A much needed update.....

Well its been a while since our last update and things have been moving along nicely....

First off, our settlement went through and the block was officially ours on the 24th June....Hurrah! Then on the 14 July we got a phone call to let us know that soil samples are in....... came back much earlier than expected. Apparently around our area there is a lot of clay, and if we ran into that, then the soil had to be sent over east for some analysis, yadda yadda yadda, 8 or more weeks later we possibly would of had a large site works bill. Anyhoo luck was with us, our soil was okay, our site costs weren't too extreme and 'J' is coming around tomorrow so that we could sign contracts. On the 15th everything was looked through, signed and sent away. Then we got a call from our CA, 'C', for our prestart meeting....which brings you up to date. :D

Our prestart was yesterday, and it took about 2 hours. The variations need to be signed and sent back in the morning. Then we have until September 11 to have everything submitted......deposit, finance approval and building permit. These are the 3 things that could push us back with starting, 2 things are up to the bank and one is up to the council....I guess we will have to get out the cattle prod and make sure they dont take their time! :D

So I guess this is the time I tell you about all the things we have chosen, and things we have done to our new house. Pictures will be compulsory.... so you can all 'ooh' and 'ahh' over it. :D

First up is the external colours:

*Roof style:vienna colour:graphite

*Bricks: Burnished red/cream mortar

*Gutters/Fascia: solver 'weathered copper'

*Garage door: Jaspar

*Render: dune

*Feature render: Jaspar

*Front door: Dulux 'Box Red'

Time for some "Oohing" people!!

The internals are the tiles, bench, cupboards, they are:

Ensuite: *floor-stone grey *wall-matt white *border-contempo grey *vanity top-platinum micro *cupboard-licorice linea

Bathroom: *floor-stone grey *wall-matt white *border-striscia grey *vanity top-rock salt *cupboard-licorice linea

Kitchen: *wall-matt white *bench tops-ash dust *cupboards-licorice linea

Now the "ahhing"

The selection for all these were on boards (about 8 different ones) with all tiles/laminates assigned for the three areas. All we had to do was just chose a board that we liked best. We could not change anything....ie/ if we liked kitchen bench from board 2 and ensuite tile from board 4, we couldn't mix together, it was all of one or nothing. I don't mind the ones we have, its just not the ones I really wanted....(maybe on the next house ;) )

Door frames and trims will all be solver 'studio white'..... no internal painting is done by the builders, we will need to do that after hand-over.

Things we changed/added: *Deleted all brick paving, will do that after h/over with liquid limestone (credited)*added door to bed1's WIR & deleted shelf and rail *added a door to laundry *added a door to rear garage, and most importantly *added d/washer recess, (and contrary to someone's beliefs....it is not my hidey-hole... or the kids for that matter! )*Relocated trough to w/m spot *lowered taps and p/point to accomodate bench *lowered oven stack, so that I can actually see into microwave recess ( darn short people!) and added pot drawer under....albeit smaller to accomodate lowered oven.....should be ample room for all those trays :D lol.

For the electrical we only added a couple of extra lights, moved the theatre one (for d/lights after h/over), upgraded most single gpos to doubles and added extra doubles in some rooms. We also added conduit boxes for tv/phones/exhaust fans.

All up we only added an extra $4k, give or take... so not to bad.

The kids dont seem to be too interested in anything at the moment, took them out to the block, and we checked out the holes (from soil testing......2 metres deep)...they didnt want to get out the car, the red front door they barely glanced at.... so we haven't shown them the internal colours as yet. I wonder what they will do when we start cheering and getting excited at taps and portaloos on the property, probably wonder if we have truly gone mad. :?

While we (I mean "I") were working out our front colours, I 'photoshoped' the front in our preferred colours, here is the side and front view.

Okay 'ooh' and 'ahh' again please people! :D lol

I am not sure if the roof or the gutters are the right colour, we only had a 3cm x 2cm colour strip for the gutter colour, and the roof tile changes colour, we grabbed a sample tile at the 'home expo'....sometimes it looks black, others dark brown, and sometimes even a greyish black. So we did the best we could, if it does look weird after its built, I guess I have a 'handyman'.....(or at the very least 'a man'?)....to repaint it!!