Building with Hall & Hart Homes

Haha exquisite choice Mailbu!

We hoped the window frames would match the mortar, render and future shutters colour, to break up the rich brown of the bricks. Then have the Oak stained wood front door and matching garage door adding the interest. We'll just have to wait!

Brick layers are almost done! Was great to have them back onsite after only a short Christmas break. Next is eaves and downpipes, then the scaffolding can come down so they can complete the lower roof.

So not long before they'll be inside and out of the weather, which considering the heat/rain recently, should be an improvement for everyone involved

Thank you for your thread and posts about your build. Glad to see to see it is going well and the house is really taking shape. We are in the very early stages of starting the process of KDR and your posts have helped us in choosing a builder. I'm currently living in Singapore and will be largely trying to manage the build from afar with the aim of moving back to Australia when the house is finished. Please keep sharing any tips and photos of you builds as I am very much appreciating them. Cheers

Hi kjane!

Thank you for your encouragement, it's great to hear from people on a similar journey. It's enjoyable to share some details about our build, as I know how much it helped us reading about other builds, before we started the whole process ourselves.

Wow managing the build from overseas and then arriving to see it complete will be an amazing experience. The guys have been really flexible for us, so I'm sure they will help you out as best they can. They genuinely care about giving you a great building experience, it's tough to fault their efforts.

If you need a recommendation for a demolition company, we'd highly recommend Macarthur Excavations. Shaun was amazing to us, honest, always available and very helpful throughout.

Just thought I'd share a pic of the house we used to base our external colours on:

Great choices!

WOW....Coming along nicely Seren1ty... Did you say you were building the Elyse?

Thanks kjane!

Yep Malibu, it's an Elyse. It fitted our needs and our block really well.

We are also planning to build a modified Elyse. Did you have H&H arrange demolition for you or arrange yourselves? We will be building in North Ryde and they have put 25K in for demolition of our existing 3 bedroom house. Is that in the ballpark of what your knock down came to?

Hey kjane,

We organised our own demolition. We got about 4 quotes. The company we ended up using, Macarthur Excavations, was recommended by H&H, but the reason we chose them was they simply turned out to be the best to deal with. The quote was higher than yours, but was for a 4 bedroom, and also included the removal of a decent amount of asbestos, and a bunch of trees. So yes it's in that ballpark, especially considering demo recycling costs are continuing to shoot up as there is just too much material for the tips now.

Thanks a bunch for your super speedy reply. Hope you have a great week ahead.

If anyone wants to post their H&H Build Timeline in this General thread, and maintain it within a single post, then go ahead and add it as a new post, and I'll update the Index in the first post on page 1 to list which page your Build Timeline is on, so others can find it.

Hope you're all progressing well!

We have our tender presentation next week and if we go ahead after that I will be sure to add our build to your thread. Looks like your house is progressing well from the timeline - is it all keeping roughly on schedule? Any tips for our presentation next week?

We're very happy with the progress. Our SS Michael has everything booked well in advance and keeps on top of the trades really well.

That's exciting about the tender! Hopefully your sales consultant has helped you figure out mostly what you're after. We had John, and he was a great help for us.

Make sure to read through a bunch of the 'Things you forget' thread before hand, and ask lots of questions. They were very open with us, and we had lots to ask!

Also make sure to put aside funds for the Electrical and Kitchen appointments, as they are where we spent the most. The inclusions are good, but there is always a wish list :p

Thanks for the tips, I'm hours into reading the thread you suggested and have added a bunch of items

We have just signed the Tender Acceptance. Woohoo! How are your builds coming along?

Congrats kjane! So glad it worked out for you

We're going well. Our lower level roofs are being finished today. Then electrical and air conditioning rough-ins are happening later this week, with insulation and internals starting next week.

Remember to keep us in the loop!

This is a very good post.

We are building with Hall and Hart with a slight modified design Elyse and we are currently in the contracting stage.

Can i ask did u request to change anything in the contract or do u have any recommendations as to what need to be look out for in the contract?

Hey rdcool, great to hear about another Elyse on the way! It's such a well balanced plan to start with, so it was easy to make it our own.

As long as your progress payment schedule is given the all clear from your bank, then it was all pretty reasonable. Most of it is standard HIA anyway, so not much to worry about.

We've found there is still some flexibility within reason even after contract. They just seem interested in giving us a great result basically.

I'd agree, we are not at the contract part yet but had LOTS of questions and variations we wanted to make in the tender and nothing was too much trouble for Sean our consultant. He had lots of practical suggestions too and pointed out when modifications would cost a lot and suggested alternatives. Where are you building rdcool and which façade have you gone with?