Building With AllCastle Homes

I used EZE as well. Got a standard plan, I suspect it was because I am at the top of a hill? EZE cost me $1,100 and the hydraulics guy cost me $5K, but we did the bare minimum pipes and pits. Big concrete ones. Which I ended up ripping out when I did the landscaping.

So far 3 months in our houses and the warranty report sent for response. Couple of doors won’t close properly, a small part of the wet seals need re-sealing and one of the facade pillars weren’t renders quite as low as they should have been. But otherwise, it’s been great in the Grandworth Newbury MkII. Having a nice kitchen, my wife and I are both letting out the Masterchef in us, and cooking up some awesome meals. Also if anyone is interested: we wanted to buy a 10 seater dining table. Ended up choosing the 2.8 m x 1 m Magnus table from Icon By Design. In this model house, anything more than 1 m wide and you impact space between table and wall and table and bench. For reference the one in the Kellyville display home is 0.9m wide.

We upgraded the stacker doors. The top of the stacker door lines up with the top of the windows. So we did it purely for aesthetics. Likewise with internal doors. It does look good, but this is a subjective thing.

I loved the Newbury MKII design but we ended up going with Grandworth 40. I noticed the dining space was quite small in Newbury and they had a clear table and clear chairs in the display home at Homeworld. I note that anywhere they use clear furniture means that the space is a bit small. We have a solid timber table with 6 chairs and it looks too small in our space. Lol. You can't win !! At least you have a beautiful kitchen, etc., and I still would have been happy with the Newbury.

Hi all ,

We moved the kitchen area as per attached so I can have a bigger theatre room and no wastage in the dinning area you mentioned. (Wife hates it so much we would have gone with Clarendon or rawson even if it means they are desire )

Can’t wait for the actual plan in a few weeks time and finalise it .

You have to go for a design that suits your own needs. We have Grandworth Mark III, but I didn't like the idea of having a sink in the island bench. We also moved the pantry to the side. We took out some walls internally as well. Just one thing to note - make sure they leave enough space for your fridge. We told them that we wanted to buy a big double door fridge and to make sure enough room was left (because you also have to open the doors out). They widened the space to around 1010mm which is fine, but they only left 1820 for the height. By the time the floor was tiled it was then only 1800 height. Many of the fridges now are very high. Make sure they leave enough space for a tall fridge otherwise you will be limited in what you buy.

Thanks TD

Having that issue for years I have already requested the width to be 1.1 meter wide and 2 meter height ( pending plan to confirm )

We should be getting the 1.2 meters width island so having the since should be fine.

Stan

the other thing - everytime your plan comes back, make sure you check every single thing again with a fine tooth comb. I changed something in the plan (can't remember what it was now) but when I looked at the kitchen plan, the kitchen cupboards had changed even though I didn't make a change to them. The tops of them (the bulkhead) was staggered. Not sure why this was done. I had to go back to them and tell them they had changed it. What you end up signing off on is the plan they will go with. Also, I wish I had made the pantry shelves more narrower. I didn't realise they were 600mm deep. I find 600mm is too deep because you loose stuff behind, especially on the higher shelves. I would have preferred the have the shelves at only 400mm deep and have extra room to move around in. They are very good quality shelves though.

Thanks TD

will keep that in mind when I can . So much to remember

Hi!

We are about to sign with Allcastle as well.

I like what you have done with the Media room, we are looking at doing the same but wasn’t sure how it would look. Still playing around with the plan.

Are you any further along in your journey?

Hi Amy

Electricals will be finalised once I negotiate with them the rip off price they are charging for the data pt,

Finance just got approved so will be evicting the tenant by month end in hope to start when they are out

Also need to follow up with site demo and set a day first .

No turning back now..

It all take a while doesn’t it?!

I’d love to see your proper plans if you have them back yet. We are building the new Sovereign with quite a few changes.

Will share once I have more time to sit at the pc and figure out how to load them here.

I think AC HAS MORE active bloggers now to share their journey which is nice.

just remember to negotiate every thing prior tender then ask for some discount as there is no wiggle room at all once you accepted the tender.

Also note any internal and external and water tank variations will need to be paid up in the first progress payment which is quite sneakey.

Basically your first progress payment would be 10 % of your build plus $50k plus depends how much you upgrade at your color and electrical selection appointment.

We have just moved into our GWN37Mk2 and had a great experience with ACH. We had a great building supervisor that was as invested in a quality finish as we were. There were issues along the way but the important thing was that they were fixed. We had good support from head office except when we challenged the placement of a gas point. To move the point 50cm and prior to the gyprock going up, it would have cost over $1000. We stopped that. Kicked myself for not seeing it in the plans before we signed as it was clear as day.

Some things we did and if I had my time over:

1. Very carefully spend time looking at the plans and imagining every room and item in the house and living in the space in my head. Simple things like where the light switches are, are there power points for the vacuum halfway down the hall, where will the kettle and the toaster be used! Once you sign those constructions every change, I mean EVERY change, is a variation and attracts a variation fee as well as the charge for the change.
2. There will be variations for placement from the plan within certain limits - did you want that powerpoint 20cm closer to the corner?
3. The LED downlights are VERY bright. And the standard layouts give a lot of light. We broke down the lighting into sections so we can switch on as required. e.g. the lights near the TV end of the room are on a separate circuit to the rest of the room. Still when I approach the house at night, even with a couple of lights on upstairs, the light is beaming out.
4. I would advise getting blinds on every window through ACH, even if you are planning on getting other window coverings later. We are planning to have plantation shutters on the front windows but now have an 8+ week wait. Not great for privacy for the front bedroom. I ended up getting temporary paper blinds from iseekblinds.com.au.
5. I put data points in the study, bedrooms and living areas but not in the office store room where I wanted to put a media server. Just get the data points! I have ended up getting mesh wifi that covers the house completely. Have to rethink the media server placement.
6. We widened the laundry by 0.5m, added 0.5 metre to garage length and 0.5m to the spare room downstairs. That pushed the stairway forward which allowed us to add a basin to the separate WC upstairs and pushed out the back wall of the house by 1m. What I didn't appreciate fully was that meant the pitched roof over the alfresco and family room would be higher and forced the windows in the bedroom to be higher off the floor. In the end it doesn't matter as the extra space is very welcome.
7. We moved the upstairs linen press to beside the WC (we now had that 0.5m from the laundry) and made the original space into a Wet Bar for making tea and coffee upstairs. Added a space for a small fridge beside the cupboard.
8. The WI Pantry is a great size but we didn't realise that the first bulkhead wall is longer than the second. That meant the spare fridge we had couldn't go down to the end of the WIP as we planned. We ended up getting a thinner fridge. I think it was because the first go at the plans included the butler's pantry and the bulkhead wall needed to accomodate a cupboard against it. We deleted the BP but the wall didn't change.
9. We ended up upgrading practically everything - kitchen, flooring, DS ceiling height, tiling - and while it cost, the end results were great.
10. Other posters have said about the fittings. The only thing we found was that the standard basin tap doesn't work with the basin chosen (the standard round basin). The outlet of the tap is too close to the basin wall which means water just splashes straight over the edge. ACH homes are replacing all 4 affected taps as part of the warranty.
11. The number of electrical fittings provided with the base price is seriously unrealistic. Included in the base price was 4 oyster light fittings and the rest are batten fittings. Or 10 downlights! 10 only. Also the powerpoint allowance is basically one per room. We ended up with at least 3 double points per room.
12. I would advise you to be aware that the indications of going $100k over base price are low. By upgrading what we wanted together with drainage needs, drop edged slab, extra piering, etc, we were well over that. If you want to keep costs down, really minimise your variations. We spent 16k on electrical variations alone. Spend on the things that cannot be done after handover - anything needing slab access, ceiling runs between floors, etc.

All in all, we are happy with the house at this point. There are small issues that will be listed for Warranty. We'll keep you posted on what happens with the warranty fixes!

Cheers
Tim

Thanks for sharing tim.

AC IS SLOW but we went with them as their first floor plan is second to none.

No one offers 5 by 3 or 15 sq bed rooms so happy with our choice.

I am now tossing if I want to pay $300 per data pt now or get some one in later for the first floor at least .

My electrical thus far is around $18k

Will share details when I have more time to use my desktop

Wow - you have a lot of electrical happening there. We have been living in our house for a year now and still have a few odd repairs happening. A couple of things I was going to mention to anyone considering building, is the bathroom and windows. Apart from the front window, we reduced the height of 3 large windows that started about a foot from the floor and go almost to the ceiling. They look grand from the outside, but a pain to put furniture against inside, and also considering the heat factor. We were lucky to think of it and only left the front one facing the street the original size. The others we brought around a metre from the ground up. Also, the bathtub that comes with the house is very small. I didn't notice it until getting into it. I note you have a freestanding one, so that should be good. I'm disappointed with the window above our bath as I have to lean over the bath to get to it to open it up. The tap and handle for the bath are not located together either which makes it difficult to use. I also feel it's too low. We're lucky with have tall trees for privacy but this would be an issue for other people. I wish it only had a small window over the bath and another small window in the shower area would have been better. Excuse the mess and quality of the pic, but this is the best I could do.

Thanks for sharing Tara,

We didn’t pay attention to the windows but luckily we had to reduce the size due to CDC CODES so may be ok with that.

We weren’t going to upgrade the main bathroom for $3000 but being told by les it’s a must so in the end we thought it’s better to have a bigger bathroom than a 1.2 meter wide entry door for the same cost !!

Thanks Tara. Yes we did the bathroom upgrade for the layout but ended up having a built in bath instead of the free standing one. They replaced it with a large 1700 bath and the end result looks good.
One thing with windows in the bathroom that we didn't notice was that the sliding panel was on the right. This meant that, despite the glass being dappled, the open part of the window would have looked straight in to where people get out of the shower. We were able to get the panes swapped so that the sliding panel is in the corner and is much more private now.

I also like to share my experiences with ACH so far. It has been smooth.
Slab completed and frame windows delivered. Once they finish a milestone, photo and status will upload to portal so I can see the progress.
Houspect inspected the slab no major issues only the step down to garage/Afresco is 60mm instead of 75mm.
AC co-ordinator will inform what next to be done and I am now up to choosing tile and getting gas connect.

Timl's bathroom tile is nice and that must an upgrade colour.

Thanks Tara for the main bathroom photo, so it is what looks like as the display home only have the upgraded free standing bath. First time to see it.

What is your site cost for the drop edge beam L?

Seems like you have them all over the slab ?

Must not be cheap.