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Hi everyone,
After a lot of lurking on other peoples building posts I decided to document my partner and I's build. This is our first time building, we have been renting together for the past 3 years so we are so excited to finally be having a home of our own and not paying off someone else's mortgage.
We are a long way to go yet to actual construction but you have to start somewhere. We signed our PPA with Easystart (Summit) on 4/05/17 after meeting with our New Homes Consultant twice previously and decided on the Athens (pretty much same as the Adina there Display Home) 3 x 2 with a theatre.
We made a few changes to the initial plan prior to signing PPA. We added double doors to the theatre, a door from the garage leading to the back of the house so we don't have to walk anything from the garage all the way through the house to outside if necessary. We have raised our garage height from 25c to 28c to allow for our large 4WD's, added 2 x outdoor double GPO's one for in the garage and one for alfresco. We have also add 4 x extra double GPO's to assign when we do prestart. We also took out a telephone point to add an extra TV point.
Hoping to have building contracts completed and signed within the next three weeks as if they are not completed and signed by June 30th we will loose the extra $5,000 on the First Home Owners Grant as the government have cut the boost back to $10,000. It's taking all my willpower not to bombard our consultant every other day to see where we are with this as the extra $5,000 is definitely a big help for us.
Looking forward to getting feedback from the wonderful users on here with any queries I have during our build and watching others building process along the way as well.
Will upload our actual plan we got with our PPA documents with our changes tomorrow, for now I only have the websites base plan
When we were looking at Summit (New Generation) they raved about their fast track process and how quickly they can get contracts and everything sorted so hopefully they manage to get it all together for you before the first home buyer grant is reduced.
Thanks SilentBoB, I actually just received an email from our consultant and our building contracts are ready to be signed. Woohoo finally one more step closer out of a million more steps to go, haha. Your build is looking great
Congrats following your build now
We're currently building with Easystart too. Good luck and looking forward to following your build!
Thanks tdk14! I must admit I have been following your build on Instagram ever since I saw some progress photos uploaded on the EasyStart website. It is looking great so far! Hopefully when we come to construction our build goes as smooth as yours
Oh awesome! Thank you. Do let us know if you make an ig account for your build 😊
Congratulations and good luck with your build. Following your progress now 😎
Thanks JP and Madora Dreamer, following yours now also
Well we were supposed to sit down with our New Homes Consultant yesterday afternoon to sign our building contracts however an hour before our appointment he rang to say the estimators overcharged by $2,000 and the contracts need to be amended again so have reschudled for Wednesday. Oh well, back to scrolling endlessly on the forum getting ideas. Just glad he picked up on it before we signed!
Just a quick question if anyone can help, at the moment we are just getting a standard light & shade in each room as we will do our own lights after handover, I'm really looking forward to hanging pendant lights over the island bench and in the bedroom. Is there any provisions we should include in prestart to make it easier to install afterhandover? Have no clue about the electrical side of things :/
We got plug base in our case as we didnt want them putting any lights in. in our case for kitchen area we had 2 of them, 1 for normal downlights and another one for the pendants over the benchtop.
Long time lurker, first time posting!
We are also building in Carissa Estate - Seville Grove so finally decided to create an account when I saw your thread
We are building with Commodore Homes but are still in admin stage. We've finalised our plan and started going through our prestart process already but just waiting for our unconditional finance approval before we book in our prestart appointment.
Looking forward to following your build!
Hi Natasha,
Fantastic to know there is someone else on here building in the same estate
May I ask what street you are building on?
Looking forward to following your build also once you've started a thread. Your slab will most definitely be down before ours so will be great to watch someone just slightly ahead of us.
I know! I was so excited when I saw your thread and it finally convinced me to make an account haha
We are building on Redheart Way
what street are you building on?
Fingers crossed our finance approval comes in soon! Was thinking of starting a thread once I've done my prestart selections..
In regards to your other post about doing your own lights after handover, we are also thinking the same.
What we've decided to do is keep the standard lights where we were wanting them (laundry, wc, bedrooms etc) and just getting them to add a junction box(?) instead of a light in the roof of the general area where we are wanting to put LED downlights after.
That way they're not cutting holes into your roof that you'd have to patch up later..
Glad my post convinced you to make an account
Oh my gosh, we are neighbours! Depending on what lot number you are but we are building on Redheart Way also!
Fingers crossed your finance approval comes in soon for you. Unfortunately we can't submit for finance until August as our savings aren't deemed genuine until then.
Thank you for the advice on the pendant lights. Very handy to know. We will most likely end up doing that. My partner works with someone who is also a qualified electrician so we will try to bribe him in to fitting them all for us
So handy having connections with people in the trades industry
Hi everyone, well last night we finally signed our building contracts. Woohoo! Below is our floor plan and elevation. Can't wait to finally see it all come to life when it hits construction. Prestart will be in roughly a month time, I am hoping, as the company's prestart consultants are currently booked out 3 weeks in advance. They also said slab goes down usually two months after prestart if there is no hiccups with the admin site or delays. Fingers crossed our slab goes down late September, early October. Will keep everyone updated with the prestart selections. Hoping to head to the tile supplier this weekend and tick tiles off the list
Trying to envision render colours is so difficult. We have picked our roof colour, Colorbond - Shale Gray, our downpipes are the same colour and our gutters and fascias are Colorbond - Basalt. Our garage roller door is Colorbond Monument. The partner wouldn't budge on a light garage door haha. Thinking of having the pier darker like the basalt and the rest matching the Shale Gray roof but unsure. Might have to look into one of those 3D programs online so I can play around with how it may look like.
Oh I love that corner window for the master and the double doors to the theatre! Great plan you got there
I wish we had a Colorbond for our roof sometimes! We've got roof tiles for ours.. we settled on a grey colour but I'm just hoping it doesn't look washed out.
We're also looking at shale grey for our render. Gonna go to Bunnings one of these days and get samples of everything..
I feel your pain with the render choices
Thank you! The corner window design is one of the reasons why we chose this plan. We saw it set out in one of there displays and I fell in love
I have so many colour card samples from Bunnings it's ridiculous! Make sure to grab the Dulux Interior & Exterior Design colour guide booklets from there also. They are a big help
I'm trying to go tonight to get some samples so will look around for those booklets too
thanks!
Hi! My partner and I are building with HGWA in Eglinton! Looking forward to following your build as it looks like we are at the same stages!
Hi m0llss, thanks! Exciting times isn't it
Do you have a build thread I can follow too?