot of light, the yellowing may be worse. Our friend chose white on white and the display we looked at had lexicon. Our colour rules: We wanted the laundry and the kitchen to have the same colours - cabinetry & tiles We wanted the bathroom & ensuite to have the same colours - the vanity & feature tiles will be the same, but we selected larger rectified tiles for our ensuite. The ensuite also has a frameless shower screen instead of the standard semi-frameless - just 'cause we wanted our ensuite to be a little bit nicer. Colour Selections: Internal Paint Colours Main - Dulux Grey Pebble - half; Skirting/Architraves/Internal doors - Dulux Whitsunday Island. Fingers crossed that Whitsunday Island doesn't turn yellow. External Colours Feature Render - Dulux Melville Island; Main Render - Dulux White Duck; Fascia/Garage door/Down pipes - Colorbond Surfmist; Bricks - PGH Frost; Roof Tile - Bristile Prestige Tungsten; Gutters - Colorbond Monument. I'm having second thoughts on the dark roof - thinking we should have gone with a lighter colour - either lithium or paladium Unfortunately it's too late now - but I'm curious to know what you think? The darker one we chose or one of the lighter colours? Bathroom/Ensuite Colours Wall Paint - Dulux Grey Pebble - half; Wall Tiles - gloss white 200 x 400mm (bathroom), *gloss white rectified 300 x 600mm (ensuite); Vanity - *Caesarstone White Shimmer, *Laminex Espresso Ligna; Floor Tiles - Belga Charcoal 300 x 300mm; **Feature Tiles - Dune Zoe mosaic. *cost extra **Owner supplied - Coral couldn't/wouldn't supply these (even though they came from Beaumont Tiles) and wouldn't give us a credit for the areas that we wanted them - their computer system couldn't recognise a credit for tiles if they weren't replaced with something else from the range that Coral would allow... Kitchen & Laundry colours to follow... (when I take some photos) Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 12Oct 08, 2013 9:47 am Porsche - I'm now very glad that we are doing the antenna ourselves. We found out at the meeting with the SS that there are 2 DP's for our block - an old one, and a new one. One of the DP's has our block situated 2m to the left, which means that our neighbours house would be on our block. This is the incorrect DP - but unfortunately that is the one they pegged out to on Friday Issues so far: Incorrect pegging means all the initial prep work has to be put off for 1 day Toilet that was supposed to be delivered on Thursday, is still not there Temp driveway supply company didn't get the message to hold off delivery until tomorrow. Hope the big pile of gravel wont be in the way of the excavator lol - good thing none of this is our problem (and lucky they're not really issues) Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 13Oct 08, 2013 12:15 pm Tiger-eye Thanks for your comment. The "hole" between Living and Activity will be filled with some kind of Plantation shutter and is to be able to have an eye on kids from the kitchen. And the His-Her WIR is my wife's update which I believe will become Her-Her very soon I've noticed that, on your side, you did a lot of modifications which we like very much but didn't request in order to keep the budget on track such as "Dropped ceiling in the kitchen" or "coffered ceiling in the entry". We may regret it because we like them very much. We also like your Alfresco slab extension which is something we never thought about before looking at your plan. On our side, the upgrade we got are: - Indulgence inclusion package - Steel frame - Ducted air con - Laminated instead of carpet - Alarm - Alu stacker door - compromise between "Standard Designer facade" and "Soffit Level Portico" - 30 dimmable LED Downlights - wide Entry door - Solid core internal door in the garage - NBN connection - Japanese style bathroom (shower and bath tub not separated but with separation from other bathroom side) BTW, what do you mean by Pegging? Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 14Oct 09, 2013 8:13 am Sukarabikun - Aaah, as a wife myself, I also understand that there is no such thing as a "his" WIR. Pegging - the Surveyor comes out before excavation starts and places little wooden posts (pegs) to mark out where the excavation needs to take place. You have some great upgrades. We are getting our ducted air done after handover (still included on the loan) - Coral's quote was almost $4k more expensive for the exact same system at our local Daikin seller. We still got Coral to put the slab in place for the outdoor part of the system. We are also doing our downlights after handover. At our electrical appointment we stuck pretty much to standard. Added a few extra power points and got Clipsal to do the wiring for owner supplied ceiling fans (1 in each bedroom), exhaust fans (WC and laundry) and 3 way exhaust/heat/light IXL's (bathroom & ensuite). We are going to ask our electrician personally if he can provide a quote to do the wiring for downlights throughout the house - Coral/Clipsal's charges were astronomical. We have found some really nice dimmable LED downlights, warm white with a diffuser from Cetnaj - Premium quality for under $50 each (includes transformer because I think they are only 11W - they'll run off an oily rag). Also, being LED they will last a lifetime - hopefully we will never need to change a globe. In our initial tender, we requested a quote for everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) that we could possibly ever want (and we still left out things that we never thought of initially). We knew approximately how much we had to spend and it was good to see how much all the options were. Some things really surprised because they were cheaper than we were expecting. It was no trouble to eliminate the things that blew the budget, and at least then we had no regrets because we knew we just wouldn't be able to afford everything. We made a lot of compromises e.g we wanted frameless shower screens in bathroom & ensuite, and ended up only getting them in the ensuite; we wanted coffered ceiling in entry and home theatre, only got it in entry. We decided what was a priority on our wishlist (after all structural changes had been made) and started the culling from there - it was difficult, but we are both really happy with what we have ended up with. I'm curious to see how your Japanese style bathroom will look - will definitely be requesting photos when the time comes Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 15Oct 09, 2013 6:23 pm Tiger-eye Thanks for the information about pegging. Obviously you guys are on the top of everything, we haven't even questioned Coral's prices nor asked for any quotes out there... We really need to save time for all of these stuff or we will end up paying top price for everything. For the ducted air con, I would have thought that installing after handover would be logically more costly but obviously the prices are made for people like us who cannot afford to spend time shopping around (Saturday is sport day for the family, Sunday is Japanese school for the kids in the city and weekdays we are both running like mads for our jobs). We are going to ask for a quote on ducted air con anyway and see if it would be achievable, thanks for the tip. For the down lights, do you guys think that it can be done after handover over the exisiting basic lighting provided by Coral? I believe we cannot ask Coral not to provide any lighting because we need to comply to Basix before handover. Anyway, that are may be questions we will have to ask when we have the electrical appointment. I'm looking forward to reading how you guys are going to position your downlights into the house. I have found the information provided by bgkdavis very interesting. Otherwise, Japanese bathroom have no separation between bath tub and shower. This because there you are meant to wash yourself first via the shower then get into the bath tub which water can be shared with all of the family. The separation is only between the sink/vanity and the rest of the bathroom which includes bath tub and shower. It's also very convenient to wash the kids and put them into the bath tub without splashing everywhere. Thanks again. Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 16Oct 09, 2013 9:43 pm Sukarabikun Hmmm, didn't know about the lighting being a basix issue. But, then again, we were only going to ask the electrician to do the wiring, and we'd organise the downlights to be installed after handover. I had a look at bkkdavis's posts - very informative. He has a good blog too. I think the position of the downlights also depends on the light and the beam angle. The greater the angle, the less you need. The ones we like have a 90 degree angle, and I've been told (by the salesman - who may or may not want me to buy more lights - I'll be doing additional research just to make sure) that we can space them approximately 2-2.5 meters apart. Depends too on ceiling height. Found This: Beam Angle: The beam angle is the angle that the downlight spreads light. The average halogen has a 60 degree beam spread. Lights with larger beam angles are more suited to areas where direct light is not needed i.e. a hallway whereas lights with more direct beam angles are suited to areas where direct light is needed i.e. over a kitchen benchtop 38° Angle - Suited for areas where direct light is needed - kitchen benchtops, bathrooms, above desks etc... 60° Angle - Suited for most applications. 90° Angle - Great for living areas and suited to most other applications. 119° Angle - Suited for areas where diffused light is needed - hallways, lounge rooms etc... I am pretty slack with getting quotes and doing all that legwork. I'm an internet/email kind of girl. I just went to Daikins website sent an email using the "request a quote" form: http://www.daikin.com.au/request-quote and put in the exact specifications that was on Coral's Tender. An authorised dealer rang me and I had to send them a copy of our house plans. They gave me a quote which was 3-4K cheaper than Coral's so we went with them. The only reason we questioned Coral's prices was because ducted air was something that we really wanted, but it was starting to push the budget a little too far. Googled Japanese bathrooms - I got it - that's a great idea. It would be good for water conservation - I'm surprised rural areas here haven't adopted something similar. I remember my sister & I were always getting into trouble for having showers that were too long (we lived on a property that had tank water, so every drop was precious). Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 17Oct 10, 2013 7:48 am Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 18Oct 10, 2013 12:11 pm Your block looks very good. I can see that the pile of gravels has been spread for the access way and a new pile of sand appeared at the back. Should be exciting moments to get the things moving forward. Thanks for sharing the information about downlights. I also got a phone call from the Daikin lady today requesting the same stuff. Fingers cross that we end up with same kind of quote as yours. However I didn't like when she asked me with which builder we are going... The may have some kind of agreements and I'll be provided with same rip-off quote... Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 19Oct 10, 2013 2:25 pm Great floor plan! Here's hoping you have a slab soon Re: Our Casuarina. Building with Coral Homes in Heddon Greta 20Oct 13, 2013 2:32 pm Tiger-eye, I've received an external quote for the ducted air con which 3000$ less than Coral's price. The guy told me that it can be installed after handover in 2 steps: - 1 day installing all stuff (before we move in) - coming back after we move in in order to install and connect the external unit (then it won't get missing when we are not in). This is a Daikin FDYQN140 which is a 4 zones split system, reverse cycle, single phase unit with standard inverter. I've tried to collect information about air con techno and it looks like the standard inverted is a cheap version of inverter compared to the premium inverter which is the real inverter technology. But it seems to cost about 2000$ more. So I need to check with Coral, which model was included into their quote before taking any decision. Also, it seems that Coral quote's includes the slab extension which I need to confirm with them. 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 4342 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 23764 |