My husband and I are building with Plantation in Ormeau Ridge. This is our first build and also our first home Apparently Plantation recently removed their "Breakthrough" range, but our build is from that range. We chose a Bronte, flipped the front, and then flipped the whole plan to get the best orientation on our block, which runs southeast at the street -> northwest at the rear. Our design changes mean that our garage is in the south corner of the block, our bedroom is in the east, and our alfresco and living are in the north.
Other changes we made were:
- Replace the window to the alfresco in the living with a slider
- Added barrier screens to both alfresco doors
- Upgrade all the appliances to Bosch
- Various tile upgrades (our package included carpet to bedrooms and tiles everywhere else)
- Moved the window in Bed 3 from rear to side
- Glass kitchen splashback
- Extended our fridge space
- Deleted wardrobe shelf/bar in master (so we can do a custom fitout after handover)
- Added extra power points everywhere. Like, so many. And extra data points too.
- EDIT: Forgot we removed the window and feature shelf in the butler's pantry too - I didn't think it was big enough to justify it.
I'm sure there were others, but can't recall now! We also had to meet a fire rating of 12.5 due to the bushland across the road from us, so we had some upgrades like sarking, aluminium flywire screens, etc. We turned the build into a house and land package so we could fix the site costs and take advantage of their "move in pack" which included the driveway and cut, turf to front, letterbox, and clothesline.
We've had a great experience with Plantation so far, other than a little kerfuffle over what screen doors, exactly, we'd added on the alfresco. Otherwise, very happy, and can't wait to move in!
Here is our "dirt" the day of the site scrape:
Timeline so far:
29/08/2014 - Signed land contract with Stockland
07/09/2014 - Signed quote with Plantation
16/10/2014 - Accepted tender with Plantation
13/11/2014 - Land is registered, but we're still in finance
19/12/2014 - Land settled - proud owners of a pile of dirt!
12/03/2015 - Commencement!
19/03/2015 - First slab date - rain delayed
08/04/2015 - Second slab date - rain delayed, again
14/04/2015 - Yay, slab finally down!
27/04/2015 - Frame and roof trusses complete
13/05/2015 - Wrap and rough-ins done
27/05/2015 - Plastering
13/06/2015 - Cabinetry
23/06/2015 - Brick off!
02/07/2015 - Lock up/Enclosed
10/07/2015 - Painting
23/07/2015 - Fixing
28/07/2015 - Plumbing and electrical fitoff
26/08/2015 - Handover!