Playford Alive build - Homestead Sandridge

PASandridge · Apr 09, 2015 4:19 pm

Hi! Im a new member here! But ive been looking at these forums for ages while planning to build!
My husband, 2 children and I are building our first home with Homestead Homes - The Sandridge at Playford Alive on a 605sq2 corner block. We have an appointment to sign our contract and start the soil testing etc. Who has built in this area? Have your soil reports come in under your allowance? Our home is 286sq2 and we have an allowance of $28,000. Im praying it is below!! Ive read positive things about Homestead too so im hoping all will be smooth sailing during the build. Fingers crossed!

PASandridge · Apr 21, 2015 3:31 pm

Contract signed! Looking forward to getting our proper drawings in!

danandmel · Apr 23, 2015 5:09 pm

Hi PASandridge
Congrats on signing with Homestead.
We have built with Homestead twice now, back in 2010, and last year, moved in just before Christmas. Had an excellent experience both times, from the Sales Consultant, all the way through with the site supervisor and all the tradies.
Both homes we built were of excellent quality and of a high standard. We have just finished our 3 month maintenance period, in which we had only a few minor issues (leaking bath outlet, ended up being a crack in the thread of the outlet itself so a faulty product) that were fixed straight away.
Good luck with it all, and if you want to ask anything about Homestead or the process, I would be more than happy to assist (well try to

)
Cheers

danandmel · Apr 23, 2015 5:13 pm

By the way....

Very nice home design also! Just looked at the plan online, did you change anything from the standard design?

TomCat · Apr 23, 2015 9:45 pm

Hello and Congratulations! I know someone like danandmel who has built twice with Homestead. Very good sign. We're building at Golden Grove but considered Blakes Crossing -- not that far from you.

oneJohn · Apr 23, 2015 10:31 pm

Our current house was build by Homestead a few years ago. On the whole, I think they've done a reasonably good job, and the fitout items seem sensible . I hope you get a good run out of them.

PASandridge · Apr 24, 2015 12:25 pm

Thanks for your reply everyone!
Glad to hear positive responses about Homestead!
We have changed the design a bit to fit our block. We are on a corner and preferred the alfresco to be facing the corner side for privacy, but the driveway crossover is located to the left so we had to keep the garage in the same spot. We also made the portico bigger as per our encumbrances, swapped the toilet/shower around in the ensuite so the toilet has a window for fresh air, changed the whole design of the ensuite/wardrobe, changed the alfresco design and upgraded our front door to be wider. We also upgraded to 2.7m ceilings and a 900 freestanding oven and rangehood. Im not sure how to upload pics on here to show you a sketch?? Can anyone help with that?
Were thinking about adding another sliding door to the dining room to allow access outside as we plan to deck the alfresco and follow it through to the dining room window.
Im also planning on swapping the door to the butlers pantry to the other side closer to the dining room. Our fridge will be in there and if we need to grab something while having dinner.

TomCat · Apr 24, 2015 9:59 pm

I'd recommend, yes, add the slider to dining. Wished we'd added another now. (We've go two to alfresco already, so no biggie but it would have been better if we did as we have a huge alfresco).

To upload photos. Set up a Photobucket (photobucket.com) account or similar. Upload to there, then copy into here. Just use the [img] tag in the 'full editor' when you post on here.

PASandridge · Apr 27, 2015 2:52 pm

Thanks TomCat! I think so too, we would regret it if we didn't.
I have finally worked out how to post pics. Here is a sketch.

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Let me know your thoughts??

Tarlis99 · Apr 27, 2015 3:41 pm

Hi!

I have been following your post with interest as we have just purchased an old home on a flat 800 m2 block and are very interested in the Homestead Sandridge layout! I love the design of this home but unfortunately there is no display home to view in SA anymore! I like how you have changed the floorplan to suit your own needs. I was drawn to this floorplan because of the fact that all the kids rooms are down one side and the activity room is also a major draw card! We would make bedrooms 3 and 4 about a metre bigger and perhaps add another metre onto the activity room to give a little more space! Good luck with everything, it's very exciting!

PASandridge · Apr 27, 2015 3:50 pm

Hi Tarlis99! Glad you decided to join the conversation!
We felt the same with the bedrooms, kids bathroom and activity room all in one area. My husband is self employed so we were glad to have a separate study in the front and didn't have to use the activity room for this. Our kids (aged seven & eight) will feel miles away from us! Im not sure about how they will deal with this when the time comes to moving in! (I wont be having mattresses on my bedroom floor that's for sure!

I admit I do feel nervous about picking a house from the plans and not being able to view it as a display! I have to picture what it will look like which is hard, but im hoping it will be better in real life than what's in my head!
Unfortunately due to our allotment size and boundary requirements of our block, we had to reduce the sizes of bedrooms 3 & 4 to get the house to fit on. We are still pleased though, they will still be a decent size for them (less room means less clutter!) haha.

danandmel · Apr 30, 2015 3:27 pm

PASandridge

Thanks for your reply everyone!
Glad to hear positive responses about Homestead!
We have changed the design a bit to fit our block. We are on a corner and preferred the alfresco to be facing the corner side for privacy, but the driveway crossover is located to the left so we had to keep the garage in the same spot. We also made the portico bigger as per our encumbrances, swapped the toilet/shower around in the ensuite so the toilet has a window for fresh air, changed the whole design of the ensuite/wardrobe, changed the alfresco design and upgraded our front door to be wider. We also upgraded to 2.7m ceilings and a 900 freestanding oven and rangehood. Im not sure how to upload pics on here to show you a sketch?? Can anyone help with that?
Were thinking about adding another sliding door to the dining room to allow access outside as we plan to deck the alfresco and follow it through to the dining room window.
Im also planning on swapping the door to the butlers pantry to the other side closer to the dining room. Our fridge will be in there and if we need to grab something while having dinner.

The changes you have made look great and sensible! Noticed you have made the alfresco smaller, any reason for this??
We also upgraded to the 900 freestanding oven package, it is excellent, we love it.

I understand with regards to your comments on not being able to view a display home. The 2 times we built with Homestead, we designed the plans ourselves and of course were unsure on whether we were making the size of things too big or too small. It is tough. I can visualise things really well, so going through a million (well not quite that many) display homes and seeing measurements of rooms, windows, bench spaces, alfrescos, garages etc etc, I could get a fair idea of whether the size we made things was what we were after. The challenging thing was trying to get a home to 'flow' nicely when you haven't walked through it. But second build round, we think we have achieved this.

Looking forward to seeing what selections you have made (or will make), especially as I know the Homestead selections quite intimately!

oneJohn · Apr 30, 2015 4:34 pm

Just looking at the plans, I have a couple of thoughts. Swapping the pantry entry to the other side looks ok to me. It means a longer walk in with groceries from the garage, but that isn't such a big deal.

Be careful about the fridge in the pantry, in terms of whether there is enough room for the size fridge you might want. Fridges are often drawn alongside 600mm deep cabinets, but the larger fridges these days are generally quite a bit deeper than than after taking into account doors and the air gap at the back. Then you need a fair bit of space to the side against a wall in order to open the fridge door. This makes it hard to have a fridge up against a wall on one side. So just make sure you have plenty of room in there for the fridge, and the space to get around the door when its open.

Also bear in mind the heat loading of the fridge. We currently have a similar pantry to that, but without a fridge, and during summer, with the door closed it will stay fairly cool even when the house heats up during the day with no one home. With a fridge in there, I imagine that the heat load would bring it more up to the temperature of the house, which may not be as good for some food storage.

I notice you are opting for the 900mm freestanding oven. It may be worth checking on the detailing that Homestead do in the cabinetry around that. On ours they did a fairly simple job finishing the edges of the cabinets, so that a ball can roll in under the oven and keep going under the cupboards behind the kickpanel. I don't find it a big problem, but some people could get worried by it.

danandmel · Apr 30, 2015 4:42 pm

oneJohn

I notice you are opting for the 900mm freestanding oven. It may be worth checking on the detailing that Homestead do in the cabinetry around that. On ours they did a fairly simple job finishing the edges of the cabinets, so that a ball can roll in under the oven and keep going under the cupboards behind the kickpanel. I don't find it a big problem, but some people could get worried by it.

Valid point, but the oven that Homestead offers has a kick panel so nothing can go under it.

https://www.westinghouse.com.au/freesta ... s/wfe914sa

Also, cabinets either side of my oven are finished off, with the sides of the cabinets going completely to ground level so there is no access to behind the kick panels from the sides.

oneJohn · Apr 30, 2015 8:48 pm

That's good - it sounds like you got a more detailed build out of Homestead than we did. Our place is a few years ago now, so things may have changed.

PASandridge · May 04, 2015 12:21 pm

We chose not to have the alfresco around the corner of the house and to just have it where the sliding doors are just simply because we don't see any use for it. We wont be sitting around the corner which will face the back fence and faces a brick wall. We would like to deck the alfresco and continue the decking outside of the alfresco like this.
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Thanks for your tips about the fridge in the pantry.

Our consultant mentioned about the walk a bit further to the pantry door but this isn't really much of an issue. I would rather the fridge closer to the outside entrance and dining area.

danandmel - We're looking at upgrading to the round bench sinks for the bathrooms, do you know much about these sinks? We have to look at how much extra these are to upgrade.
We'd also like to have the mirrored backsplash in the kitchen aswell but unsure how much more this is?

PASandridge · May 04, 2015 12:29 pm

Oh and I forgot, due to our encumbrances we have had to make a few amendments. They require a bigger portico which we will have to sit down and work out. They also require us to address the side facing street which will be on the main bedroom wall, but we're stuck as to how we can address it? On our paperwork it says for either a:
- Wrap around veranda (not suitable for this design)
- Window (Consultant has suggested putting in a highline window but we don't like a window above the bed.)
- Feature materials and detailing
- Wall articulation and modulation
- Blade wall

Any suggestions? We plan to have the façade a dark liquorice brick with rendered pillars to the portico. I don't feel comfortable having windows on the secondary side but if worse comes to worse and we have no other option, I would only look at having 2 slim vertical windows above our bedside tables.

danandmel · May 07, 2015 10:56 am

PASandridge

danandmel - We're looking at upgrading to the round bench sinks for the bathrooms, do you know much about these sinks? We have to look at how much extra these are to upgrade.
We'd also like to have the mirrored backsplash in the kitchen aswell but unsure how much more this is?

They are very nice sinks, we liked them, but we ended up choosing the rectangular countertop basins (named Adelaide). Probably would be a similar cost upgrade I would assume, and I don't think they were too expensive to upgrade (maybe $100 each basin)

Mirrored glass splashback on the other hand, we found that the price for a glass splashback was about a $4000 upgrade, and we don't really have a lot of splashback in the kitchen. We chose a large 600x300mm tile, which was only a $40 upgrade.......little cheaper than the glass. Figured we can always change it later on sometime, so we put the extra money into other upgrades we preferred (eg, stone benchtops)

danandmel · May 07, 2015 11:13 am

PASandridge

Oh and I forgot, due to our encumbrances we have had to make a few amendments. They require a bigger portico which we will have to sit down and work out. They also require us to address the side facing street which will be on the main bedroom wall, but we're stuck as to how we can address it? On our paperwork it says for either a:
- Wrap around veranda (not suitable for this design)
- Window (Consultant has suggested putting in a highline window but we don't like a window above the bed.)
- Feature materials and detailing
- Wall articulation and modulation
- Blade wall

Any suggestions? We plan to have the façade a dark liquorice brick with rendered pillars to the portico. I don't feel comfortable having windows on the secondary side but if worse comes to worse and we have no other option, I would only look at having 2 slim vertical windows above our bedside tables.

Addressing the secondary frontage on a corner block is sometimes quite difficult. We didn't have to deal with this issue, but my sister who is about to commence building also had the same problem, what to do on the secondary frontage. She was lucky enough to have the space for wall articulation, so she could vary the setbacks so it appears 'staggered'. She also put another slim vertical window on the side, but this was a study, so it wasn't too big a deal. Looking at your design, you can't really do this, but as you suggest, maybe windows are your only option. A blade wall may not suit your design and feature materials, unsure what you could use on a side that is just the exterior to your bedroom. Friends of ours had 2 slim vertical windows above each bedside table, and I actually quite like this, so this is what I probably would choose in this situation. You aren't really compromising anything else with regards to the house design, and windows probably would be the cheaper option. I also wouldn't mind a highline window above the bed, but then again, these are just my opinions.

From the aspect of allowing extra light into the bedroom, this side of the house, which direction is it facing? Will this get morning sun, or afternoon sun?

PASandridge · May 07, 2015 2:42 pm

I have some across some slim windows above each side table on pinterest and it is growing on me. I think this is what we will end up going for. This way our curtains for the front and sides can match, where as a highline window will be harder to dress.
Our front will get the morning sun, as it faces in a easterly direction.