Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Apr 27, 2019 6:49 pm Hi fellow home builders and renovators, After a lengthy journey bouncing back and forth between custom build and project home and back again over many months we have finally made a decision and yesterday made a deposit on a McDonald Jones Bronte Farmhouse Grande Manor. We will be building this beautiful home on 12.5 acres at Maraylya in Sydney's northwest . I have extracted some great ideas from this forum throughout this process so I thought I would try to give back a little by documenting our experience in the hope that others may find it helpful. Obviously it is early days yet but as the information starts to trickle (pour?) in I will endeavour to keep this thread current. We have selected the French provincial facade and will probably go all face brick because as much as we like the rendered or bagged look I really don't want to have to worry about painting and dealing with the inevitable cracks. We have proposed quite a few changes to the internal layout of the home but very little change to the overall footprint. We have had many assurances that the changes "won't be too expensive" but time will tell what this really means. This is probably the aspect of this process that has generated the most anxiety. Our design consultant has been very helpful and accommodating of my myriad questions and multiple visits and so far the experience has been a positive one. That's about it for now PS Would love to hear from any fellow Bronte builders in the area. Cheers Stephen and Jo Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 2Apr 27, 2019 7:36 pm Hi S&J, welcome to the forum! Your land looks amazing, we have just bought a much smaller block (5600sqm) in Glenorie. We are still deciding on builders, have gone back and forth like you, we’ve got a MDJ design as a back up plan (the hermitage) but are currently still progressing with the custom option. Builder not chosen yet,but currently getting our second set of plans drawn up. Look forward to following your build! Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 3Apr 27, 2019 10:42 pm Hi gogo65 Thanks for the welcome. In the end the decision came down to cost. We met some good builders and one in particular stood out, we would have really like to build with them but as you are no doubt aware the cost difference of a custom build is really significant. We to liked the design of the Hermitage and have incorporated some of its features into our Bronte. Glenorie is a lovely part of Sydney and the bakery has great pies! Cheers Stephen PS do you really have a 65 gogomobile? I have a 66 mini moke and love it! Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 4Apr 28, 2019 10:11 am Haha no gogomobile, it’s my initials and something to do with my date of birth 😩. Bronte is a great design, we had planned on using the master bed layout of the Bronte, but we want the master opposite to garage as we will also be building a granny flat near garage and wanted distance between the two, hence the hermitage worked better for us. Assume you may be dealing with V at home world kellyville? He was awesome, so easy to work with. We also had a builder we loved, had plans drawn up but came back to expensive. We changed our whole design and now working with two builders, one has given us a provisional tender and budget seems to be otrack so fingers crossed. Would love to see your plans! Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 6May 14, 2019 8:31 pm Some progress starting to be made. The customer portal now shows that the soil test and contour survey have been done. The reports will be in in a week or so. As an IT nerd I think the customer portal seems quite well implemented. We got our initial plans back this week along with an initial tender document. The plans have remained very true to my sketches and I am quite pleased with the way things look. Only a few very minor changes to be made. We are also pretty pleased with the cost that the changes have come in at, so sleeping a little better for now . We changed the internal layout quite a bit to match as closely as possible the design I had for our custom build, so good so far. Below are images of the original Bronte and our modified version (bottom photo) We have received some price lists in preparation for our visits to the design studio. Some allowances in the offer we have received should help make this step hurt a little less but I guess time will tell. I will also be building my ultimate man cave shed next to the house (well not ultimate because we do have a budget) but it will be nice to have some space. It is early days yet but would have to say we have had a good journey so far. Next step for me is to arrange to get power to where the house is being built on the block. This is over 500 meters from where the power currently is (it's a big block) and the quotes I'm getting for this much copper are shocking (pardon the pun). Anyway that's all for now Cheers Stephen Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 7May 14, 2019 9:11 pm Hi Stephen, Good to see that your builder has customer portal, I believe this is something all the builders should be having in place sooner than later. How much do they want for 500 m of power cable, I wonder? I know that you would need much thicker cables if it goes over 100 m. Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 8May 15, 2019 3:40 pm Hi Alex, I don't have a fixed price yet just estimates and you are correct the gauge of wire required is much thicker to allow for voltage drop over the distance. Not to mention the cost of the trench required. Then there is the question of if I should bother running a phone line or not. At this stage I'm thinking no but there is no NBN in the area yet and 3G/4G coverage is not wonderful on Optus or Telstra which would make life a little tricky for access to the internet (Important for my job). Whilst I have the trench dug it am thinking about dropping in some fibre optic cable to use for data from the front of the property. I could then use it for security and gate control if I wanted to and 4G reception is much near the front of the property. So much to do! Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 10May 15, 2019 4:38 pm Hi S & j Hope build goes well. Don’t forget that once it starts the builder has a lien on the site and you are not supposed to go on site without his permission. I found our site got very messy and it was hard to see what was finished and what wasn’t. However they eventually did a clean between stages and told the messy trades to clean up or they wouldn’t get their full payment. Most complied. A lot depends on the site supervisor you get, ours was very good but not without a few errors which they rectified. The project homes seem to cut the tradies jobs to the bone payment wise and some tradies resent this and I was worried they would do a bad job. Most jobs were ok . Good luck and will be interested to see how it all uhfolds. Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 11May 20, 2019 11:00 am Hi Guys , We are also considering working with MDJH for our build .We have had our concept drawings and have had our provisional tender drawn up. We were initially happy with the base price and some of the site costs but began noticing alot of items which we thought would be standard had extra cost. Items such as roof sarking and wall wrap. Im a carpenter by trade and totally acknowelege that these items are not essential in a build but because of the new basix regulations your house will simply not meet the requirements. In my opinion this should be a standard feature with the base price. Has anyone else been charged over $4415 for sarking? Also has anyone had any joy in convincing MDJH to allow your own external contractors to carry out work during the build . Would also be interested to compare some quote you guys have recieved for additional upgrades. Here are some of ours to date : Roof sarking $4415 ( sore point) Wall wrap ( still waiting on a quote) 10000lt tank and overflow $9000 upgrade to 40mm edging on the stone in the Kitchen. $3000-$4000 Would appreciate your feedback thanks Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 12May 20, 2019 3:52 pm Hi Emeraldno1 Welcome to the world of project home building. External contractors is a recurring issue with just about any project builder these days. I am an IT nerd and want to have a licensed friend of mine do the wiring for the data and alarm etc. Cat 6 cable is cheap as chips and I always prefer wired networks where possible. It was just going to be too hard. I have spoken to a mate of mine who works for another mob who have a similar policy and the main reasons he gave were to do with scheduling and accountability. Classic example he gave was a scratch to a newly installed kitchen, contractor A blames contractor B etc and it all gets messy. This way the one company controls everything. I do get it, but it will be a lot harder doing the cabling afterwards but budget simply wont allow it before hand ( not for the infrastructure I want to do). I will check on some of the upgrade prices when I get home. Reading this forum prepared us how much more than the base price a project home ends up costing so it didn't come as a surprise but the costs add up quickly. Having said that I had my own custom plan that I really wanted to get built. The house was actually a little smaller than the one we chose in the end and it was going to cost very close to double what the Bronte is costing, it was never going to happen. We got a number of quotes from builders large and small so in the scheme of things we are still quite happy so far. Things like 40mm bench tops really add up and then if you add waterfall edges etc it goes even higher. My partner really wanted more draws in the kitchen and the price given for draws was a about $250 per bank of two or three draws which we thought was reasonable then saw further down the price list that soft close draws are another $50 each. Bottom line is the base price is really very much a starting point but my experience has been that this is the norm for this industry and not any worse with MDJH. Very few if any of the homes on display at home world in Kellyville Sydney were able to give me a definitive answer to the question, "how much to build this house as displayed?" Not much of a consolation I guess. Cheers Stephen Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 14May 20, 2019 9:50 pm Thanks Wowbingo We are really hoping the entrance onto the living area with the stacker doors open to the bush-land backyard will have an impressive effect and take advantage of the block. In the latest version of the plan we have widened the stacker doors and reduced the space between them to increase the effect. Cant wait to get started Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 15May 27, 2019 6:13 am Hi S & J By the looks of it you would be on a site prone to bushfire with a high BAL rating. If so I have come across a company that makes specialised windows for such areas they are called Warrior Windows. The difference being that the frames are steel not aluminium and will not melt in case of fire. In other words if you are trapped inside your house the fire should pass over it without gaining access through the windows. These are the only true fire proof windows and doors. Good luck with the build Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 16Jun 29, 2019 11:23 am Emeraldno1 Hi Guys , We are also considering working with MDJH for our build .We have had our concept drawings and have had our provisional tender drawn up. We were initially happy with the base price and some of the site costs but began noticing alot of items which we thought would be standard had extra cost. Items such as roof sarking and wall wrap. Im a carpenter by trade and totally acknowelege that these items are not essential in a build but because of the new basix regulations your house will simply not meet the requirements. In my opinion this should be a standard feature with the base price. Has anyone else been charged over $4415 for sarking? Also has anyone had any joy in convincing MDJH to allow your own external contractors to carry out work during the build . Would also be interested to compare some quote you guys have recieved for additional upgrades. Here are some of ours to date : Roof sarking $4415 ( sore point) Wall wrap ( still waiting on a quote) 10000lt tank and overflow $9000 upgrade to 40mm edging on the stone in the Kitchen. $3000-$4000 Would appreciate your feedback thanks Hi there, Have you had your quote for the Wall Wrap as yet? We have had our tender and are yet to sign. There are ours - we are building the Lyndhurst executive. We've deleted the study to make it fit our block and made rooms bigger. Roof sarking - $3410 10,000ltr tank and overflow - $9340 for tank and connections then $2380 for overflow The 40mm im still confused about. this is what my tender says - even though i asked about 40mm - the price is $2260 for the below in tender "Provide 20mm stone bench top with 40mm edge to the kitchen bench tops only (excludes butlers pantry) in lieu of standard, selected from My choice executive range. no allowance for waterfall edges Would be interested to see how you have gone? Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 17Jul 20, 2019 11:41 am Hi Natpow Our cost for the 40mm bench tops was very similar but this will blow out very quickly if you don't chose from one of the standard colours. We are on tank water and will be installing a 110,000 litre water tank ourselves and that will cost about $9000. the pipes to the tanks will be prepared by McDonald Jones but we have to connect ourselves. We had to get additional sarking for our bush-fire requirements so the cost was different and cant really compare. natpow Hi there, Have you had your quote for the Wall Wrap as yet? We have had our tender and are yet to sign. There are ours - we are building the Lyndhurst executive. We've deleted the study to make it fit our block and made rooms bigger. Roof sarking - $3410 10,000ltr tank and overflow - $9340 for tank and connections then $2380 for overflow The 40mm im still confused about. this is what my tender says - even though i asked about 40mm - the price is $2260 for the below in tender "Provide 20mm stone bench top with 40mm edge to the kitchen bench tops only (excludes butlers pantry) in lieu of standard, selected from My choice executive range. no allowance for waterfall edges Would be interested to see how you have gone? Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 18Jul 20, 2019 11:45 am Hi All, Our journey continues. Haven’t posted in a while as not a lot happening whilst we go back and forth with plans and changes. For the most part the process has been painless. Contracts have been signed, so that's exciting! We did seem to have a bit of a communication breakdown regarding the positioning of the house on the block. Because the block is 13 acres we have a lot of flexibility where to place the house. I did a drawing of where I would like the house positioned and facing, measured accurately off boundaries etc. I even bought a measuring wheel to make sure I got it right. The plans came back very differently. Resent my drawing then received version two, still wrong. Resent my drawing, version 3 comes back, still wrong. They finally got it correct on version 4. Fourth times a charm. Our build is on acreage and we have a BAL (Bushfire Attack Level) rating of 29. McDonald Jones have been very good at making sure that the house meets the requirements of the BAL 29 and it hasn’t cost a great deal more, so that’s a big plus. Also, some of the changes required to meet the BAL requirements improved our energy efficiency so our basix cost came down which was a bonus. However, a few matters have arisen that we were not aware of. At our contract signing we were told we needed to get a landscape plan before the DA could be submitted. Would have liked to have known this earlier as we would have had it ready. Anyway, phoned council (Hawkesbury) to see exactly what is required in such a plan. It must be prepared by a qualified landscaper and the duty officer also told us that we need an arborist report to clear any trees. Spoke to our person at McDonald Jones and they questioned if this was really necessary. Phoned council again to confirm and it is on rural blocks. So now we find ourselves having to get an arborist reports to establish that the trees in the asset protection zone are not a protected species. We also need to get a landscaping plan. Both of these are delays and costs we hadn’t planned on and would have liked better advice on. Colour Selection Allow plenty of time for your colour selections, this does take time, or at least it did with us. Jo is very thorough. The staff that have been assisting us in the selection process have been helpful and nice and have a good knowledge of the finishes and products available. The costs can blow out here, significantly. I would love to have a dollar for every time we hear the words, “that’s an upgrade”, however reading this forum we were somewhat prepared for this. Jo was a little disappointed in the range of tiles for the bathrooms and splashbacks etc feeling that the range was limited. Some builders send you to a tile shop, but McDonald Jones haver their own range in the design studio to choose from. Floor tiles wise we decided to do ourselves after handover. One of the areas that really stings cost wise is the kitchen benchtops. Once you go from the standard Caesarstone to the deluxe (the next level in the range) the price jumps dramatically if you are having 40mm benchtops. I believe this is because the standard benchtops achieve the 40mm edge by simply gluing two sheets together but because of the patterns in the deluxe range they have to attach 40mm edges with mitre joints and this is much more labour intensive. Big Windows One issue that is causing some frustration is with window sizes. To take advantage of our bush block views we have opted for large single pane glass widows in the ensuite and bathroom. The plans have them at 1800mm wide, but I would prefer a little wider as I have seen this at a number of display homes and it looks great. We were told to be wider they would need to have a silicon join as they could not go bigger in a single pane. Jo was unsure what this would look like and we were told we could see this technique at Mojo homes on display at Kellyville (Mojo seems to be part of the same company). We rock up to homeworld Kellyville to get an idea of what this looks like. Not only are there no joins but there are windows there 2.4 meters wide, in several homes. So we explain these details to our rep and several emails back and forth and two weeks later we still have no clarification on the issue. It’s not a huge deal but certainly is frustrating when you have a vision. In the meantime my life is consumed with getting power to the house, water tanks (no town water), septic systems and internet access in what seems to be a telecommunications dead zone. That’s enough for now Cheers Stephen and Jo Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 19Jul 22, 2019 7:42 pm Well the windows continue to be a source of frustration. Currently the plans include windows that are 2100 by 1800. The latest quote we received today states that to go from 1800 wide to 2100 wide for one window will be an additional $2000. Needless to say I have sought confirmation on this because it seems quite high, certainly hoping this was an error. But more perplexing is the explanation as to why the window cant be wider than 2100. Long story short, it's a WHS concern To add to this we were informed that if we were building one of the Mojo homes that have windows 2400 wide on display we could indeed have 2400 wide windows. Once these display homes are no longer on display the widows will not be available. I guess the WHS issues don't apply to Mojo homes, who knows. It's the first real bump in the road we have had with this build but I am finding the explanations interesting to say the least. We await further explanations. Time will tell I guess. Cheers for now Stephen and Jo Re: Our McDonald Jones Bronte Build 20Jul 22, 2019 10:40 pm From my experience you are better off talking directly with the window fabricator, as their systems tell them exactly what is possible with glazing spans and what glass thickness is required etc. The new home sales people, without being rude to them, would have little idea on window refs etc. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Check our Homeone build blog here Hi AKG, We had a base tender of $592 for 31 squares from MC Donald Jones. It looks relatively cheaper than other builders. But I assume there are many hidden things that… 1 16754 Thank you so much everyone. This all makes a lot of sense. I guess when you talk to a builder who butters up everything to look very polished, you get to start believing… 7 17198 of course there are legal avenues. You've already mentioned it. Sue them. I find it odd that lawyers wouldnt be willing to take on the case, given CCT evidence and… 1 23754 |