Building Custom Design with Fairmont Homes - Lewiston SA

Hi Everyone

I have been following posts on Homeone for the past 9 months and thought maybe its time I start my own.

My husband and I purchased a 2.5 acre block of land in Lewiston South Australia back in December 2014. We then spent time visiting display homes and talking to builders before deciding to build a custom designed home with Fairmont Homes.

We signed contracts in May 2015, have done all our selections and final interview. We received final council approval at the end of August. The footings on our new home were started this week with the slab scheduled to be poured on 14/10/15.

Our Block



House Plan



External Selections - PGH Cobblestone bricks, Monument gutters, Evening Haze fascia, windows black. Roof is tiled in a colour called Twilight (not pictured)

Hello! We are also building a custom design with Fairmont Homes. We are building in Modbury North.

Wow, they certainly acted quickly for you! We signed up at the end of March. our council application was lodged at the same time as you! We only had our final builders interview on 3 September and we will likely start towards the end of October as they wouldn't order the survey until we confirmed demolition had been finished, which was Friday.

Your house looks great, lots of room!

Hi Bobbin, at the risk of sounding like a stalker I must admit I have been following your thread as we have both been doing similar things at the same time!

I feel that things seem to go so slow so I’d hate to think how your feeling! Unfortunately they give expectations on when they do things which they just don't keep, from memory I think that their booklet says construction should start about 4 months from when the contract is signed (we actually signed end of April but their office didn’t sign until 12/5/15) so even I feel that we are already at least 1 month behind at this stage. Hopefully now that your demolition has finished things will move fast for you.

We’re happy with the design of the house, we have two small children so it’s probably a little too large at the moment but we wanted something that we could all grow into over the years as I have no intention of ever building again!!

More selections

Kitchen - the silk moose will be the back of the bench as a feature with the rest of the cabinetry in silk platinum micro. Splash back we were initially going to have glass but I changed my mind and went with a standard while subway tile and will look at changing the splashback later on.





Butlers Pantry - Cabinetry the same as the kitchen in platinum micro but in the matt finish. The bench is frosty white mirage laminate.



Bathroom - the cabinetry is burnt oak natural with Astral Smartstone bench. Floor tiles are 300x300 roman aniseed matt tiles and wall tiles are 300x400 roman aniseed gloss tiles.

Exciting times here as our slab was poured on Wednesday!





We had a great time Thursday night walking around the slab working out where everything is and our Miss 5 loved seeing where her bedroom will be.

After talking to Fairmont our septic should now be installed in the next week or two with the frame starting after this, so we should start to see deliveries being made on site soon.

The only disappointing side of things is that they have given a finish date of 29th June and then there is another month on top of this for the floors, we were initially hoping to be in around May.

Haha, no, we all do it!

Looks like we have some similar choices with tiles too. We also chose the standard subway tile. We are having it laid brick bond in the kitchen. And we have chosen the astral stone and have white cabinetry.

I am glad to see you are having good progress, although every time I look at your thread I get a bit annoyed with Fairmont as we haven't even had site start yet!

F

We are having the subway tiles laid brick bond also with white grout, have been second guessing myself thinking maybe I should have gone a grey grout to make them a feature but too late now!

Sorry to hear that progress on your build has not been what you expected, hopefully once the build starts it will move at a decent pace.

Found your post Lewiston looking good, we chose burnt oak for our bathroom cupboards and all white in the kitchen, love your plan very spacious, you won't regret the space later on when the two little ones are not so little!

We also chose white grout, and are also second guessing ourselves thinking we should have used grey! At the time we hadn't thought about it and just automatically chose white, but now I have been seeing subway with anything from light grey to dark grey but haven't seen it with white!

I think we would have gone a really light grey if we had thought about it beforehand.

I have seen the tiles with white grout in photo's and it does look good but I agree I think we would have gone with a light grey too just to make them pop a little especially as we are having them laid brick bond. During selections I did ask what grout people normally go with and at that time I was told some go with black which made me screw my nose up so I just went with white.

Hi Heatherkam. Yeah we love the space too, probably a little too big but as you said I don't think we will regret it when the kids have grown.

Well its been a busy week!

The builders started the frame last Thursday and started putting the roof trusses up yesterday. Its so exciting seeing it all start to be built now after looking at it on paper for the last 6 months.

So far we have been happy with the progress and quality, we did find a couple of issues on Thursday night particularly with one wall not being straight but found the next day that all issues plus some we hadn't noticed had been fixed so feeling good that they are picking up errors as they go along and rectifying them.

In the last week we have also finalised our electrical adding data points, tv ariel and the landline. More $$ but easier to do these things now rather than later.

I've put some photo's of the progress below, sorry they aren't very good.

The builders completed the frame and roof trusses last Thursday morning.

Gutters and fascia have been delivered and hopefully things will keep moving along this week but the roof tiles or windows have not yet arrived. A little worried that the gutters and fascia are just sitting there as we had our water meter knocked off a few weeks ago so the sooner they go up the better!

Looking great!

Are you building in a new estate or do you have a lot of land? It's funny seeing houses that are the first to go up with nothing around them.

Thanks Bobbin

In regards to your question the answer would be yes to both. We are building on 2.5 acres so a lot of land and the other blocks around us have the same. Basically an old farmer has subdivided his land. We bought in his second subdivision of 16 2.5 acre blocks which basically all have a 50 meter frontage and are about 200 meters in length.

We have way too much space but the kids are going to have a massive backyard to run wild in! Miss 5 is also looking forward to having a vegie patch and fruit trees along with some chickens and a sheep or two to help keep the grass down.

Even though it looks as if we have no one around us the two blocks directly across the road from us finished building in October, one next door neighbour should be finished building in January and the neighbour on the other side had their footings start this week so our end of the street should have finished building by the middle to end of next year.

The progress on the build this week has been ok with the gutters, fascia, windows and glass sliding doors having been installed. Railing around the roof has also been installed ready for the roof to go on so hopefully that will happen next week.

Spoke to the office last week and they have indicated that the bricks won't get done until the new year, really hoping that they're wrong and that bricking will at least start before Christmas! Hopefully the site supervisor will be in contact soon and he should be able to give us a better idea as to when things are scheduled.

I thought that the SS was appointed after the slab was laid and they then told you a completion date too?

It's looking good but it must be frustrating to know nothing will be done on it until after Christmas! Are they going to put the roof on beforehand?

It actually doesn't surprise me that the bricks will be delayed until next year - Fairmont are infamous for their dreaded 'waiting for bricklayers' stage!

Haven’t posted in a while as nothing much was happening until the week before Christmas. After we had finally accepted that nothing was going to happen with the build until the new year we were both surprised and very happy to find that the roof and bricks started the Monday before Christmas. The bricks were especially surprising as we were told in November that this was not scheduled until the new year.

Both trades were there again today so basically the roof is on and they have started doing the ridge capping and probably about 1/3 of the bricks have been laid. We’re really happy with how things are progressing and the work is looking good.

Actually seeing the roof on with the gutters and bricks it now puts my mind at ease that we made the right choices with our external selections.

Supreme Kitchens also rang in December and they were drawing up the kitchen ready for manufacture in the new year and I have dropped off our rangehood to them. They didn’t have an install date yet but I’m guessing the kitchen will probably be installed sometime in February.

The first fix of the plumbing has been completed and we spoke to the electrician last week to discuss extra work we wanted and they advised that the first fix of the electrical is scheduled for the 13th January.

So far we’re really happy with how well the work has been progressing and how good its looking. Given the progress so far we're hopeful that our finish date will be sooner than the end of June. I’ll post some photo’s later of the work completed so far.

So we visited the build again on Sunday as we wanted to measure a few things up and we were surprised to find that the brickies had been either New Year's Day or Saturday and completed more work! Considering we were told bricking would not start until the new year we're thrilled that probably about half the house is already bricked and I would guess that bricks would be complete within the next two weeks.

The roof is also looking complete but there must still be a few small things to do as the roofers still have their equipment there and there are still a few bits and pieces up on the roof.

I've posted some photo's of the work so far