We have finally decided on our builder and signed the contracts.
The story so far...
Initially we we looked at display homes and various builders. Some designs were great and others pretty average. Build quality varied as much as the construction materials used. So we naively thought we found a good builder that we could work with. So much so that I walked into the office of this builder with a cheque for the deposit. Now here is where it went South very quickly...
Problem 1 - We liked the staircase. The one in the display home and the one in the glossy brochures. The sales lady advised that this was part of the very low build price. Upon attending the sales office to pay a deposit we learn that the staircase was an optional extra and the price of this staircase, or if it could even be supplied, was unknown. From there it went downhill. It went downhill quicker than the freeway into Goulburn. They simply could not provide one single straight answer. All wishy washy. Nothing made sense. Sure the house was nice and the design was great but the reality was we had absolutely no idea what we were actually going to get for our hard earned...
So... I walked out with the cheque feeling somewhat disillusioned.
We then looked at a lot of designs and we couldnt find anything we liked as much as the design we walked away from. Mindful of the issues with copyright, we decided to come up with our own design to suit our block and see what it would cost to build.
We downloaded a fairly simple CAD program for house designs called Home Designer Suite. $100ish, ignored the tutorials and off we went. After a lot of mucking around we came up with this design.
One of the unique features to our block is that it is a battleaxe block with a park at the rear of the house. The DCP says the facade has to face the park so every design with a garage at the front or side became totally useless.
We had a few main criteria:
We have 5 kids so we wanted a 6 bedroom house and we preferred all rooms to be upstairs
We wanted all rooms other than the master bedroom to be the same size
We wanted a separate garage closer to the entrance to the block
We wanted open plan downstairs
We liked the idea of a large outdoor area
Full brick construction as the top and bottom floors mirror each other
We wanted the staircase we liked
So we came up with this design that we felt suited our needs / wants and fit the block.