Land Settled!!!

We setttled on our land last Thursday, so we officially own our own little piece of Australia!!! I suppose we should welcome ourselves to the world of debt...

Not a huge deal happening on the house front at the moment... our soil and contour reports are back, we officially require a H class slab... we were hoping for the M but at least it wasn't a P!!

We have approved our fourth and final deposit variation, so we should be moving onto booking our colour appointment soon.  

We will leave you with a birds eye view of our lovely little plot!!

Pre-walkthrough colour selections meeting – upgrades upgrades upgrades!!!

We had our pre colour selections meeting this week, originally it was scheduled for the 26^th but we couldn’t wait so we pushed it forward. We want to try and be super quick on our end and if we go over the 150 day fixed price period then it would be no fault but their own lol! Anyways we walked away from the meeting feeling a number of emotions… excitement, disappointment and confusion!  =/

Ok so first things first, the meeting provides the opportunity to go through exactly what’s included and what is classed an upgrade… and just about EVERYTHING we wanted was an upgrade…  I was ready with my pad and pen and wrote down the prices of upgrades that related to us… some we will get, some we won’t. 

 The biggest shock to us was the stone benchtop – we didn’t realize that we only had a selection of 6 colours from the Essastone range included in our Impressions package. If we want another colour from the Essastone, Cesarstone or Quantum Quartz range we will be charged extra.  I had already decided (prior to this meeting) that I wanted Cesarstone – Snow… when asked how much to upgrade we were blown away!  Safe to say we will be TRYING to pick one from the standard Essastone range as it will still give us the same look, but it’s not as white as the snow. 

Other than that, the standard range that they provide isn’t bad at all and we are quite happy to go with it.  We will be upgrading a few little bits and pieces though.  We will post our final upgrades and selections after our official colours meeting.

We’ve also spent the last couple of weekends looking at bricks.  In our colour selections folder, we were only given the brochures and standard inclusion list for Austral so we trekked out to Horsley Park to see what the bricks actually looked like… Out of all the standard bricks, we liked the Brampton from the Whitsunday range.  I must say that we didn’t fall in love with it, for the reason that the colour is baked on, so if it’s chipped then a yellow colour is seen – not the grey. Both of us were a little concerned about this so we decided to go see some houses built in this brick.

We managed to see one that was just built that was for sale, so we went up to see the finish and there were a lot of bricks chipped (which I guess brickies cant help!)  so we did some further research and noticed that some MDJ clients were selecting PGH or BORAL bricks… I used the meeting to ask about the option to use another supplier.  We can do so, provided we pay 300 to change.  Fine by us! In the scheme of things it's a small price to pay for what we want. 

We have since visited PGH and BORAL and we have both FALLEN in love with the PGH - Cement brick from the Foundations range.  This brick is coloured all the way through so chipping won’t be an issue.  Safe to say I think we have finally decided on this one.  

Other than the above, we don’t have much more to report on, land should be settling this week and we decided to go to the Sydney Home show on Sunday… we picked up quite a few little ideas with regards to colours in our kitchen, outdoor decking, heaps of brochures for plantation shutters, I’ll let the hubby do his ‘purchasing’ thing with all these suppliers!!!!

Over and out!

House decided and Land registered!!

Ok so it’s been a while since we last updated you on what’s been happening and let’s just say there have been a few movements!

Firstly we have decided on the house we are going to build.  As mentioned previously we were both leaning towards a McDonald Jones Homes and that’s the one we decided to go with.  We are building the Havana 3 with the Tropicana façade =) We accepted the proposal on Easter Saturday and placed the deposit a few days later.   They were able to ‘come to the party’ and offered us a deal we couldn’t resist! YAY for us.  Right now we are waiting on the soil, contour & other reports on the land to come back so that we can get an accurate indication of what the site costs will be…    We are really hoping that we need an M class slab, even though we have budgeted for a H class one… the extra $$ will go a long way! We are also in the process of finalizing the changes we made to the plan – and believe me we have made a few! Our rep said that it’s almost a different house!   Probably not the best piece of advice for people wanting to build, but we sort of had no choice considering the restriction in width we had on our land…

Secondly, we received the official notification from Landcom saying our land has registered!  It was a few month’s late but that didn’t bother us at all.  We are planning to settle on or before 26^th May - we are just waiting on our bank manager to finalise the loan docs and send them over and we are on our way to officially owning our own piece of Australia!

Thirdly and lastly for this update, MJH sent through our colour selections folder last week. We’ve been through it and both got very carried away and excited about all of the choices.  We had to remind ourselves not to get too excited as it can be very daunting having so many things to choose and so many upgrades to consider!  We are going to take it one step at a time and try and stick to the standard where we can, but some things we know we will be upgrading.  We will be visiting a few suppliers this weekend to see some of our favorite selections in person – it’s amazing how different a sample can look on a brochure rather than in real life!  Our walk through with a MDJ rep is booked for 26^th May… stay tuned for the outcome!

We had a good play on the envisage website (http://www.studiom.com.au/)  and FINALLY came up with the façade colour schemes below:

Hopefully we don’t change our minds on this one! So far we are extremely happy with MDJ - they have kept us up to date at every step of the way. They even sent us a nice sms on Friday telling us that our colour selections book is in the post.

Stay tuned… more updates coming shortly!