Browse Forums Building A New House 1 May 12, 2014 12:15 am Hello!
Excited to post on here after trawling through the forums for a good few months - and getting some tips and tricks along the way! I wanted to post a log on here because I find the info very useful, and it's interesting to see what other people pick as well as the process they go through. Also I found some of these very helpful in ultimately deciding in what builder to pick as well. My partner and I are building our first home in the northern suburb of Alkimos in WA, specifically in the Trinity estate. We purchased our land in February so are currently in the process of waiting for titles. They were initially slated for June but they've since been delayed to July, fingers crossed it's no later! We have signed with our builder, Celebration Homes, so are hoping to knock out prestart and all the other "hard" stuff before titles so we can get up and running asap! Our block is 465m, 15m frontage. We're planning on building a 4x2 with study and activity nook. We also extended our garage by 1m to allow for extra storage room instead of a shed. This should leave us with about 4.3 in the backyard which we're pretty happy with, since most backyards these days are pretty tiny and we wanted the option for a pool later down the road (especially for resell). We have picked out a lot of our internal fittings and fixtures as well as most of our exterior choices, so assuming nothing impossible comes up in prestart we're pretty set. If anyone has any tips or advice to give beforehand that'd be much appreciated. Cheers (I will try post photos of layout and photos of features later on!) Timeline February, 2014 - Bought our land June, 2014 - Prestart complete October, 2014 - Titles issued November, 2014 - Land access is allowed December, 2014 - House plans approved by council February 2015 - Slab goes down March 2015 - Bricking starts April 2015 - Bricks complete, roof timbers start May 2015 - Roof goes on! End of May 2015 - grey float, plaster and windows all go in. Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 2May 13, 2014 2:43 am Hey Rory14 We are also building with celebrations. Got our slab just over a week ago, we are so excited! Keen to see what design you have chosen. Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 3May 13, 2014 9:17 am hello and welcome here's a tip for pre start: have a plan A & B for your choices If you chose a tile outside of the builders range have a plan A, B & C get a cost on everything, you can delete it if it goes over budget. A lot of people have been surprise on some of their costing's from the builder good luck and have a great and smooth build! Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 4May 17, 2014 6:28 pm Hi AshShep, that's exciting! Where are you building, and has been smooth for you? I've heard some negatives things about them, but I'm remaining positive since I've heard good and bad about ALL builders - plus I think some people complain for the sake of complaining. 2-cupcakes-pls hello and welcome here's a tip for pre start: have a plan A & B for your choices If you chose a tile outside of the builders range have a plan A, B & C get a cost on everything, you can delete it if it goes over budget. A lot of people have been surprise on some of their costing's from the builder good luck and have a great and smooth build! We've pretty much planned all our choices, and have kept to builders so pretty good on that! A lot of what we want we actually priced up before we even signed a contract because it's pretty important for us to try and contain our spending - especially as first home owners we didn't want to get carried away. There's only a couple of upgrade things we've not priced up yet, but hopefully prestart will be okay. We have already started to make a list of what things are must haves and others we can sort out later. Anyway here is the promised plan, unfortunately it's the most updated I have and it's not 100% accurate. The windows in the cinema will instead be two windows facing the front. It is a modified version of the Gibson. We absolutely love it and can't wait to live in it. http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/DuncraigGal/House_zps6d9627dd.jpg We've discovered very few people have both study and activity rooms, let alone even one though! We personally thought it was necessary as we both will work from home and we thought an activity nook would also be a good selling point later on - plus we LOVED how it looked and flowed in the display. Would definitely recommend people consider it even if they don't want/think they need a study. Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 5May 17, 2014 11:11 pm Hi Rory, We too will be building in Trinity, Alkimos & our land also titles in July (we hope)! Last time we were up there it was just sand dunes! Not even a road in sight! Our land is 375m2 as it's what we could afford and and so it's more of our first home than our dream home. We've chosen a personalised version of the Graduate by Smart Homes. We cut out the study in ours so we could shortern the design to give us more back yard. I'm glad you seem to be having a good experience with Celebration! Ours not so much Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 6May 18, 2014 12:57 am Sounds like you might be in the same area! Are you in the newer section? Ours was want to be June but the land agents verbally told us July. Oh no that doesn't sound good I know a lot of people building at the moment and it seems to be a complete mixed bag! A friend is with a reputable company in a much higher price range and she's having absolute hell. Have you gone into prestart or anything yet? Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 7May 18, 2014 3:08 am rory14 Sounds like you might be in the same area! Are you in the newer section? Ours was want to be June but the land agents verbally told us July. Oh no that doesn't sound good I know a lot of people building at the moment and it seems to be a complete mixed bag! A friend is with a reputable company in a much higher price range and she's having absolute hell. Have you gone into prestart or anything yet? Yeah I think building experiences are a mixed bag..! Our Sales rep for Smart Homes is a tad too placid for my liking and missed the mark with a stack of things, making heaps of mistakes, didn't even know the estate guidelines before having us modify our selected home resulting in about $3000 worth of changes, not to mention having to flip our house (because he failed to get informed that one of the land guidelines had specified the garage be on the opposite side), so now our living area will be facing East! We have purchased land in Atelier. We were told July from the get go - but maybe you were in on things long before us, or perhaps an earlier release? I have pre-start in just over a week so I am frantic surrounded by colour charts and samples Our Build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=72518 Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 8May 18, 2014 8:13 am hi rory 14 i am building with celebration home as well i am on brick stage pre-start tips for celebration home 1 get you sails rep to price everything even they say you can do it at pre-start big no no. DO NOT TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER 2 with you laminate you can go to laminex show room in ousbourne park and pick you bigger range you will love it 3 if you haven picked all the selection out of the builder range pryer to pre-start as the pre-start people are shocking mate that couldn't wate to throw you out of the office quick as they can 4 must do preselection pryer to pre-start in osbourne office . preselect every thing give you time to think.as a pre-start lades all they intreated in do there paperwork 5 DO NOT relay on pre-start lady to give you any ideas about any thing as because that not helpful as you might think 6 ONSE YOU HAVE DONE THE PRE-START ANY FURTHER CHANGES WILL BE COSTING YOU 350 $ EACH 7 DO NOT CHANGE ANY WINDOW OR A EXTERNAL WALL ON PRE-START AS IT WILL COST EXTRA AND PUT YOU BACK FRO ANOTHER MONTH AND EXTRA CHARG MONTH FOR RE SUBMISSION OF PLANS TO COUNCIL I HOPE THIS HELP Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 9May 18, 2014 12:06 pm mr singh hi rory 14 i am building with celebration home as well i am on brick stage pre-start tips for celebration home 1 get you sails rep to price everything even they say you can do it at pre-start big no no. DO NOT TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER 2 with you laminate you can go to laminex show room in ousbourne park and pick you bigger range you will love it 3 if you haven picked all the selection out of the builder range pryer to pre-start as the pre-start people are shocking mate that couldn't wate to throw you out of the office quick as they can 4 must do preselection pryer to pre-start in osbourne office . preselect every thing give you time to think.as a pre-start lades all they intreated in do there paperwork 5 DO NOT relay on pre-start lady to give you any ideas about any thing as because that not helpful as you might think 6 ONSE YOU HAVE DONE THE PRE-START ANY FURTHER CHANGES WILL BE COSTING YOU 350 $ EACH 7 DO NOT CHANGE ANY WINDOW OR A EXTERNAL WALL ON PRE-START AS IT WILL COST EXTRA AND PUT YOU BACK FRO ANOTHER MONTH AND EXTRA CHARG MONTH FOR RE SUBMISSION OF PLANS TO COUNCIL I HOPE THIS HELP It doesn't sound you had a good experience but were you unprepared? We have been in twice now o look and will probably go a third time before prestart to confirm. The only things we haven't decide on is te carpet, paint colours inside and out (but we might not do tha with them anyway), colour of the window frames and door handles (we have a pretty good idea, just need to 100% decide). Shouldn't be external changes, the man we are going through told us we had to make all external before signing off on contract so all should be good. We want to build some half walls in the shower but we were told we arrang that in prestart as it's not structural. Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 10May 19, 2014 8:29 am Good luck with your build, love the plans! We'll be building in Yanchep soon (hopefully) with Redink - posting this to follow your build. Will start a thread as soon as I have more info Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 11Jul 08, 2014 11:18 pm Long time and forgot to update! We had our prestart almost a month ago now, but we're still waiting on final contracts to come through (hopefully this week or they'll be getting a call!). Our titles are supposedly due this month, so heres hoping we get them soon! According to CH our plans have been submitted to council, so if things go to plan we're hoping the slab goes down in the next few months and should hopefully be a quick-ish build. Definitely think you NEED to be prepared for prestart. We were probably 95% prepared and a few things threw us off, also the original consultant misled us on a few little things which at the time (when the prestart girl is staring at you!) was pretty upsetting and stressful. Nothing we couldn't fix/get over but was a bit frustrating at the time! Our block still doesn't have a road at the moment, but I'm hoping when I visit in a few weeks I'll be able to take some photos of our block! We've never been on an "official" visit yet other than scoping out on vaguely marked out land. Fingers crossed it all gets rolling soon! Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 12Jul 12, 2014 5:18 am Good luck and we're looking forward to the pictures of your block Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 13Jul 28, 2014 2:36 pm How's it all going rory? We drove up there a couple of weeks ago and still no roads, nor have i received any news whether titles have come through yet.. Our Build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=72518 Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 14Jul 29, 2014 9:18 pm Hi dream catchers, We pretty much have a road! We haven't been but my parents were up on the weekend and apparently we have a retaining wall, curb, road, tap etc! Our titles are due mid August now but the land developer has told us we can't access the site until early October at the soonest which sucks but not much we can do about that other than cross our fingers they finish things a bit quicker! Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 15Jul 29, 2014 11:03 pm Yeah I received an email today saying October. So does that mean building can't commence until October? I thought it was once titles were out? I'm so confused.. lol Either way i'm super bummed.. Means we'll be renting for longer and now we'll probably be in around my son's 1st birthday. Here's to crossing fingers! Will have to go for another drive up this weekend and check it out! rory14 Hi dream catchers, We pretty much have a road! We haven't been but my parents were up on the weekend and apparently we have a retaining wall, curb, road, tap etc! Our titles are due mid August now but the land developer has told us we can't access the site until early October at the soonest which sucks but not much we can do about that other than cross our fingers they finish things a bit quicker! Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 16Jul 29, 2014 11:28 pm Contact your settlement agent! We spoke to ours and they basically said we will get titles but they won't let us access the land until they say so (October). Which is a pain but nothing we can do! I think we are heading up on Sunday so might see you around. there's no tradies around then so should be able to get onto the street! Oh wow have you had bub then?? Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 17Jul 30, 2014 12:59 am Ah good! Might just go on Sunday then! Oh yes! Should have mentioned that! lol We had a baby boy 8 weeks ago now He arrived 3 weeks early via emergency c section which was pretty traumatic :s Things have been super crazy since and we ended up back in hospital for another 7 days when he was just 4 weeks due to a blood infection He's recovered now thank goodness, but things got really scary for a while there.. Mum was here from o/s too, she just left last week and i've been going nuts trying to manage the little man on my own lol What Street is your block on again? rory14 Contact your settlement agent! We spoke to ours and they basically said we will get titles but they won't let us access the land until they say so (October). Which is a pain but nothing we can do! I think we are heading up on Sunday so might see you around. there's no tradies around then so should be able to get onto the street! Oh wow have you had bub then?? Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 18Oct 27, 2014 1:14 am Our Build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=72518 Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 19Feb 07, 2015 4:27 pm Okay I have been really slack/busy with work so haven't updated this in months and months. We finally got our titles and settled in October, after a few setbacks - such as not having access to our land amongst other bullsh*tty things! Nothing happened then for several months due to these setbacks, but in January we finally had earthworks progress and on the 3rd of February we got our slab! So hopefully in a few weeks we get some bricks, and eventually they start building! Our only negative at the moment is during earthworks they damaged the back retaining wall, quite a large chunk has been chipped so still waiting to hear back about the solution to this (as it's too noticeable to dismiss). Also since I meant to do this back in June/July these are our selections! We've already had to change our outside pavers so hopefully nothing else changes before they go in. This is our final house plan: Our roof is the dark grey, with our garage and window frames being the cream colour. We've chosen red brick on the outside and our pavers (old ones shown) are a dark grey with a red trim framing them. Our front door is grey, unfortunately that was the darkest shade possible as they can't insure/something darker colours from the sun. So if necessary we may paint darker. The tile on our right is the floor tile throughout all the main living areas and hallways, as well as activity. The mosaic tile is our kitchen splashback and the laminate chip is the cupboards. http://www.caesarstone.com.au/colour/6250-wild-rocks Our kitchen bench. We are having the same floor and wall tiles in both bathrooms. In our bathroom we are having the lighter colour on each side of the darker coloured drawers, and main bathroom is all light. The bigger feature tile is the ensuite and the skinnier tile is the master. We had originally picked out different colours but we had to choose the same stone in the end so ended up with the same colours. :/ http://www.caesarstone.com.au/colour/2040-urban Our benchtops in the bathrooms. Our laundry floor tile and wall tile. The light laminate is the cupboards, and the darker flecked laminate is the benchtop. Our carpet for theatre, study and bedrooms. I am the most unsure about this colour to be honest! But we will see. Our external double doors (PMAD104): https://www.corinthian.com.au/Products/ ... PMADSL-104 Our internal doors (DECO 2D): https://www.corinthian.com.au/Products/ ... co-DECO-2D We also paid to get our house painted and went with the colour "Kitty Grey". We ended up seeing it painted at the Celebrations show home in Eden Beach after we chose it and LOVED it! So very happy with that choice, should be a good neutral base to start with. Hopefully in 6ish months when it's all put together we can agree that we made the right colour choices! Re: Building our first home in (Trinity) Alkimos, WA. 20Feb 07, 2015 5:45 pm Very similar plan to our house. Great choices here too! Can't wait to see it finished Thanks NativeZen! I can't wait to start landscaping, though it's going to be a while away yet. No movement on site yet as of the weekend. Hoping to see some earthworks… 3 2150 Can anyone give me any onfo on New Homes WA? Good or bad, hopefully good just need to know if my choice was good or not? Thanks ❤️ 0 4948 That is a really good attitude Akin to you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I do enjoy watching that tik tok inspector from Victoria but he does go a little… 12 72436 |