Madison 35 by Clarendon Homes - Handover!!

Crazy. The construction journey we were given shows windows installed after electrical, plumbing and air conditioning rough in! We only had electrical started yesterday.

Yeah we got that same construction journey.

Turns out it was a mix up with part of the information being about the neighbours progress!

So the windows are in about a week and a half, but the fascia and gutters were installed yesterday. Roof was meant to be installed today but the inclement weather put paid to that. Hopefully tomorrow it'll be installed, then we'll carry on next week with the rough ins.

Can anyone please help me decide whether to proceed or not. My wife and I have put in our preliminary deposit with GJ Gardner for $4,400 for a 4 bedroom house with 2 bedroom granny flat for $500K. This does not include driveway and landscaping. The total size of the house is only 338 sqm. Judging by the prices you mentioned in your post it appears that we are overpriced. We actually think our one is cheap already. Any thoughts?

Yeah that's a lot of money... depends i suppose on the level of inclusions as well as any issues with the site?

So my house will be about 350m2 all up, and we're looking at $430,000 (excluding land cost) once absolutely everything is finished, moved in, landscaped etc, completely done...

I can see the granny flat would add on a bit - with the extra plumbing, bench tops, cabinetry etc... but that surely wouldn't be a lot extra to add on.

All up it seems a lot of money for the size. Be careful with GJ Gardner too - didn't the Logan and Ipswich franchises go belly up recently?

A quick little update - The gutters and fascia as well as colorbond roof upstairs have been installed. This was all completed by 4 March. I'm told lower roof should have been done this week some time, ready for windows on Monday.

A couple of pics showing the gutters and upstairs roof. I'm really liking the Surfmist as a colour! Particularly stands out amongst the sea of dark roofs around us:-P

*** edit *** The colorbond isn't actually Surfmist, it's Shale Grey - which is a little less white.

I've tweaked the blog a little bit too - Post #1 as well as containing the timeline, now also contains progress photos from the one perspective. Kind of a fun single perspective of the development of our home.

We quite like our Surfmist roof as well, because we too have a lot of dark roofs around.

Windows, stackers, cavity sliders and the front door frame + sidelight were delivered on Friday, ready for installation on Monday. The all look so much larger than I expected, the rooms will be nice and open... it's going to look great!

Windows are in and lower roof is on. It's nice to get a feel for the window openings and how breezes/cross flow should occur - though it's a bit hard to get an accurate idea of airflow when you have no walls!

Wow!! Looks very nice. I like the colour of ur window and stacker door frames. Is that silver colour? House looks so huge.

I've just checked our plans - It's called "Anodic Natural Matt", but yeah it's basically silver. It's the closest we could get to the roof and gutter colour, which I also just saw isn't actually surfmist... it's Shale Grey! Haha oops. I love it anyway, but would have been nice to say the right name from the start

Yeah it's massive! It's so impressive inside, the 2.75m ceiling height feels so spacious!:x]

Haha sometimes all these names are so confusing. I even forgot what we chose during our selections that we have to look into the paper everytime as we kept on changing. I will not surprised even if they put any wrong colour 🙈🙉🙊

Beautiful colour selections. Looking forward to see how it all comes together for ur house. So that we can correct our mistakes in our next home 😉

Yep I've already got a list of things I would and wouldn't do the next time! All part of the fun of it

The house wrap has basically been finished - just need to do the garage wall. The plumber has also been in to fit the gas lines, however possibly still needs to run pipes upstairs, not sure.

Plasterboard has also been delivered, which is surprising to see when so much needs to happen before they install it... but good progress all the same!

So this coming week, services are meant to finish their first fix. I'll hopefully meet the A/C installers on site and discuss outlet locations. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the weather, if that has any impact on them coming in or if the sarking gives them enough protection. The forecast for rain all week isn't super promising though!

A few pictures of the progress

Hi Taco.

i am building with Clarendon in Sydney, you are a bit further ahead than i am at the moment. my build has completed the slab and framework is next, just a quick question, are you using an independent building inspector during your construction and if so is clarendon being helpful and okay about it.

i have planned to use one during the final inspection, but am thinking of bringing in an inspector sooner to pick up issues earlier in the process. I have become more concerned after reading this thread - Building Sheridan 35 with Clarendon - Illawarra, but its hard to get both stories in this thread as its only coming from one party but nevertheless clarendon customer is not happy and is letting loose on this forum.

let me know...and hope all goes well with your build.

Hi MiB - congratulations on getting the slab down!

Yeah i'm using an independent inspector and Clarendon have been fine about it. It's been pretty straightforward and easy so far - the inspector lets me know at what point they come in for the various stage inspections I've picked, and I let Clarendon know, who advise when that point is reached. I then tell the inspector who arranges to go on site.


You have a right to get it inspected, and I think it's also a valuable investment. Like you say, there's an example of when things go wrong, so well worth getting that extra help.

No photos to add for this update, but plumbing and air con rough-in was completed today, with only electrical rough-in left before the bricks can start.

Not sure when that will be, but next door has been running for about 1 & 1/2 weeks now and still don't have their upstairs scaffold installed. We're using their brickies I believe, so we'll probably be ready to go before they're finished. Can't wait for bricks to be started and finished though - the sooner that happens the sooner we won't so much be affected by all the rain!

I know, the rain/storms over the past few days has been interesting. Seems to be blue skies currently though, so would be nice to see your bricks commence.

It's been one heck of a wait, but we finally have a start on the bricks!
Somewhat frustratingly it was a case of the bricks should be starting "next week" for a couple of weeks, but we've reached that point at last.

Still waiting on sarking to be applied to the garage wall, as well as repairs being made around the place where trades have punched through.

The hold up can be attributed to both the weather, and the fact that we're 3rd in line of Clarendon builds that are in our street, so we've had to wait for their brick layers to finish them before coming to ours - it's one team for 3 houses that are around the same stage, so have to be patient. The brick work on the other houses looks great though, so can't wait to see ours complete.

Anyway, bricklaying has been done up to the termite barrier, house 1 has finished bricks and house 2 was raking the last bit of mortar this morning, so we should be full steam ahead with the rest of our bricklaying.

On a side note - I love the look of the bricks. They look very bright and clean and the pattern has come out well. Some better pictures will come when there's more to take a photo of! In pics 2 & 3 the yellow bricks are for the 3 rendered posts and arch

Hi! Just saw your thread. We built with Clarendon in Stage Three of your estate (we were one of four in the 3rd stage). Had handover in Nov last year. I actually walked past your build yesterday. Looks great!

Looking forward to following.