Week Five: Frames

Nothing much to report during week four, since it was spent waiting for the slab to dry. Didn't really warrant a blog post, so I skipped straight to week five.

Our frames were delivered yesterday (Thursday) and tradies arrived today (Friday). Half of the walls were done by the end of the day. Our site supervisor said that there was a strong possibility that they would come on site tomorrow to continue, as the framers have a lot of work lined up and are hoping to push ahead with their jobs. No complaints from us!

Work is anticipated to finish next Tuesday or Wednesday, and our super supervisor has done his best to ensure a smooth transition into brick-laying. Crossing our fingers!

Construction has certainly been very smooth.

Here are the pics...

Week Three: Concrete Slab Completed

Busy week! We had tradies onsite Monday and Tuesday preparing the slab. Tuesday afternoon also brought out the termite dude, he mentioned something about laying the termite columns or something. Sounded intriguing, but I didn't ask for further clarification.

No one on site Wednesday, but from today (Thursday), cement trucks arrived at 7am and the slab was poured and finished by around 1pm. Job well done!

We've already received notification about the next progress payment invoice is coming our way. We finally spoke to the site supervisor for the first time this week and we've been told that frames have been ordered. We're looking at 1 week for the slab to dry, then 2 weeks for the frames to start going up.

I wish that I'd asked about our estimated PCI date, but didn't want to peeve him off further. He's already cranky with us regarding a misunderstanding regarding our neighbours fence. I wont bore you with the details, but suffice to say he was only passed our file 3 days prior to the phone call. So, two site supervisors in two weeks. Hoping that's not an ongoing trend.

Here are some progress pictures that have been taken throughout the week.  It was wet and overcast, but luck seemed to be on our side.

Authors note: I conveniently live 5 minutes from the block and have to pass my street to get to our current lodgings. Still, can't help feeling like a stalker ;-)

Tuesday 5th July

Thursday 7th July

Week Two: Concrete Piering and Slab Prep

And we're rocketing along. Popped down this morning to check on the progress, and we're a little excited about this development. Nothing had initially happened since last week's update, so was very happy to spot the trucks and machinery this morning.

We also received our email this week that confirmed we'd officially moved into construction.

Here are this week's pictures.

Week One: Site Scraped and Leveled

WEEK ONE

Okay, we're officially into week one of construction. I'll attempt to do a weekly progress update from here. Email received this week from Wisdom confirming that we've officially moved into construction.

Hubby headed off to work on Tuesday morning and noticed a Wisdom ute turning into our estate. Thought it was interesting.

I did a drive-by the same afternoon to find that the site had been scraped and leveled, ready for plumbing and slab. Nice!

We haven't heard from our site supervisor yet, I'm guessing we'll hear in the next week or two. I'm told to expect an expected move-in date around now, so looking forward to hearing that (as well as the inevitable future forehead slaps due to more 'delays').

Oh well... gotta have hope!

Some photos:

All Wrapped Up

Variations are paid, sign is up and we have excavation starting next week. Happy days! Heres some pics of our sign, our final plans and final documents.

 

Pretty sign...

  

Final Floorplan

 

Facade

Facade 

 

Roof Pitch

 Colour Selections Exterior

 External Paint Colours

 Door Colours

 Internal Colours

Complications... Wine Needed.

Our rapid progress has unfortunately been halted... again. We knew we had a problematic block. Cul-de-sac front, sewer at the back but we chose a house design that apparently 'fit like a glove'. By choosing a floor plan with a smaller-than average depth (19 metres), we were under the impression that we would avoid complications with the sewer line which runs across the back of the block. We were told that we were classed as "Building Adjacent to Sewer".

Engineering report came back 2 weeks ago.

Guess what? Hmmmm. Yep.

The slab falls within the zone of influence, which we knew (within 900mm of the sewer pipe). Half of the house encroaches upon this area of influence (but not over the sewer itself) so we were initially told by builder and plumbing contacts through hubby's work that extra piering would be required in this instance. We had a $5000 contingency within our tender to provide this.

Unfortunately, our builders engineer has instead requested complete encasement of the sewer, which through my research can be upwards of $30 000. Pretty devastated, as our incredibly flat block of land has the potential now to have amassed a ridiculous $50 000 total in site fees.

Waiting on the plumbers variation to come back now, and not looking forward to it :-(

So, I will leave you with this inspirational quote. #foreheadslap

Bubbling Along Quite Nicely!

Pleased to report that our DA application was submitted on the 8th March,  and we received word that council approved our plans today. 4 week turnaround was definitely unexpected, but a very pleasant surprise!

Plans will be stamped and Wisdom will be in touch next week regarding the next steps involved.

It's getting closer! Cheers to Wollondilly Council for their fast service and kudos to Lee S from Wisdom, who has been absolutely amazing in chasing up the council and keeping us updated.

In the meantime I'll leave you with this... dedicated to our future neighbours.

Administration Woes

We have officially hit the 24 week mark since we signed up with our builder. 6 months, and we are still nowhere near starting construction.

So far, it has taken:

• 11 weeks to receive the initial tender (told 4 weeks)
• 2 weeks for tender revision: change of facade (the only change/ delay caused by us, the client). 
• 11 1/2 weeks to receive the architectural plans, with the final two weeks of this time frame spent amending errors made by the draftsman (told 4-6 weeks) 

 Plans were finally approved, so we headed down yesterday to sign the paperwork and pay our next deposit. We are then advised at the beginning of the meeting that the compliance team picked up on a major issue with our driveway, the problem being due to the cul-de-sac and subsequent house set back.

CDC/private certifier will no longer be an option due to this, so we are left with no choice but to get our DA approval through council. This was unexpected and soooo disappointing. 7-10 days DA approval has now turned into another 6-8 weeks waiting on council to approve us... or not, which may be the case.

Needless to say, I folded up the bank cheque I'd busted my arse to get organsised the day before, placed it back in my purse and we left with our two overtired children, as we needed to talk and consider our options.

I'm happy to report that management contacted us a few hours later and our file will be passed on to the director at Monday's management meeting, in the hope that some things can be expedited for us.

I'm really happy with this course of action and really can't fault Wisdom Home's customer service. They have an extremely high sales volume at present and all calls and emails have consistently been returned in a timely fashion, in particular our tender presenter.

Hoping for some good news soon!

In the meantime, here are some images...

FACADE

A nearly identical facade on a local home. Ours will have a double garage rather than the twin, and we'll have a cedar infill between the portico and fascia, as well under the fascia to the left of the portico.

EXTERNAL COLOURS

We are aiming for the following colour combinations. The following image is a mock-up with our preffered choices

Monument Colourbond Roof
Austral "Urban One" bricks in Pepper
Portico render will be "Dune"
Caboa stained cedar infills and garage door

PLANS: Florence Facade

 PLANS: Front and Side Views

PLANS: Floor Plans

Patience is a virtue.

Long time between updates because the tender process was incredibly, frustratingly slow. We paid our initial deposit on the 22nd August and it took 11 weeks for Wisdom to come back to us with the price.

We spent much of that time doing drive-bys, gazing forlornly at our block of land. The only thing of interest within those 11 weeks was some low-life dumping rubbish on our block the day AFTER a scheduled community council clean-up. Nice. Great fun to tidy, especially after dogs had rummaged through the bags of dirty nappies and copious amounts of takeaway, leaving it in the condition below.

Word to the wise... when dumping rubbish, don't leave identifying letters, invoices and paperwork buried within the broken garbage bags. Whoops!

Tender came in at $10 000 above what we were quoted. We can thank the saline-affected soil, building adjacent to the Sydney Water sewer line and H-class conditions for that!

During our time waiting, I also did a lot of research into the 'Promenade' facade we originally had costed. I was able to get my hands on a 3D representation of the facade and we immediately changed our minds (after dry-heaving, of course). We're now going with the lovely 'Florence' facade. So back to the tender office to make the necessary changes. Luckily this only took a bit less than 2 weeks.

 These are our current working/draft drawings.

We'll need some cut and fill done, as well as some drop-edge beams at the back and right hand side of the build. Luckily we can go through CDC rather than council regarding approval to build. Now just waiting on formal house plans to be drawn up. The fun begins! 

We also received our colour folder in the form of a USB stick as soon as we accepted the tender.We think we've narrowed down our external choices. 

Austral Urban One 'Pepper' brick

Same brick on a project builder display home, along with 'Dune' cement render.

So, that's it for now. Cheers and thanks for reading! Now off to trawl the internet for more colour ideas ;-)

Building with the Robbo's...

Hello all! I've started this blog as a way of keeping friends and family up-to-date on the progress of our build, as well as serving as a way of preserving the process for us along the way.

We've purchased a 670 sqm block of land in the Wollondilly Shire. We settled on the land last week and paid a deposit on a house through Wisdom Homes about 2 weeks ago. Just waiting now for the tender presentation. Very exciting!

I'll leave you with some images of the Prosperity 26. The display home is at Oran Park and the design fits our block perfectly. We have a large cul-de-sac fronting our block, which complicates the home setback but we found a floor plan that fits like a glove.

View from the land...

Floor plan Prosperity 26

Prosperity 26 Display Home Images