Building with Statesman? Would you be my pacing partner?

andystew · May 28, 2009 11:21 pm

sammy_sj

Once you sign the contract you normally receive the master plans approx 8 weeks later and then the footings about 2 weeks after that. You can then book in to do your colour selections...... they send you a book of selections to look through to prepare you for the day that you will probably go through 1000 times

We received our contract back today - now signed by the builder. Not too bad, considering we signed on the 30th of April. We also received the colour selection guide...and I see what you mean, we have already looked at it a dozen times and we only got it today. It looks like we will have to move out early and get the house demolished soon so that the footings report can be done, then submitted to council. Fun and games I am sure.

netadelle · May 28, 2009 11:38 pm

After much prodding we got our footings variation report on Monday. It was $14,000 over

and the kids would end up with a 2mtr high retaining wall 80cms behind there bedroom windows

So we have put in a variation to have the garage lowered by 60cm (another $5000), this will hopefully raise the back of the house up, and the footings should only be another $7,000, that is above the $20,000 listed in the contract. Then the kids will only have a 60c high retaining wall outside there bedroom windows.

So now we have to start all over again, the variation for lowering the garage has to be approved, the master plans have to be redrawn then the footings report done again.

Seriously my hair is falling out.

craigandamy · May 30, 2009 8:40 am

Thats no good netadelle. Hopefully you can get it organised soon.

Our Update - Spoke to Statesman on Monday to see how much longer until we have a start date. They said 4 more weeks and we would have full and final approval.

This got me thinking, given that there time frames are generally way out I am hoping that this time frame is much sooner so I can get a slab. finger crossed

sammy_sj · May 30, 2009 9:39 pm

Well our build has now slowed right down.

The only thing that happened last week was a visit from the electrician. This week we had a visit from the plumber.

Hopefully this week we at least get our roof tiles delivered!!! The house next door to us(same builder) had their bricks AND roof tiles before the frame even went up. We've had our bricks before the frame went up but no tiles

The house across the road is about 1 week behind us (also same builder) and they didn't have their roof tiles either so I wasn't so worried.... but when we went today they had their tiles delivered. I was thinking that they would have brought them up on the same truck especially since they are the same colour

I think I'm just really excited for the roof to be up as then they can get started on the bricks etc, etc.

Oh and CBA have to be the most unorganised bank ever!! One week they've lost one document the next week it's another

I'm getting really sick of them telling me there is just one more thing to sign!!!

Well thats my whinge over for the night.....sorry guys.......this house building stuff is like one big rollercoaster

craigandamy · Jun 02, 2009 2:39 pm

just had statesman on the phone telling me that there will be 135t of soil that will need to be removed when the foundations have been dug!!!!

they must have stuffed up with this and 13.5t of soil...they also said that it would be 10 trucks. When I questioned them on it the person said "you have deep foundations"...

Sammy as how much soil did they remove from you block?

sammy_sj · Jun 02, 2009 10:17 pm

Geez that sounds like alot. I reckon we had maybe 2 big trucks full of soil (truck size I'm talking the ones that normally deliver the soil.... like the Garden grove size trucks) How much are they saying it's going to cost to remove the soil??

So how far underground are you builiding your house????

clm1982 · Jun 02, 2009 10:30 pm

I hate to put you on a downer but 13.5 tonne of soil is not alot, it seems like it but its not really. It would only end up being about a small trailer load. We used 2 tonne of soil just to concrete the footings on our shed and 2 tonne was only a small pile of dirt. So id have to say 135 tonne would be correct. We didnt get our soil removed as we have 2.5 acres we just spread it around the property. Are you able to do that instead or is your land average size?

I understand your frustration with all the extra money, so far statesman have charged us $1000 for rock rigging and an extra $660 for our septic tank and im sure it wont end there unfortunatly.

sammy_sj · Jun 02, 2009 10:34 pm

Oh and on a brighter note for me.... DH friend from soccer is a brickie and turns out he is doing our house

Apparently he had to go pick up the plans tonight so hopefully we'll have some sort of brickwork by the end of the week

craigandamy · Jun 03, 2009 8:23 am

Late yesterday I got a phone call back from the engineers at statesman. I informed them of my dismay at removing 135t of soil from the block and that I wasnt building the White House.

Anyway, they assured me that the tonnage was right and explained how they worked it out. Our footings are 750mm x 250mm so rather deep and for everyr lineal meter there is 500kg of soil. they told me it would be $16/t to remove, this is when I explaied that they should be paying me fo the soil.

And the beauty is we get another credit of 2k which is all helpful for fencing.

As we have a rather large block we are getting the soil kept, towards the back of the block. It will be usefull for the shed foundations, aound the house (driveway) and entertaining area. Also we can use it to backfill where the gardens may be.

Sammy, you have half a roof also, so congrats. ::celeb::

On another note when I was talking to them I asked how far along until we get a start date. The bloke said it was at council so another 1-2 months.....thinking he was talking crap...i rang the council and they said it was at the builders awaitng building consent..... :th:

Thats funny as the liason person from statesman said last week we would have full anf final approval in the next 4 weeks.........all we want is the slab and it would be good to get it in early July as our boy turns 2...

melanie02 · Jun 03, 2009 12:34 pm

Hi everyone

We have just finished building with Hickinbotham which is basically the same company as Statesman (construction services aust.)

We signed up in July 07 and the house was finished end of February 09

My advice to you is to make sure you keep on to them...ringing,emailing whatever it takes because we learnt the hard way that if you don,t then it will probably be a very long slow process

They were really good once the actual building started,but before that it was painfully slowwwwwwwwwww....
Don,t just assume that things are happening....we made that mistake when waiting for the engineers report on a variation that had to be made...after about 4 weeks of not hearing anything,we rang up and spoke to the engineer and he was furious with Hickinbothams because guess what...he didn,t know anything about it and hadn,t even seen the variation...well we were of course livid and told them that they needed to have it done asap (which they did .... only took 2 days!) Imagine if we hadn,t have rang up in the first place to query it :evil:

Anyway as a result of these sorts of problems and the apparent lack of communication in the office,it was 11 months before they started construction

The council were great and only took a few weeks for approval

We also found that it was better to ring the council direct to find out how the approval was going rather than ringing the office as they seemed to have no idea :roll:

Sorry for the rant.....but I,m sure if we had been on to them earlier then we wouldn,t have had to wait so long and I,d hate anyone else to have to put up with that.

There build time was pretty good though...ours is a large 2 storey and it took about 8 1/2 months and they even worked over Christmas.
We are extremely happy with the house and there really aren,t very many things they they need to fix.
We,ve been here nearly 3 months now

We had about 200 tonnes of soil removed from our block...well we actually kept some of it for the garden and we had someone else remove it for us as he knew someone that wanted some fill.

Good luck everyone with your builds and don,t forget we want to see lots of pics

Cheers Mel

sammy_sj · Jun 03, 2009 8:28 pm

craigandamy

Sammy, you have half a roof also, so congrats. ::celeb::

Yay how exciting :z:

DH just came home and said that his friend told him that they are starting the bricks tomorrow too. Hopefully the weather will hold out for the rest of the week so they can get a good start.

netadelle · Jun 03, 2009 9:13 pm

We had colour selections today. I got sick of asking "so how much does that cost?"

We got there at 9.30 and left at 1.30. I think the poor girl missed her lunch break. I thought we had everything decided before going there. It just all seemed to take so long, she had to keep going off into another area to 'check' things and 'look' for things.

We also thought alot of things where in our contract already, which weren't :::

We couldnt get the brick we wanted, so we made a last minute choice and went with the same colour scheme as alulei (it's a good thing she is in a different estate to us)

We thought the laminex we wanted was in the standard range, but it wasnt ::dizzy::

All up at the end of the appointment $5680.00 !!!!
$1855 for brick upgrade
$1653 to get a third coat of washable paint on the interior, and to have the cornices a different colour to the walls
$1409 for a microwave space, upgrade the laminate and pot drawers in the kitchen

So now we have to rethink some things again

netadelle · Jun 03, 2009 9:15 pm

We where quoted $11,000 to remove 700 tonnes of soil from our site. We have decided to have the garage lowered (an extra $5000) which will bring the back of the house back up, so we should now only have 50 tonnes of soil to be removed at a cost of $2000.

alulei · Jun 03, 2009 9:29 pm

netadelle

We where quoted $11,000 to remove 700 tonnes of soil from our site. We have decided to have the garage lowered (an extra $5000) which will bring the back of the house back up, so we should now only have 50 tonnes of soil to be removed at a cost of $2000.

Hi again netadelle!

Just a thought - people are often looking for fill and my mum has mentioned before that on freecycle (yahoo group) people have advertised it for free before if people come and remove it. Or an ad in the messenger or something? We were told it had to be removed that day so we didn't get time to really plan ahead, which stinks. The guy who removed our soil charged us $11/tonne for 100t. I thought that was a rip sine I heard they re-sell it for $22/tonne. But apparently not looking at everyone elses bills!! Worth a shot anyway, if you have a few weeks up your sleeve?

andystew · Jun 10, 2009 12:01 am

Hi all, Just thought I'd give you an update on our progress. So far, we have had no problems with Statesman - everything is moving along at a steady pace. We signed contract on 30th April, contract signed by builder returned to us on 6/5, the Surveyor for the engineer came last Thursday (4/6) and the Soil tests are being done tomorrow (10/6). I went to Council last Thursday to check to see if I have everything to submit our request for Demolition, and low and behold, behind the counter was an old friend of mine (who I didn't even know was working there). Luckily she is working in Developments at the moment, so hopefully she can keep an eye on our development applications and make sure that they keep moving. The house packing is moving along - we are starting to see walls we haven't seen for nearly 20 years.
Couple of quick questions, does anyone know approx. how much it is for the following upgrades (at selection). Two colours for interior paint, i.e. different colour for walls and different colour for cornices, doors etc.? Also, how much for upgrade to Silver bricks over the standard bronze ones? We have also been debating doing one of the Gold front doors - as our hallway will really lack any sort of natural light if we don't. We're also thinking of getting cupboard doors upgraded to have a pattern? Any clues to pricing on any of this stuff? ::dizzy::

netadelle · Jun 10, 2009 11:52 am

Depends how big your building is.

But my upgrade prices are pretty much what you are asking about.

The brick was an upgrade from bronze to silver.
Two get two different colours of paint was something like $260, for the cut in, but because we wanted a lighter paint we would need 3 coats.
The kitchen price is for a non standard laminate doors and laminate benchtop.

Just called them again, they have got the re-drawn master plans, they are with our colour consultant who will have them until Friday, then they will go back to the engineers.

sammy_sj · Jun 10, 2009 8:57 pm

We upgraded our front door and from memory it was about $570. Unable to help with the brick upgrade or cupboard pattern upgrade as we went with standard. With the paint we opted to have the 3 coat washable paint and that was an additional $1300 - Thats just one colour though so can't give a price there either. Was advised by a friend who is a painter that with only 2 coats of paint it can look a bit wishy washy depending on the colour so thats why we opted for 3. I didn't bother asking about a second colour as we'll probably just get feature walls done once we move in.

vid · Jun 15, 2009 4:25 pm

netadelle

$1653 to get a third coat of washable paint on the interior, and to have the cornices a different colour to the walls (

sammy_sj

With the paint we opted to have the 3 coat washable paint and that was an additional $1300.

I was interested in seeing your paint upgrade prices, we aren't building with Statesman but we were charged $2066 for "3 coat paint system (scrubbable deluxe finish) to living and garage" total: 295.10m2.
I'm a little cynical about this as to if we will get value for money, it seems like a lot of money for 1 extra coat of paint!

netadelle · Jun 15, 2009 6:25 pm

Well we dropped the 3rd coat of paint. My husband has promised me on pain of death that he will help me do a third coat of paint before we move in.

I told him it would be easier to get them to do it. I think he feels he can get me to drop it and not do the 3rd coat when we move in. But I am going to hold him to it.

Rang them again today, *big sigh* apparantly there head colour consultant is on holiday so the others are all stretched, so she hasn't finished with the master plans, so they havn't been sent onto the Engineers. It's tiring.

sammy_sj · Jun 15, 2009 9:22 pm

Hey Vid,

Definetly a bit of a difference in paint prices. I expected ours to be more than what it was so I was quite surprised. Ours is for approx 205sqm excluding the garage so your also getting a bigger area painted so the price may not be too bad after all.

Netadelle..... From what I recall you and craigandamy signed contracts at similar times. They are at final stages of council approval so Statesman seem to be taking their time with your house. I second what Melanie wrote.... you need to keep on at them to ensure they they are working on your file and that it's not getting closer to the bottom of the pile. ::angry::

Make sure you keep track of all the calls that you make and things you were told. Whenever I called them I always asked when things would be done by and made sure I followed up to ensure they were actually done by the time frame they gave. I think I read too many horror stories on here to let our house drag on. I've been doing the same with our SS so I can keep upto date with when everything will be happening. I had been calling him weekly but haven't spoken to him in a couple of weeks as the tiles and bricks are being done so time for another call this week. I sorta feel like I'm being annoying but I figure thats his job and at least I know where we're at.

Onto our house..... The brickie said that he'll be finished by Wednesday or Thursday this week. We went and had a look on the weekend and its looking great.... I'll post some pictures on my thread in the next few days. I'll give SS a call later in the week and find out whats next on the agenda. I'd imagine the next progress payment won't be too far away :::