GJ Gardner - Twin Waters (slightly modified)

Been reading threads on here for a while and I've got really good advice and opinions which have helped us along the way. It's now my time to share .
It has not been easy getting to this point though as our land is a battleaxe with a downward sloping driveway so most builders weren't keen to work on it and on top of that we had some sales people telling us they could, only for their building engineers to say they couldn't.

Anyway our timeline so far;

• March 2019 - Start builder hunt and looking for land]
• April 2019 - Found land that my partner really liked and signed a contract subject to finance (Due 30th May 2019).
• April - May - Hunt for builder begins. We started off with Porter Davis who had a really good deal, salesperson led us on, but after paying the deposit, started backtracking, telling us the land might be hard to build on, she'll send to head office, giving us other options, etc. Didn't hear back for almost 3 weeks then when we pulled out to go with another builder the sales person started claiming they could do the job and quoted really high site costs but we had already decided to cut our losses and leave. We also considered Ownit homes and Clarendon (who we were really disappointed couldn't build on our lot)
• 5th May - Signed prelim agreement with GJ Gardner and paid deposit ($1,500).
• 7th May - Requested and got an extension for finance condition for the land to 28th June.
• 31st May - Got conditional approval from bank.
• 3rd June - Received NHP with all the requested changes, paid second deposit ($1,500).
• 13th June - Requested and got another extension for finance condition for the land to 26th July.
• 24th June - Received draft contract document. Requested changes which they were very accommodating on.
• 8th July - Signed building contract and paid 5% deposit.
• 17th July - Kitchen appointment.
• 19th July - Tile selection.
• 24th July - Unconditional approval for loan.
• 5th August - Building approval.
• 14th August - Color selection appointment.
• 23rd August - Land settlement.
• 16th September - Site works.
• 8th October - Slab pour.
• 28th October - Frame completed.
• 15th November - Roof completed and Electrical done.
• 17th November - Media cabling done (We did it ourselves which was really good of the supervisor to let us do that) 13th December - Bricking done.
• 16th January - We're enclosed and plastering is finished.
• 4th February - Kitchen cabinets installed.
• 20th February - Tiling complete.
• 10th March - Painting complete.
• 9th April - PCI.
• 15th May - Handover.

Here's the modified plans. Quite disheartening for a 296sqm home to turn to be around 230sqm or less. It didn't occur to us that walls are added up in the total size..

Good luck! Things are about to get very exciting 🍾

Some progress photos

Looks good !

Thanks...exciting times...

Final product...now to landscaping..

Looks great!

Beautiful! Love the We're currently looking at the Twin Waters 300 plan... Anything that you'd look out for or recommend with this plan? We're thinking of bumping out the garage to 6m width... and reconfiguring some of the upstairs. Hope you're enjoying your new home!

Which GJ's are you building with? It looks like the plans changed from when we built. From what I can see now, bed 5 (which we have) has been changed to linen which makes sense as it is too small and in retrospect we could have made it bigger. Also, make sure you're comfortable with the room sizes as we found them to be small, so increase them if you can.

Other than that, you can have a look at how we reconfigured the master and Cinema. Also, if $$ allows, you can have a balcony upstairs with your master.