Porter Davis - Madison 40

Wow that's quick! Can you believe we started late march and our PCI is on Thursday. If all goes well, still feel like there is so much left to do and feel like they won't finish on time /quote]
What do you think the difference is? SS? Location? Availability of tradies? rain? dc_1985 what specific delays have you had during your construction? We are due to start building at the end of February and just wanting to know what things to look out for.

MikW

I think your SS needs to be a good project manager. Mine was excellent, he was always 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule. Our baseline for handover was early Jan 2018.

Second is availability of trades and location. SS usually manages between 10-15 houses, so they have to plan ahead whenever a job/trade is finishing up and where they are going next. More trades around an area definitely help.

In my case, I am not too far from Clyde North/Clyde Area, there is about 100+ PD houses being built in the area from what i was told. My guess is to service about 100+ there has to be a backlog of trades that PD can reach to.

Only in my street there are 6 PD houses. 5 double storey and 1 single. I am the first PD double in the street, and 1 single vancouver down the street. Opposite me is a Waldorf 48 just started the framing and down the road again there is a brookwater half way there. The trades just jump from houses to houses...no need to drive too far..just cross the road..hahaha.

Also I have been on top of all major defects raised by darbecca and the ones that I have raised. I have kept a list and checked as they were fixed. I raised about 50 issues of my own that needed to be addressed such as gaps, height of window and bench in kitchen and galley, location of lights and switches, caulking missing, wall to be redone, bulkhead to fix, tiling in bath where pattern was wrong, tiling missing as skirting in wet areas.

I have had trades work on weekend. Almost every weekend 2 out 4 there has to be someone working when we go visit.

We started 1st of June 2017 and the first 2months was pretty quick.
We were told 12 December for PCI but then yesterday was told end of the month (November).
I will be inspecting the house next week as a Pre-PCI then if there are anything to fix, they will have till PCI. Hopefully no delay.
We have also just sold our house just in time to pack and move out before xmas.

Are one of your windows double glazed vs single glazed?

I know that double glazed windows go from sliding to awning type so the configuration is different....could be the reason?

So, random question for those who have signed contracts. What unexpected or previously undisclosed costs were you presented with at contract? Was the price put before you a shock/surprise? Or was it basically the tender + WoS quotes added together?

Well, we had our appointment on Nov 9th and 10th, would have probably seen some of you there! I think our costs and choice of colours may be very similar MikW

We went colourtech in the kitchen with shaker profile and fitted out the galley. This may be very silly of us but we only realised at WOS with kitchen culture that our actual kitchen bench top according to plans will be much larger than the one on display. The length is something about 3.4m or so, where as the display in pointcook is 2.75m! Therefore we asked to fit some more cabinets in with a push door, on the overhang side of bench.

Don't have the exact costings with me but colourtech cost us around the same price as you Mik, $8,350. To add an extra 8 cabinets at the back of the bench was roughly $1,800-$1,900.

Electrical came in at $16k with downlights on both levels, extra power points, exgauhst fans, 7 data points, security sytem, CCTV pre-wire ( i would like to get some 4k or very high resolution camera for CCTV post handover), NBN stuff and outdoor lighting. We managed to scale this back to around $10k by doing batten lights offset for downlight setup post hand over and removing all the dimmer switches (brother in law is a fully certified electrician that can get all this done post handover).

We've gone with the Cat 1 laminate flooring, believe it's called dolcetto, cat 1 carpet with underlay upgrade. Also we are doing the 140mm Colonial skirting for ground floor with 92mm colonial architraves. However, we've asked PD to not fit the skirtings where we are having the laminte flooring as we do not want the quads to ruin the look. We will fit the skirtings post handover and achieve a much cleaner finish (as seen in Waldorf Grange and Astor grange display).

A little bit dissapointed with the WOS process, I also felt it was a bit too much for the 2 days they give you and felt the colour selection person didn't really care about our build and was there to just fill in the paperwork ( which was incorrect in the end). Did anybody offer you guys a discussion around if you wanted wallpaper, or if you wanted to upgrade your insulation? I was interested in getting costing on wallpaper as I quite liked the look of it in some bedrooms and powder rooms on display. I also wanted to discuss extra insulation to parts of the house. May have to make good friends with the SS and see if we can just stick some in before plaster goes up!

What kitchen and bathroom bench tops did you guys go with? We are going with Lagoon Cat4 for kitchen, Cat 3 Lyra for bathrooms. Also decided to do the charcoal colourtech cabinets in master ensuite as per display in Astor Grange.

After all that, I forgot to tell them to put an antenna on the house for the free to air tv! And yes, also no Brivis consultation but we have already decided to do refigerated cooling with 2 zones.