Frame stage complete

Finally, the frame stage was completed on the 3rd of April. To avoid any time wasting, I organised for a frame stage inspection the next day with John the building inspector I hired and the builder. It was a fruitful event as there were a couple of errors that the inspector spotted after a thorough inspection. We are still waiting for a verdict on the report of the inspection which would come out on the 15th of April.

The Below picture was taken today. There were some carpenters working on the fixing of the frames and some windows were up on the ground floor.

Bumped into a family of roos enjoying the view at the park opposite the property

Looking at them just makes my stomach rumble for some Kangaroo steak.

Frames up!

Finally frames up on the 21st of February 2014. We went with Victorian blue from Boral bricks because we liked the colour.

 

Taken 26th March 2014

 

 

 

Conventional raft salb

Our soil report came back H so we could choose either the conventional raft slab or waffle pod slab. After much research, we chose the conventional raft slab over waffle pod slab because we preferred our house sitting over steel and concrete rather than polystyrene and some concrete.

Concrete base and stiffened beams laid on the 22nd of January and concrete poured on the 23rd of January.

Temporary fencing

Temporary fencing done on 26th of November

Our block

My Mrs and I were looking around for a block of land to build our dream home and came across a 4 year old established estate known as Mosaic estate located in Lalor. By the time we managed to locate the land agent, the land that was left were either not to our liking or we had to settle for re-sold land. Undismayed, we registered our interest with the land agent and left it as that. The very next day, we received a call and the land agent told us that there was a block of land that opened up due to an unsuccessful finance application from the previous party. We went and had a look and decided on it almost immediately.

So here we are with this block of land and off we went to look for a builder. To cut the long story short, we put in a couple of non refundable deposits with 2-3 builders. We were not impressed after putting the deposits down because none of them could tell us a fixed price. We were told that we will only find out what the final damage will be until the drafting of contracts stage which would already set us back a couple of thousands after having to put another deposit down for engineering and soil survey. It is as good as having to say yes to the final amount after already paying them so much money in deposits in fear of losing the deposits. We found out that this is how a lot of builders work now a days.

We chanced across a custom builder known as AGL homes who could tell us a fixed price straight away on a turnkey project on our piece of land. This meant we did not have to worry about fencing and landscaping and the best thing is everything is customisable. The price they gave us we could live with and at least we had the peace knowing that we will not be hit with any other mickey mouse charges which a lot of unscrupulous builders do. We met them in October and started work on the design we liked and what we want included in the house. There were a lot of discussions that took place and we finally agreed on a plan and design on the 21st of November. We settled on a 40SQ double storey house. Here is the layout of the house plan we agreed upon


Ground floor

First floor