Browse Forums Building A New House Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 21Apr 08, 2016 7:23 pm Hey Marshall we are almost at lock up. About 3/4 of the house has been bricked and the entire inside has been insulated and gyprocked already. When we went down this afternoon there was a guy flushing the gyprock (as we are having reveals) and it is starting to look like a house now not just a construction site! The builder has also put temporary external doors on the home. How are you going? Plans approved and lodged yet? Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 22Apr 08, 2016 7:53 pm Sadly not, we are only just putting our mortgage application through now, we wanted to be debt free before we tie ourselves down with a mortgage. Thankfully we're finally there so fingers crossed, it should be plain sailing Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 23Apr 08, 2016 8:00 pm Hey JJ I would LOVE a cactus garden. I'm jelly haha A neighbour up the road where we lived 25 years has one. It's amazing. Has couple of Palm trees and a metal wagon wheel feature central. It's fantastic. I wish I could do that! Enjoying your tips and ideas Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 24Apr 09, 2016 8:34 pm Hi Tomcat, Don't be jelly, just do it. Hahahahaaaa The cactus are eaaasy.... go for it...especially in Adelaide, all you gotta remember is drainage, drainage, drainage. I've just been planning out the beds today, as it happens. I'm going to make hypertufa rocks to edge the beds and see if I can get them 15-20 cm high... then amend the soil with scoria and coconut coir, a little peat to combat the alkalinity in Seaford Meadows - and voila! Cactus garden. I'll put scoria on the top, too. They like some very dilute Charlie Carp fert in the growing season (1/8th the recommended rate). I'll chuck a couple of Yucca around as well, and the occasional acacia 'limelight' for softness. I've been busy rescuing cacti and succ's from the B-word people. (It's like Macbeth for theatre people... we don't say the 'B' word cus it's the cactus version of hell - shade and daily water!) The poor buggers are always almost drowned. I repot them immediately and don't water for at least a week, if not longer. There is a great place in QLD that will mail you bare-rooted succulents and cacti - cactiandsucculentsrus.com They have lots of rarer types for great prices. Honestly, though, the big box hardware and garden centres are getting better at having the 'collector' items. The 'B' warehouse people at Kilburn have had some excellent varieties. And once you have one succulent, you can get a gazillion cuttings or pups from it. Most cacti usually pup well, and agaves are tough as old boots. I'm slowly increasing my stock in pots so I can have 'instant' garden. Can't wait, although my hubby is sick of pots all over our courtyard backyard. Lucky I like plants, I'm up to my armpits in 'em. Had to laugh; as I was pottering around this arvo, next door's grand-daughter was heard - "LOOK Nanna, there's CACTUS!" And I saw this little face peering intently over the fence. I waved, standing in my daggiest clothes, thinking 'Great, now I'm the crazy cactus lady!" Believe it or not, I like hollyhocks, sweetpea, tulips and delphiniums etc... but this climate... whaddaya do? I was thinking of a ship's wheel feature, as we are on Naval road...I can imagine your neighbours garden looking beautifully quirky. I wonder where they got the wagon wheel? Is your garden unsuitable for cacti? I've seen plenty of mixed plantings around. Try one or two. New Building Seaford Meadows SA 25Apr 09, 2016 8:52 pm We've moved from Somerton Park which has very sandy soil -- great for cacti! We're now at Golden Grove which has boggy clay, so no good at all. I'd been growing and striking lots of yuckas in pots and agaves and palm trees for a couple of years ready to take with me. I haven't planted yet as we still need to do a few other things and add some gypsum and loam. I don't think cacti will ever work here ... Soil is too boggy. Though I may try a few. I'm going to try some blue chalk sticks and want to get some flapjacks (kalanchoe?) too -- I love them! You should definitely get a ships steering wheel! Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 26Apr 10, 2016 7:41 am JayaJaya Hi Tomcat, Don't be jelly, just do it. Hahahahaaaa The cactus are eaaasy.... go for it...especially in Adelaide, all you gotta remember is drainage, drainage, drainage. I've just been planning out the beds today, as it happens. I'm going to make hypertufa rocks to edge the beds and see if I can get them 15-20 cm high... then amend the soil with scoria and coconut coir, a little peat to combat the alkalinity in Seaford Meadows - and voila! Cactus garden. I'll put scoria on the top, too. They like some very dilute Charlie Carp fert in the growing season (1/8th the recommended rate). I'll chuck a couple of Yucca around as well, and the occasional acacia 'limelight' for softness. I've been busy rescuing cacti and succ's from the B-word people. (It's like Macbeth for theatre people... we don't say the 'B' word cus it's the cactus version of hell - shade and daily water!) The poor buggers are always almost drowned. I repot them immediately and don't water for at least a week, if not longer. There is a great place in QLD that will mail you bare-rooted succulents and cacti - cactiandsucculentsrus.com They have lots of rarer types for great prices. Honestly, though, the big box hardware and garden centres are getting better at having the 'collector' items. The 'B' warehouse people at Kilburn have had some excellent varieties. And once you have one succulent, you can get a gazillion cuttings or pups from it. Most cacti usually pup well, and agaves are tough as old boots. I'm slowly increasing my stock in pots so I can have 'instant' garden. Can't wait, although my hubby is sick of pots all over our courtyard backyard. Lucky I like plants, I'm up to my armpits in 'em. Had to laugh; as I was pottering around this arvo, next door's grand-daughter was heard - "LOOK Nanna, there's CACTUS!" And I saw this little face peering intently over the fence. I waved, standing in my daggiest clothes, thinking 'Great, now I'm the crazy cactus lady!" Believe it or not, I like hollyhocks, sweetpea, tulips and delphiniums etc... but this climate... whaddaya do? I was thinking of a ship's wheel feature, as we are on Naval road...I can imagine your neighbours garden looking beautifully quirky. I wonder where they got the wagon wheel? Is your garden unsuitable for cacti? I've seen plenty of mixed plantings around. Try one or two. I love the, Ships wheel idea although I have no idea where you could get one. I'm looking forward to seeing your garden when it's done, ever since I was a kid I've had a bit of a, 'thing' for cactus after buying a couple at a fair and they developed these beautiful little flowers. Unfortunately, I know nothing about plants so our garden will have to be as simple as possible. I'm pretty sure your land is the one we had our eye on a wee while ago but it was already on hold. Lucky score for you! It's a great size Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 27Apr 10, 2016 8:53 pm Haha talk of flowering cactus reminded me of this ... My husband txt me this pic early December with msg "the cactus is flowering". Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ It's a pic of him at our country cottage. I thought "it looks like he's talking to it!" I asked him what he was doing and he replied "talking to it" he's hillarious! Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 28Apr 11, 2016 9:52 am Hi Tomcat, Luuurve that picture.... that's what I do, talk to 'em. Coming from Sydney, that pic is very SA to me... the dry and the stobie pole. We'd never seen stobies before coming here. I gotta say I love prickly pear fruit, but I think we aren't supposed to have it, it's a noxious weed or something, although I see lots around. You can absolutely have cactus on boggy clay. You gotta raise your beds 30-40cm and put down 5cm medium drainage gravel into that. Then you can top with 30% scoria, 50% sandy loam, like for grass (but no added fertilizer - 80% sand 20%heavy loam), and 20% coconut coir. Cactus have pretty shallow roots. Top dress the lot with scoria. I'm raising my beds with hypertufa rock edging. You can make miles for peanuts. Feed them twice in summer with 1/8 strength charlie carp. Water once every 2-3 weeks in summer, not at all in autumn, winter or spring (unless spring is VERY dry). I had one in the front yard that I never watered. Now potted up and awaiting the new garden. Even if you have only one small bed - life is short, have what you want. Those less fortunate than ourselves will be the first to tell you to grab every opportunity to enjoy life - you never know what's coming - grab the 'happy' while it's going. I have a half dead, out of it's pot flapjacks, that I don't really like... I like the other kalanchoes... if I pot it and it comes good, do you want it? A house warming present. I could meet you in town somewhere - I work in Adelaide 2 days a week, but am often there on other days. PM me if you want it. I'll go pot it up, now. Hi Marshall 5858, I just bought a concrete mould for a ship's wheel online, apparently it's about 47cm diameter so I can make a few and scatter them round... best part of $100 - sheesh! But I figure I'll get the use out of it. We are lot 1269... I only wanted cactus because we don't want to prune and feed and be slaves to our garden in our decrepitude. Or now, either! Cacti and succulents are the best if you know nada about plants. Set and forget. Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 29Apr 24, 2016 7:21 pm Well, we received our working drawings on Wed 20th Apr... and lots of little things were wrong... things we were told had been done/changed/fixed, weren't. Surprise. Not. It wasn't anything dreadful though, no walls in the wrong places, although the wall separating the bedroom from the robe space is still too long - I sent an email in the planning stage, asking for a specific size and was assured it had been changed etc etc. Nup. There were lots of minor issues with windows and doors, however the big thing is that a random large bulkhead seems to have made it's way to an equally random area in the kitchen/dining space. Porquoi? We are hoping that this was just a mistake and not an engineering requirement... being steel frame, the outer walls should take all the load. We were given the impression that there was insulation throughout the whole ceiling; the plans say garage and living areas only - what the heck do they think living areas means? I live in all of it... hahahahha We are having Santorini Random brick on the front with off white mortar, a greyish/whitish/yellowish bookleaf stone on the rectangular bay window, and Bianca brick on the rest of the house. We've decided on a Colorbond Surfmist roof and Shale grey gutters and fascia. Surfmist garage doors x 2. All light colours. The idea is that the bay window will 'pull' those colours down from the roof and across from the garage and tie it all in together. Here's hoping = nervous. Then again, we don't stand around admiring our bricks and things, so I guess we'll be happy as long as we don't positively hate it! I was only afraid of hubby coming home from a hard day and not feeling 'glad to be back' if he hated it. But he's trusting me on this. The paint list they have is EXTREMELY limited, and there was only one colour remotely close to what I wanted - it threw way too much brown in the shadows. The rest were mostly variations of 'rental beige' which made my eyes start bleeding. The whites were all too pink, too yellow, too green, too blue, too something bl©©dy else, and I would start beating my head on the walls if I had to live in it. So now we have to ask how much extra to have the colour we want - which is Dulux Brume quarter strength. We'll see what they say. The good part of having the working drawings is that we decided on the concreting and garden beds, so I can get an estimate now. Joy, oh joy! That can join the pile of other 'guesstimates' I have for the after build works. My god I'm so thrilled I could just go into a coma. Wake me when it's over. I'll be glad to have it all, but choosing all the stuff doesn't float my boat. I've been dragging a friend around 'cause she luuurrrrves all that. There are so many things I would rather be doing... cutting my toenails springs to mind. "I can't do selections today, dear, I'm washing my hair." And all the stuff the sales people want to show me... as seen on the block, or some magazine... I want to start screaming - "I do NOT want to live in a metrosexual man's bachelor pad! Or a Kmart catalogue! Or a 'Vogue' magazine bordello! Or an expensive Swiss plastic surgeon's office! Or a soulless hotel! Arrrgh! So there!" Of course one doesn't let on, but if one more person tries to make me buy something similar to anything that's been on these reno/build shows and the like, there will be ructions. My hubby is great, he sees the steam curling out of my ears and guides me gently away. I think I'd better have some rubber walls... Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 30Apr 24, 2016 7:43 pm Uh-oh, we're still waiting for ours, they're taking forever!!! Thanks for the giggle, I need it after an afternoon of Disney movies. Your place sounds like it's going to look lovely and will probably stand out from most of the designs I've seen on the estate. I think it's great that you know exactly what you want/like and won't settle for less. I'm so indecisive, I know what I like but then I see something (usually on here) and start wondering if I should change a few things.. I suppose the answer would be to stop reading the threads but I love keeping up with the progress of a select few that I've been following, I almost feel like I know some people in real life haha. Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 31Apr 24, 2016 8:24 pm Hi Marshall! I love following the threads, too. I wavered with some things that I'd seen, but then just imagined myself looking at it/cleaning it/working around it every day and then some things were obvious 'no's. I don't want anything non-practical to live with. And then... I really like a lot of things I see - in someone else's house! I sorta have to settle for less, because hubby is waaaayy more conservative than I, but we usually strike a happy balance. I always say he can't came back to haunt me 'cause he'd never recognize the place... I would have mannequin heads on the side tables with spotlights shoved into the eye sockets, for mood lighting but it would have given him nightmares. He's already looking askance at the Alien (a la Ripley) cookie jar I have to keep dishwasher tabs in. I've bought one for my Mum, as well, for Mother's day. She loves it! A Disney marathon was it? So you know about the eyes bleeding thing? On a lighter note, my cacti and succulent collection is almost complete - just have to take cuttings from it all now. That seems to be going well. I've been playing with making hypertufa pots and garden art - that stops me going completely insane. And the ship's wheel concrete mould arrived! Yay!l So what's been going on with you? Apart from watching terrorvision...oops, I mean Disney? And waiting? New Building Seaford Meadows SA 32Apr 24, 2016 9:01 pm Yeah, I know what you mean about the impractical choices. We would absolutely love porcelain tiles but with two young kids and a large, dirty Golden Retriever, there is no way on earth that we could keep the grout clean and if it got grubby, it would be me needing the rubber walls!! Haha love the idea of the Alien cookie jar, my hubby would hide it if I bought something like that, he has very conservative & traditional taste (can be boring ) he lets me have some freedom though otherwise we would need our own homes! My hubby came back from Vegas with a disgusting virus, he kindly passed it on to me and the two kids so we have been struggling our way through the week it's been pretty rough, hence the kids keeping still long enough to watch a movie or two! I hope we're all fighting fit by Friday as that's when we have our first selections appointment. I'm really excited but Kind of over it all at once. It's probably the thought of hubby vetoing all my wonderful ideas hahaha. We too have been thinking as far off as the garden too. We won't have a huge space but we really wanted a lemon and Avocado tree so have purchased those and a lime tree, I'm not sure why, I'm thinking it must be for hubby's Coronas.. Is your land still being held up? Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 33Apr 24, 2016 10:05 pm As far as I know, we're still on hold until end of June/beginning of August... which is kinda cool, as I can get my selections and crap together in the meantime. Then it will be waiting for council approval. Sorry to hear about your bug... even when it's over, one stays dog tired for soooo long after. Funny that you should say your hubby went to Vegas - mine has to go there for work sometime in September. If they haven't started our build I'll go, too. If they have - I won't leave them on their own! The other funny thing is our hubbys sound like twins - I always tell him he's boring and that we need separate houses! I can only push him so far, but it's sorta good, 'cus he curbs my worst excesses (read 'b@t $hit craziness' for 'excesses'). I have a lemon and lime tree here... best thing we ever did. Key lime pies, lemon butter, lemon pies, Moroccan style salt preserved lemons and limes, general cooking, slices in iced tea in summer, Christmas vodka punch... the list goes on. When I have heaps, I zest them and freeze the zest in teaspoon amounts. I then juice them and freeze the juice in cubes. That takes care of cakes and soups and drinks and all sorts. I manage to keep my mother, my neighbours and my colleagues supplied, as well. These are trees that I do not feed, water or spray - if I did, I could probably supply SA in it's entirety! We will have them again. I have a fig, but usually use the unripe figs for putting up jars of greek spoon sweets to pass around. I like figs, but after one or three, I'm done. I get more enjoyment out of putting up the jars than eating spoon sweets, as well. I'll be putting in a pomegranate in the new place. Perhaps I'll try a dragonfruit as well, to keep up the cactus theme. We are fast heading into middle age, and this will be the last house, so I want everything as practical as possible. Everything has been planned for ease of use and maintenance in our decrepitude. You should have seen me on the weekend planning shelf heights and distances in the store rooms and pantry! No shelf so high I can't reach it from a small step stool. No step ladders when I'm 95! I'm only 5'2" so it means a lot to me to shrink as I age - I already feel like a microbe. None of it has really been about having what we like - it was more about not having what we hated from other places we've lived in I hope you're all feeling better, and don't have too much angst at the selections. Good luck! Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 34Apr 25, 2016 6:45 am ??? How did I miss your reply and thread? Wow, you have green thumbs! Thank you - I'll consider a cactus spot ☺️ Would love the flapjack - that's incredibly kind of you - but too hard. We're on opposite sides of the planet and I don't orbit town too often. Can't wait to see your place. Sounds fantastic. I love quirk ? it never dates and always makes me feel happy ? Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 35Apr 25, 2016 5:27 pm Thanks Tomcat... ha! Try telling my husband that quirky never dates! Sheesh! Is it possible for any of you kind and lovely people to guide me thru posting pics? It seems I have to have the pics up on the interwebs somewhere to be able to post them? Is that right? I don't use any social media, so is there a way around this? What is this tapatalk thing? Will that let me post pics from my phone? (That's if I recall the password to use the app store ) Even my mobile isn't connected to the net unless we're at home. I'm a technophile-Luddite, so I guess holding two opposing opinions at the same time makes me either insane, or an artist.... those who know me would probably suggest the former... Hubby, Mum, and I geeked out today and visited Glacier rock (Selwyn Rock), down on Inman Valley road. It's completely amazing, you can really see the grind marks where the ice sheet ground across it. There are big digs in it where you can see other stones and detritus were ground across the rock face. And you can see the granite type boulders that were dragged down - you can see they don't belong - sticking out like a sore thumb! The whole thing is so obvious in real life. Having only seen it on the telly before, I didn't realize how much it really shows up. I could almost feel the weight of the glacier... eerie. Took some brilliant photos. Hope you get over your bug Marshall, and hope everyone has a great week! Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 36Apr 25, 2016 6:14 pm ok trying to use tapatalk on my Surface.... ggggrrr... kept crashing will try uploading a pic....grrrrr hate new stuff!! Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 37Apr 25, 2016 6:20 pm it says this forum does not exist when I try to attach! ...grrrr... Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 38Apr 25, 2016 6:22 pm That sounds like an interesting day out, not been there but I'm sure hubby would enjoy it. I use tapatalk on my iPhone, it's pretty simple but God help me if it logs me out as I have no idea what the password is! Bug is better thanks, it's just this evil cough and temp that is proving difficult to shift Re: New Building Seaford Meadows SA 40Apr 25, 2016 6:29 pm this is really bad... first it says pic is too big, then it says forum doesn't exist - Aaarrrggghhhhh!!! pointless when the user is faulty! User error!
I have a mild autism, and I really struggle when there are no clear and concise instructions. I can't figure it out! waaaahhh! For reference, this is the Austlii reference. My take on this is, that they would be breaking the law denying access to a homeowner in Victoria, or their agent from having… 1 9098 Is it just a report written to give to the bank initially and it is based on what and how your payments are made up for, or is it a full service where they go out and… 2 5604 Hi Suku18 In NSW the statutory required insurances are: 1. HBCF ( Home Building Compensation Fund) - This is if the builder dies or goes broke. But this only covers 20%… 1 2713 |