We bought our block at Auction in February 2017 - It is not in a new estate, it is one of about 5 vacant lots in the whole town. It is 300m from the beach and about 800m to the main street.
The block is 810m2 and the runs pretty much east to west, the street front is on the east and there is a crown reserve on the west.
The 3 things I love in new homes are skillion facade, raked ceilings with highlight windows and hardwood timber floors. We also know the importance of morning sun in winter (from north-west) and know that the majority of cool afternoon sea breezes come from the east. And we wanted to stay single story.
I originally started looking at project builders (Coral homes, Metricon, Perry Homes) as we paid a lot for the block and were hoping to save some $$$ on the build.
After comparing "base prices" and inclusions (and the fact that Metricon said they couldn't really make changes to their plans) we decided to deal with Coral Homes.
We had friends that had built the Bahama 30 a few towns over and thought it was a pretty functional family home.
I looked at the design and as our back yard faced west (hot arvo sun in summer and no morning sun in winter) I thought I could move the media room to open up the northern sun into the house and extend the deck to limit the penetrating afternoon summer sun.
I asked about raked ceilings - cant do, asked about hardwood floors - cant do (just engineered floating timber floors) and asked about skillion facade - YES this is one of a few designs that they could do.
I came up with this design and after about 6 weeks of waiting got an estimate of $375K - Bahama 32 modified.
After much consideration we decided that although this is an awesome design and facade the blocks orientation would mean that we would get no morning sun in winter and the only coastal breeze we would get is through the front door. So we looked at another design.
Coral Homes Casuarina 32 - This design allowed me to change the media room into a front deck and therefore allow light and breeze from the east into the living areas. After tweaking the decks, turning the study into the media, moving some bedrooms around it was a pretty functional family home that made the orientation work. BUT it was a huge 366m2 and unfortunately it didn't offer a skillion facade on this plan. Casuarina 32 Modified
We detailed all changes very accurately with the sales lady at Coral homes and it was sent off for drafting changes and estimation. We waited 5 weeks, the price came back at $405K, but the plans where wrong, so the sales lady and I repeated the same changes and sent it off again. This happened 2 more times, wasting a total of 15 week to get the changes accurate.
Towards the 13th week of waiting I started asking myself do we really need a house that huge? (all the 4 bedroom displays we had been in were all around 300m2 and seemed big), are we really building with Coral for $405K + $20K to finish everything outside? (I have only known their builds to be cheaper ones under $350K), am I getting anything I love? - NO.
While waiting for the plans to come back with Coral I decided to draw up a plan of a house would want, with all the things I love in it. I came up with this.
I didn't want too waste money hiring a drafty or architect to do up my plans just so a builder could tell me that it is going to cost me too much. So instead I asked Perry Homes, GJ Gardner and Ben Campbell Building Group to give me an estimate based on my plans and I detailed all the finer things that I wanted included (skillion roof, raked ceiling with highlight windows, cladding and render, pebblecrete driveway, solar panels and hot water, ducted air con, hardwood floors, hardwood decking, stone benches and even a corner stacking sliding door to the front deck. I indicated I would like to achieve a price of $430-$450K
Perry Homes called me back and said their estimating team didn't want to waste their time on a quote. GJ Gardner came back with $458,000 but seemed very vague with the details and the sales lady took a lot of goes to just resketch my sketch for their estimation folder.
Finally Ben Campbell Building Group came back with detailed plans from my sketch that were spot on (taking 3 days instead of 15 weeks like Coral), their estimate was detailed and the owner of the company Ben came down to meet with me to go over the estimate (4hrs + drive from head office). The estimate came in at $459K, although it was 1K more than GJ Gardner the fact that their drafty was amazing, the owner made and effort to meet me and I knew the local Foreman was enough for me to be confident in choosing them to build my forever home.
It has been a process to nut out all the fine details and have now chosen the majority of fitting and colours.
We have just lodged with council and have also added a granny flat.