Our Custom build with Rossdale - 6 months later

woodvillesouth · Mar 21, 2010 4:33 pm

TamDaz

Everything looks wonderful Woodville South. Really original design and it must be so satisfying to know you did it all yourselves. I hope your enjoying your home too and not just spending all your time working. Hopefully your builders will get themselves into gear and fix the last things that need fixing. Top stuff!

Thanks TamDaz. Yes it is really rewarding to look at things and know we did them. To be honest it has been abit crazy and it is really only the last couple of weekends that we have been able to sit back and relax and enjoy it!

saoye · Mar 24, 2010 11:19 am

Hi Woodvillesouth,

How is your bamboo flooring holding up with the pets? I'm going to install the bamboo flooring after handover as well, but was just wondering how it's handling dog nails etc.

woodvillesouth · Mar 24, 2010 6:17 pm

Hi Saoye

The bamboo is absolutely brilliant. We love it. There are no marks on it at all yet. Our 2 year old has certainly put it to the test and it has passed. Our dog is normally an outside dog, so we don't have that to worry about, but there have been several times when our little boy has brought the dog into play and there are no scratchs. I love how it feels under foot as well.

Anna1 · Mar 24, 2010 7:42 pm

Love Love Love the fence

I'm absolutely going to that outside my daughters window - she is very artistic and the view would just be an extension of her. Did you just use blue board?

suh · Mar 24, 2010 7:44 pm

Fantastic job

woodvillesouth · Mar 24, 2010 8:49 pm

Anna1

Love Love Love the fence

I'm absolutely going to that outside my daughters window - she is very artistic and the view would just be an extension of her. Did you just use blue board?

Thanks Anna. Yes it is blue board we used. Pretty easy to do and not very expensive.

stegosaurus · Apr 09, 2010 5:06 pm

Hi Woodvillesouth

Congratulations on creating a beautiful home!

I almost bought a house in Glengarry street late last year but someone came in with a higher offer at last minute - so I bought a block of land (on the rebound

) in Croydon a couple of weeks later. I do love Woodville South though...

Anyway - slightly odd question for you - did you have to pay Charles Sturt for any damage to footpath during construction? If so can you remember how much?

Thanks

woodvillesouth · Apr 09, 2010 7:04 pm

stegosaurus

Hi Woodvillesouth

Congratulations on creating a beautiful home!

I almost bought a house in Glengarry street late last year but someone came in with a higher offer at last minute - so I bought a block of land (on the rebound

) in Croydon a couple of weeks later. I do love Woodville South though...

Anyway - slightly odd question for you - did you have to pay Charles Sturt for any damage to footpath during construction? If so can you remember how much?

Thanks

Hi Stegosaurus
Congrats on the purchase of your land. Our previous house was in Brompton so we actually looked at the Croydon area as well but couldn't believe our luck when this block came up in Woodville South. Who are you building with?

We had to have the crossover moved from one side of the block to the other so we had to reinstate the old single driveway, build the new double crossover and fix the footpath. Almost the entire footpath was wrecked from the trucks driving up on it (I think the demolition trucks did the most damage) so we just did the whole footpath across the front. Charles Sturt don't actually do the work, you have to get a contractor in to do the work after getting a permit from the council and then council come out and inspect it after to make sure you have done it to their standard. It is abit frustrating because it took us ages to finally get a concretor who would do the work. It seems that they have that much work half of them never even returned our calls let alone be prepared to come out and give a quote! I'm not sure how much the footpath cost us because we were billed for the crossover & that together and obviously the crossover would have been most of the cost. I'm not sure whether they expect you to do any repair work yourself as well.

robinred55 · Apr 09, 2010 8:14 pm

Hey woodvillesouth,

I love your design and your house looks great. It does help to see others' piccies because it gives the rest of us hope.

Your home is really beautiful. I hope you're enjoying it.

stegosaurus · Apr 10, 2010 2:55 pm

woodvillesouth

Hi Stegosaurus
Congrats on the purchase of your land. Our previous house was in Brompton so we actually looked at the Croydon area as well but couldn't believe our luck when this block came up in Woodville South. Who are you building with?

We had to have the crossover moved from one side of the block to the other so we had to reinstate the old single driveway, build the new double crossover and fix the footpath. Almost the entire footpath was wrecked from the trucks driving up on it (I think the demolition trucks did the most damage) so we just did the whole footpath across the front. Charles Sturt don't actually do the work, you have to get a contractor in to do the work after getting a permit from the council and then council come out and inspect it after to make sure you have done it to their standard. It is abit frustrating because it took us ages to finally get a concretor who would do the work. It seems that they have that much work half of them never even returned our calls let alone be prepared to come out and give a quote! I'm not sure how much the footpath cost us because we were billed for the crossover & that together and obviously the crossover would have been most of the cost. I'm not sure whether they expect you to do any repair work yourself as well.

Thanks woodvillesouth - v.interesting. My builder 'pointed out' to me recently that my footpath is in poor conditon (which presumably translates as "we are not going to pay to fix it once our trucks have munched it up"). Can't promise I won't harass you about this again in the future...

vid · Apr 10, 2010 3:23 pm

woodvillesouth

stegosaurus

Hi Woodvillesouth

Congratulations on creating a beautiful home!

I almost bought a house in Glengarry street late last year but someone came in with a higher offer at last minute - so I bought a block of land (on the rebound :lol:

) in Croydon a couple of weeks later. I do love Woodville South though...

Anyway - slightly odd question for you - did you have to pay Charles Sturt for any damage to footpath during construction? If so can you remember how much?

Thanks

Hi Stegosaurus
Congrats on the purchase of your land. Our previous house was in Brompton so we actually looked at the Croydon area as well but couldn't believe our luck when this block came up in Woodville South. Who are you building with?

We had to have the crossover moved from one side of the block to the other so we had to reinstate the old single driveway, build the new double crossover and fix the footpath. Almost the entire footpath was wrecked from the trucks driving up on it (I think the demolition trucks did the most damage) so we just did the whole footpath across the front. Charles Sturt don't actually do the work, you have to get a contractor in to do the work after getting a permit from the council and then council come out and inspect it after to make sure you have done it to their standard. It is abit frustrating because it took us ages to finally get a concretor who would do the work. It seems that they have that much work half of them never even returned our calls let alone be prepared to come out and give a quote! I'm not sure how much the footpath cost us because we were billed for the crossover & that together and obviously the crossover would have been most of the cost. I'm not sure whether they expect you to do any repair work yourself as well.

We built with Fairmont and I queried the damage to our footpath as I knew exactly which trucks did which damage, but basically it's "stiff bickies" THEY damage, YOU pay, not right to my way of thinking but not much you can do about it, I looked at the fine print in the contract and sure enough they cover themselves!

woodvillesouth · Apr 10, 2010 9:03 pm

Yep that's right, Vid, they certainly make sure that it's your problem.

No problems, Stegasaurus, let me know if you have any questions in the future. We kind of decided that since we were spending so much money on our new house, we might as well redo the whole footpath (perhaps could have got away with only doing half of it) because otherwise you end up with this nice house but an ugly footpath running across the front which spoils the look.

orangepool · Apr 10, 2010 9:17 pm

@@ OMG...there's so much to consider.......................................

woodvillesouth · Apr 10, 2010 9:18 pm

robinred55

Hey woodvillesouth,

I love your design and your house looks great. It does help to see others' piccies because it gives the rest of us hope.

Your home is really beautiful. I hope you're enjoying it.

Thanks Robinred. We are loving it. Good luck with your build. Nice to see there are a few other Rossdale people on here now. When we started we were the only ones so there was no-one to compare notes with. If you have any Rossdale related questions, feel free to send me a message.

robinred55 · Apr 10, 2010 9:20 pm

Thanks woodvillesouth,
I'm sure things will come up as we go along. We're coming to the fun stage- selections. Rossdale have you running all over the place. I feel fairly positive now though.

dearhouse · Apr 19, 2010 10:20 am

You have a beautiful home, Congratulations! Is that exposed aggregate next to your driveway? If so, do you mind telling me the cost? It's beautiful. Congrats again!

woodvillesouth · Apr 19, 2010 9:59 pm

dearhouse

You have a beautiful home, Congratulations! Is that exposed aggregate next to your driveway? If so, do you mind telling me the cost? It's beautiful. Congrats again!

Thanks dearhouse! No it is actually just just creek pebbles which we used as abit of a feature in both the front & back yard to break up the garden beds. We actually were going to have exposed aggregate for our driveway but it is not as popular in SA as it is elsewhere mainly because our soil in SA tends to cause concrete to crack a fair bit. It was hard to get anymore prepared to give a quote on it but it seemed to be around $110 psm. We ended up doing pavers because it was cheaper as we were able to lay them ourselves.

fitzy_02 · Jun 12, 2010 1:26 pm

woodvillesouth

Well our water tank is now in. We did that ourselves & luckily our SS has let us get it done prior to handover which might mean we can get just abit of water in it before we move in to help with the garden. Otherwise we would have moved in during Sept and had an empty tank all summer. Originally we were going to have a slimline tank down the side of the house but once the brickwork went up we decided that we didn't have alot of room there but the backyard had heaps of space so we decided to go for a much bigger round one. We wanted a tank that was bigger than could fit through the access so we got it built on site and it cost less than the off-the-shelf tanks that the other companies offer. The company we used is called Taylor Made Tanks and they have been fantastic and so for anyone building in Adelaide, I can highly recommend getting them to at least give you a quote. PM me if you want the details.

Anyway, here is our 12,000 litre tank:
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Hi Woodvillesouth, Great house! I love your kitchen - the colours and finishes and how it's been put together - especially love the idea of the pantry door being concealed!
Now i just wanted to ask more about Taylor Made Tanks - we have just had a quote for 2 tanks - 1 x 35,000L (build-on-site) located up the backyard as we have a large space for it. They have made suggestions to plumb the whole house to the tanks so we can ultimately be self-sufficient. They seem to have offered the best service in terms of coming out and talking to us, and the best laid-out(explained) quote that we have seen from anyone. Out of 5 places we asked to quote, only one other has got back to us. It's quite a bit of money and originally we were only intending to get the big tank to store for the garden and supplement toilets in the house. Not sure if it's worth the outlay?
Is your tank for garden and house? How much of the house is plumbed? Quality of their tank?
Thanks

woodvillesouth · Jun 12, 2010 6:56 pm

Hi fitzy

Our tank is plumbed to both our toilets and the laundry and also used for the garden including our subsurface system under the lawn. During summer we turned the house off for a while so we could use it for the garden which was needing abit more water than normal because it was all establishing. Since March the tank has been pretty much full so it is definately worth getting the biggest tank you can afford (financially & yard space wise) because it fills up quickly if you have a decent roof catchment but gets used quite quickly if using it for the house. I wish we had gone abit bigger to help it last abit longer in summer. Taylor Made were excellent and the tank seems to be of very good quality. We would happily recommend them.

coolm · Oct 14, 2011 2:27 pm

Congratulations on your new home.
We are about to embark in this journey ourselves, with a custom design by Rossdale. Your blog will be very helpful