Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 41Jan 25, 2010 10:58 am Hi all We are about to sign up with Hickies to build in Coast Estate at Seaford Rise. Building the Preston with lots of changes! Great to read your posts about the colour selections etc and to get ideas. This is our first time building so a little scary!! Does anyone know much about their render? Apparently the colour is not mixed in and only painted on after which makes us a little worried and thinking maybe we should just go with plain bricks and get it done ourselves after?!!... Oh by the way - I LOVE the inverness - my dream home but unfortunately doesnt fit on the block (well it does but we would have no backyard left Thanks for reading - look forward to completing the journey with you all! Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 44Jan 25, 2010 12:25 pm Hi all i am really being nice and its making me sick and i would really like to be able to just tell it like it is ,but because of reasons beyond my control i cant as yet and maybe never will,if all the problems are all fixed. Ithink i may become a Independant Building Inspector in my next life and come back and personally inspect every single home that they have ever built for free.but please feel free to contact me off air so to speak and i can let you know a few of the do,s and dont,s when dealing with ? you know who!!!!! Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 45Jan 25, 2010 12:51 pm Hi all again ,on the render paint issue the render is painted we had our garage piers done and rendered quoins on all cnrs and entrance and these where all painted.This was done very professionally by some very good tradesmen and then painted by some very good painters ,out of all the tradesmen we,ve had these along with the new tiler (long story) are ex tradies and take a lot of pride in their work if all were the same we would have had a beautifull house by now.(another long story ) Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 49Jan 27, 2010 11:31 am Im s,oooo ha,pppppy we,ve had a big win today ,had Independant Building Inspector come over this morning and after inspecting wet areas of which we have had so much trouble with ie (soft grout in wall tiles ,lack of waterprofing,no fall to drains etc etc )Then after finding out all wet areas where to be part of a mandatory inspection required by council ,which was not done but is now in the process of being sorted out ,phew what a drama .Well anyway I.B.Insp tells us that all the tiling has not been done to code and will all have to be pulled up of all floors and pulled of off all walls .What a relief ,the tilers we had previously were so bad.and apparently have been sacked.We poured 100 litres of water on the floor of our ensuite after the tiles where laid and 80 litres ran out onto the bedroom floor,and the other 20 laid in a pool on the ensuite floor ,not one mill went down the drain.THANK YOU MR K Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 51Jan 30, 2010 7:49 pm Hey Bobaloochie, We building the Inverness at Lewiston, have made a few changes added a study between B/R 4 and rumpus room added triple garage taken bath out of ensuite, moved toilet, added double shower they are the major things, its a fantastic design, just perfect for a family. We are waiting for our soil report to come back from engineers, then we can finally do our colour selections. Has anyone seen the Inverness for display at Freeling. I love the colours in that house, its pretty much what i have decided on!! Issy, I hope that its not too long before all your problems get fixed and you can move in. For some reason its not letting me upload house plan, i keep getting "Sorry, the board attachment quota has been reached" How do i get around this?? Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 52Jan 30, 2010 8:36 pm We are building a Statesman design, but same tradies as Hickinbotham, our build has been fine apart from a few small issues. 1. We have a grey brick, that occasionally has a brown end, they put some of these brown ends around the front windows. I complained and all the brown ends where removed. 2. We suddenly realised that we had ordered kitchen benches at 1005mm high, they charged us $600 to have them made at 955mm. The thing that really pisses me off about this is that they hadn't even started making the kitchen benches. I rang the kitchen manufacturer and they said they would only charge $90 to make a change at that late stage. So Hickinbotham charged us $510 for the pleasure of making a phone call to the kitchen company!!! 3. We had a change in SS and our new SS realised that our old SS had not ordered our Garage door!! So although the house is almost finished we will have to wait 6 weeks for the garage door to come in. We have had an independent inspector in at slab stage and frame stage. He found almost nothing wrong with the slab, and that they had missed a few support beams for the frame. The SS told me that we had gotten the inspector in to 'early' and they the framers hadn't finished yet which is why a lot of the bracing was missing, I pointed out that it didn't cover some of the support beams however. I am getting the feeling that it depends alot on who your SS is. Your SS is the one who makes the decisions about which tradies to use, so if you have a good SS who has fostered good relationships with good tradies I think you will get a good build. Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 53Jan 30, 2010 8:57 pm Hi I and B, I pm'd you so check your messages when you have a chance. On the SS topic I actually asked him if he would be happy in letting someone build him a house just like mine and be perfectly happy with it. Needless to say I didn't get an answer. Hickies shouldn't have so little SSs to supervise masses of houses. I think mine has well over 200 houses to oversee. Way too many for a person to supervise properly. I was told on the grapevine that Hickies wanted to increase their builds from 1,500 to 1,800 per year (without increasing their SS numbers either). Go figure...... Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 55Jan 31, 2010 8:48 pm Hi Bec, I went out to freeling today. The Inverness is a fantastic design and yes, I liked the colour scheme too. Have they given you your 'ok to start date' yet? When I got mine in the mail they gave me a date for 4 weeks after the date of the letter so I was quite surprised when, 4 days later, I woke up to an excavator out the front. He'd just finished the scraping the site and the first tandem truck bringing the fill in was bogged. Man, I am a heavy sleeper! Its such an exciting, nerve racking, frustrating, emotional rollercoaster of a ride and I can understand how people get addicted to building!! Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 56Jan 31, 2010 9:39 pm My house has just finished framing. The ** buggers must know when I go back to work (qld). So I've organized a inspector. Yer they sting you for everything. The mistake I made was agreeing to a 20k increase to the footings. Without getting a inspector in to check before the slab went to, as to make sure they have included all the extra bits and pieces. How ever I have photos, so do you guys think I should take them in to get checked out. Not only that they charged me 5k extra for delays. (I signed up in march, slab poured xmas) but 90% of delays was due to their producers and processors. I talked 50% of that 5k. and agreed as I was on a time frame. I'm about to hit them up and ask them to leave the skirting boards semi attached. Lets see if the charge me a change fee. Considering they stuffed up the other day and asked me to remove a item, which I did... I should have charged them a stuff around fee. If there is a next time around, I wont be a push over. Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 57Feb 01, 2010 6:00 am IanandBec http://i676.photobucket.com/albums/vv126/IanandBec_2009/HousePlan.jpg Hey Everyone, Have finally been able to upload house plan. Enjoy Bec that is a very nice design... a good spot up there at Lewiston... Kodiak Data Cabling onFaceBook Consult*, Design and Installation Data, TV, Home Theatre/ AV Cabling, Multi Room Audio, IP CCTV and Door Intercoms Ask for a Quote. *DIY DATA Cabling Is Ilegal Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 58Feb 01, 2010 6:25 am Jarqus How ever I have photos, so do you guys think I should take them in to get checked out. DEFINITELY!!!!!!! (if you check out 'Issys Hamilton Alfresco' you will see why I say this!) Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 59Feb 17, 2010 4:58 pm Hi all Thanks for your responses re render. We have decided to go with rendering and rendered quoins although no idea what colour render yet! We dont want too cream or grey. We have signed up and received our colour selections book! YAY! Went down there to have a look and of course have come back really confused! I havent seen the Inverness on display but perhaps I should if the colours are good cause i need more ideas. The Chandler at Aldinga has nice colours too but will go check out Inverness also. I will upload our plans soon so you can all have a squizz and yes i can be really slack at checking this but will honestly try to keep you all up to date on my progress as i have loved reading everybody's journeys. Hopefully mine will be relatively hassle free! HE HE Re: Hickinbotham Homes in SA 60Feb 26, 2010 12:17 pm issy jo Hi all i am really being nice and its making me sick and i would really like to be able to just tell it like it is ,but because of reasons beyond my control i cant as yet and maybe never will,if all the problems are all fixed. Ithink i may become a Independant Building Inspector in my next life and come back and personally inspect every single home that they have ever built for free.but please feel free to contact me off air so to speak and i can let you know a few of the do,s and dont,s when dealing with ? you know who!!!!! issy jo Hi all i am really being nice and its making me sick and i would really like to be able to just tell it like it is ,but because of reasons beyond my control i cant as yet and maybe never will,if all the problems are all fixed. Ithink i may become a Independant Building Inspector in my next life and come back and personally inspect every single home that they have ever built for free.but please feel free to contact me off air so to speak and i can let you know a few of the do,s and dont,s when dealing with ? you know who!!!!! Hi everyone, We just do not know where to go from here with hickinbotham homes. We signed our contract in September 2009. Nothing happened until we started panicking because we have not heard from them during October and mid November we called them to see how the plan will be running with the home stages. They said developer delayed they cannot do anything about it. This is our first home and we are allegeable to receive first home owner grant. However the slab has to be poured till end of March. They have done nothing. We had to push for all even the colour selection which we just received for 4 of March 2010. This is ludicrous.We have no idea how to go about this. Can we take legal action? Especially because they have written a statement for SaRevenue how developer has caused all these delays and Westwood has asked them to retract that statement because it is entirely untrue. Now we could sue them for misleading info. This is horrible is there anything we can do to speed up this process? Thanks for you input! Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74757 I would never build with Fowler homes. I built with them in 2021 and till date maintenance issues are pending. All their existing trades and businesses don't work with… 14 105646 Hi there! Putting the feelers out there for those who have (or almost) built with Arli homes! Interested in your experiences who've built from their stock home designs… 0 23533 |