The Roof, The Roof, The Roofers are on fire!

It's all moving along so fast these days! Each time we visit it's hard to believe what we are seeing!
So since my last post our roofers has been working hard at it and completed out roof! Yay! We love the colour so one less colour worry down! 
It is really quite amazing, considering the amount of rain we have had of late, that anything has been done at all! Just look at our moat! There's proof right there. 

The Moat

Derek and I were in there the other day and I was just thinking is it going to be big enough? It looks so small when you are looking at it without walls and it is just planks of wood stuck together and windows jammed in large spaces. The roof seems to make it feel darker as well. Not so light and breezy as before. But people have been assuring us that once the plaster and things are in it will feel much bigger and very different. Derek very much scolded me for thinking that too! "It's 35 squares Ams, don't be ridiculous!"


Last week the plumbers had been through and roughed in the plumbing for us. So my lovely little bro Dan came down to use his expertise as a plumber and point out to us where certain things are NQR! 
There was a list, albeit luckily for us not a large one. There was one major, major item that had been stuffed up on though! In our butlers pantry (ehh yay! I love saying "my butlers pantry" I feel so aristocratic!) we had PD put in the plumbing provisions for a sink. I do not know yet if I actually want one in there, so we plumbed it up anyway in case I do down the track. So Dan went in and stood there staring for a minute, I was like "what's wrong?", at which he informed me we have no waste outlet (drain) for the sink. There is hot and cold taps but no waste! Massive "UH OH"! All drainage, sewage, grey water points go in before the slab is laid. This one did not. Not good for PD, whom I informed of this yesterday, as now they will have bore a hole in the slab to put in the waste, apparently this is a rather large and expensive job which needs doing before bricking up.
It was lucky that we discovered this now as it could have been a horrendous mess had it been figured out any further down the line.    


You will also notice in the below pictures, that the windows have been installed on the second level and we have been wrapped up with insulation to keep us warm in the Winter and cool in the Summer.

In my conversation with our super site supervisor yesterday, I let him know about our plumbing wishlist. Whilst he let me know that our bricks were being delivered this week, although due to the Christmas break nothing will be started in the bricking department till around mid January.
Slightly nervous about bricks sitting around for that long, then again, it technically isn't my money that will be wasted if they grow legs and walk off. I just hope they don't get pinched, as we don't want two colours of bricks used if they have to replace them out of a different batch in the new year.


This will be my last post for the year so Derek and I would like to wish all our avid readers, family and friends and very Merry Christmas along with a safe and happy New Year!
We hope you visit our blog next year for more adventures of building our dream home!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year  

Nollaig Shona Duit

Slainte

Amy and Del

Stories of Trusses and Gutters

Very short one today.


Just really wanted to update the photos as we have now recived Trusses for the roof line and guttering around the second story.. Oh yeah, and we have a second story! Yay! 
The windows are all in on the ground floor now too.
It is just flying up so fast! Our guys are really putting the hard yards! 10 days between the Slab invoice and the Frame invoice! Some one is looking forward to their holidays!
Off to a Christmas party tonight.. I imagine all these Christmas parties that I have coming up are going to hamper my lurking efforts at the house! But then again.. where there is a will there is a way! Stay tuned for more updates and pics..


Over and Out


Ax

Second story done, Trusses waiting to be put up.

Front door frame has been put in

Scaff has arrived and been put up 

Trusses are up, although it's difficult to see them

Windows added

Guttering added

Beloved admiring his sliding door on his Theatre room

Clickety clicks we have some pick up sticks!

We have wood that has been nailed together by the hand of many a man;

It gives shape to our dream of a building big on our little land;

But it resembles that of pick up sticks;

We can't help to keep looking at it just for kicks;

Seems the supervisor was telling us the truth;

Now its our turn to give you the proof;

Through it though the breeze can still flow;

As you can see in the pictures below.

Its in cement now...

On Friday 12th November, I was again husband-less as he was off gallivanting with work colleagues. So instead of heading straight home and getting into the wine too early, I thought I would swing by the now-scraped and piped dirt to see if any thing had happened in the days since we had last visited.

We knew that the proposed date for the slab laying had been the 10th November and we had been down the Monday before and noticed the supplies there and waiting, indicating that it was only a matter of time before we would be well and truly cemented in.

True to their word I arrived to see to a grey mass covering our plot! Yippee! We were cemented!

I got to have a quick walk around it and a look before the storm came on in and rained down on me! Note amazing pictures of sunny storms! Always an interesting sight!

Colour Selection for Bathrooms and Kitchen

Kitchen

Cupboards - White Hi-Gloss Vinyl Wrap

Benchtops - Caesar Stone "Osprey" and Laminex "Rock Salt"

Splashback - "Toffee Fingers"

Bathrooms

Wall Tiles - Sandstone colour

Floor tiles - Mocha colour

Benchtops - Caesar Stone "Latte"

Cuboards - Formica "Fini Chocolate"

Features - Pebble - master ensuite shower only, Stackstone - Under mirrors (not shown here)

Magical visions in the last week

View pictures from bottom to top

Materials for the slab have been delivered

Land has been scraped and the Porta-loo and pipes are in

There was movement at the station for the word had got around...

that there had been people at our block moving dirt around!

Yep you heard it right! We have movement YAY! We also have a porta-loo and a rubbish bin made out of temporary fencing! Woop Woop!

Last weekend as we were on our way to Sarah's 30th - Happy Birthday Sarah! (Although she doesn't read the blog I still like to send the shout out)

We popped into the estate for a quick drive around with Mum and Dad only to find a big yellow digger! I did not think I could ever be excited about dirt moving machinery but there you have it folks.. I was excited!

The fact that there was a digger has now made me want to go down there every day to see what has happened next.

Being Cup week I had figured with the public holiday being on the Tuesday, that most tradies would not be around on the Monday to do anything. Little did I know that the dirt moving and toilet delivering fairies were working their magic over out little piece of silt!

Curious to see it again, the digger I mean, I popped down again on my way home from work on Wednesday to find that the land had been scraped in preparation for a slab and the loo had been delivered. I was overjoyed and marveled at this vision for about 20 minutes, especially seeing as it was completely unexpected. Sad I know.

Del had not been with me at the a fore mentioned visit as he was off being wined and dined by Google, so on Friday evening he wanted to go there on our way home again. To quote the sticker "MAGIC HAPPENS"! It really does!

We rubbed our eyes to make sure we were seeing clearly because we had PIPES! Pipes people! Oh what a wonderful sight! Again with the sad..yeah yeah! But PIPES! Drainage pipes! (I am doing a little chair dance as I write this because I am so excited!)

We walked all over the house imagining the rooms and making sure our delightful pipes were in the correct places, (because we are so down with building houses and we know everything there is to know) as far as we could tell anyway.

Del made sure the porta-loo was in full working order, we can not have tradies not being able to pay their penny now can we?

Then we set off home for a celebratory wine and a high five that our dream was under way!

In other news, we have had a phone conversation with our Site Supervisor, Michael. Seems like a nice chappy so far. He told me to save his number in my phone and welcomed me to call him any time with questions. Poor guy obviously does not know me yet and may live to regret his invitation to call him! So far I have no questions so he is in the clear for now.

We have also visited some furniture stores recently to have abit of a look around around at couches. Just mainly to see what we will be up for in having to purchase 3 new sofa suites so I can budget aptly.

We popped into Plush and found 3 suites we really really like. We spoke to the woman there for a good 45 minutes about designs, materials, sizing and pricing. She was extremely helpful and informed us that we can purchase in the Christmas sales and they can make to order then store our order in the warehouse until we are ready to have it delivered! What great news and great service!

We took home all our information and mulled over it for a week or so. Then popped into a different Plush store had a chat to the fella there and he gave us a quote of what he could do for us, seemed reasonable, and was the same deal with ordering, storing and delivering. I am getting fairly excited at this point as we are drawing nearer to settling on the couches!

We looked in a few other furniture stores, as many as I could get Del into with the promise of a Chocolate Sundae after, and we kept coming back to the Plush suites as being the best of the bunch.

I spent last Sunday drawing up our rooms to scale and putting the couches in them, rearranging the formations, making them larger and making them smaller. All because we don't get the benefit of being able to do the old masking tape trick and marking them out on the floor in the rooms!

We have found out that the couch Del wanted to have in his Theatre room was too large for the space, but being a modular we could just take one corner off it and it will fit perfectly! The couch in the family room can be one chair larger than we thought, also being a modular it is easy fixed as we just add an extra seat to the design. Last but not least, the couches in the lounge area, I have decide that I would like a three seater and two arm chairs to sit around the fire place in!

I have photos of all the goings on of late but I just don't have them with me today :( sorry about that folks.. But I will endeavor to put them up ASAP.

Over and out for now.

Ax

The Waiting Game

Its been nearly a month since my last post. Sorry for that, but there really hasn't been that much happening!
Alas, this post will be a short quick one merely stating a couple of facts and to show that I havent forgotten about you all!

In the last month we have pretty much been just... waiting.. waiting... waiting and ahhh waiting.
We have been waiting for the following:-

• The bank to come up with the full approval on the cashola they are going to lend us. This is still a work in progress. We are pretty much there now, but just waiting for the mortgage insurers to do their thing as our deposit was just short of what the banks require. I emailed our broker last night and apparently that should be in this morning and we will be good to go and on the money.
• The developer to approve our styles and colours, gardening plans and building plans. That came up trumps last week! Woo hoo no changes to be made! We have good taste obviously!
• Building approval and certs from the council. Once we have all these we are ready, setty, goee!

Something else interesting that we discovered last weekend was that we have water! Yay! South East Water have attached our front garden taps ready to go! We have fresh water and recycled water taps ready and waiting to be used. It was tempting to go down with a hose and hose the dirt, seeing as we are already paying for it all, but I refrained from looking like a complete tool in front of my new neighbours! I have photos of the taps on my camera, just incase you have forgotten what garden taps look like. I will post them in my next update.

Our street is nearly full of houses now (for the part of the street that is completed anyway, there is a section that is not finished and is in another stage to ours), there is only about 5 or 6 blocks left including ours that have not started building yet. Though I am fairly sure on our side of the street we are the last ones left to start building.

Our neighbour on the left (when you face the property), is Robbie, he is living in his house already and our neighbours on the right, we dont know them yet, they are nearly at lock up! Poor them they will have our construction noises early in the morning! At least when we move in most construction noise will be over and we will have a quiet little street.

We are so looking forward to seeing our house! Its so hard to imagine us in it because we physically can't see it yet! I am already mentally shopping for it all the time and working out budgets so we can buy everything we need and want when we have the keys!

I send Derek links to online shopping websites all the time and drive him nuts I am sure..but hey I now know where all the online bargains are! For homely bargains see me!

Ribeda ribeda that's all folks!

Ax

When Pewter turns to Toffee...

I know, I know.. I have been slack! I have excuses: busy, tired, writers block and the list could go on but I wont bore you with that.

September so far has been busy. We have had appointment after appointment, birthdays, weekends away etc etc.
So I will go back and start at the 31st August with our Electrical and Colour appointments.
Our first appointment was with M in the electrical department. With M we had the task of selecting where our lighting was to go throughout the house and what kinds of lights they were to be e.g. down lights, battens, chandeliers and so on. Where power points, data points and wiring was to be put in the house. Any extra home, sound devices and security systems were all added in this time too.
We sat with M for about 2.5 hours going through each room and putting in everything. We had done our own draft plan before seeing her so the job was slightly easier as we were fairly organised and had a rough idea of what we wanted. It actually went rather smoothly which pleased us, including M, to no end and she actually thanked us at the end of our appointment for being so easy to deal with! Bonus!
The price tag for the electrical appointment came in under what Derek had thought so that was also very pleasing to our eyes and ears!

After the appointment we were given a lunch break, lucky us!
Then, the afternoon went all pear shaped and ended in tears for this little duck..

We sat down with "F" (I will leave her name out for her own safety) at about 1.30pm. We were feeling good, full with a nice lunch and caffeined up on coca cola.
F's first words were "oooh whats that your carrying there?" I was carrying my piece of glass painted with the perfect colour of "Pewter Illusion" for my prized splashback that I had worked so hard on to choose, so that Derek would be happy with the kitchen colour choices I had made. This was the one colour we had finally come to agree on!
I explained to F what it was and got the response "You cant have that colour! You can have any Dulux colour you wish for except for the Metallics and the Pearls."
[Insert smile disappearing from Amy's face at the same rate as a bullet from a gun]
Noooooo! There is another word beginning with F that would have been fitting at this point but I kept it safely in my mouth seeing as we had only been sitting with F for a few minutes and she hadn't really got to know us yet.
(Background to this story is that I had been told by someone at the colour place that I could have ANY Dulux colour I wanted, I figured that would actually mean ANY! How ridiculously presumptuous of me!)

So we proceeded on with the appointment, starting with Bricks and all things external then moving onto all things internal right down to handles on cupboards. There were a lot of "No's" coming from F's mouth and quite a lot of whispered "F"'s coming from mine!

{Side note: I would not have had a problem with the no's if I had being given all the correct information at the start of this whole process! I feel that if we had have been told the boundaries as to what you can and cannot have at the start, the process would be much more refined and less damaging (to my brain and Derek's ear drums on the way home) and my research would have been built around these no's and in turn would have been "yes's". }

F also told us a lot that of the things we asked her about were supposed to have been decided at our tender appointment, like soft closing drawers and floor boards, and that she had no notice that this is what we would be having. This confused us immensely as we were told at the tender appointment that those things were done at the colour appointment! Someone was not being honest with us and I had a fairly good idea who that may have been at the time (someone whose name started with an F perhaps?), but gave the person the benefit of the doubt anyway.
At the conclusion of the colour appointment I walked away feeling a sense of loss and disillusionment, especially at not being able to have my Pewter Illusion and having to choose Crust instead. I don't even like crusts!

I am fairly sure F knew how majorly annoyed I was, I made that extremely clear in the three hours we were with her. I also made it very clear that we were paying a lot of money to have this house the way we want to have it and why should we not be allowed to have what we want? What were the reasons behind her no's? To that we got nothing. She had no answers but pretended, albeit badly, that she cared and she was sorry. Frustration station!
Upon going to this appointment, I was under the impression that the person helping us with these, seriously major, choices would have some knowledge, understanding, advice and ideas about interior design..Apparently not.. all we got were blank looks and impatient frowns when we were making our decisions too slowly.

In the car on the way home, my loss and disillusionment came to head and turned into tears of frustration and disappointment. After having put so much time and effort into planning into the whole exercise and then having to change so many things on the spot to something that I did not love and did not want!
Derek tried to calm me down by saying "calm down", which as many of you know, generally works like a hole in the head and I was riled even further. Then cake was suggested and I brightened a little bit.. but only a little bit!
That evening we went to Bunnings (AGAIN) and picked a new colour for the splashback. I really did not like Crust and it was playing on my mind that we only had 48hrs to get any changes through to F. So we settled on Toffee Fingers. I like Toffee, so was feeling much more comfortable about the choice. The colour is also similar to my beloved Pewter Illusion but without the metallic through it.

The following day, we had our appointment with the National Tiles people to make the decisions about the tiles for our bathrooms and laundry. Again, we went along completely organised and had the majority of our decisions made before we even arrived. We only had to make a small change to a feature area under the mirrors in the bathrooms as we had thought the mirrors met the vanities, but they don't. It turned out great though because there was a stack stone feature that Del loved in the display home we had seen and this was available for us to use as that feature. We were thrilled as we didn't know we could have it!
The girl at Tiles was also very very helpful with suggestions and ideas. She liked what we had chosen and also thanked us for being so organised. I was also in a better mood as I had noticed cake was available for clients on my way in and we got to have some along with a free cappuccino from the local cafe, in a break between tile choice and the quoting. That's what I call service!

The same day, at about 6pm, I sent a massive email to our Customer Service girl, K. I went over everything that was bothering us and asked for a lot of answers, not without a few sharp swipes about the previous days disastrous results. K got back to me by 10am the following day (awesome service point number 1), she replied to each question systematically in red font to make her answers clear (awesome service point number 2), and she answered everything in detail or stated that she would follow up and return to me with the correct answer (awesome service point number 3)! Amy was a much happier person following this email as you can imagine!

The following week on the 8th September we met with K to have our Contract appointment. This is the appointment where we go through everything and make sure its all we want and more. It is also pretty much the last opportunity to go through and make any last minute changes and adjustments to our plans and colours. There were a few things that needed moving and changing, but all in all this was a relatively easy and pain free process. K made any changes on the spot, so we could see them straight away. She even told me she would check up on why the Metallic paint is not available to us, but I am not getting my hopes up just in case.
We payed the balance remaining on the deposit and signed all the paper work and got our own set of signed plans and contracts!
Woo Hoo!! We are all set to go...nearly! Now all we are waiting for is council approval, developer approval, and our bank to deal with PD. When all this is done we will have an actual start date! They are saying now that it will be anytime before the 31st October! Yippee!!

I am feeling more relaxed about everything this week as it feels all under control. Fingers crossed it stays that way!
Even though we have had one not very pleasant experience, we feel that we have been lucky and well looked after in other areas so far. I have heard horrible stories on other blogs so we are feeling rather blessed at this stage.

Peace out
Ax

Footnote: I know it sounds like I am being a housezilla with regards to splashbacks and colours and floor boards etc, but I have good reason! Once they are in the house they are there to stay..there is no going back and changing it, unless of course, we win the lotto! Next blog I will do my best to be a little bit less ranty! I will also hope to provide you with some pictures of the colour choices we have made.

How would you like to pay for that?

So we have had somewhat of a productive week with some ups and downs, nothing to serious though.

We had a meeting with PD on Wednesday at which we went through all the structural changes to the house and locked in anything we needed or didnt need or could or couldnt have in the house. For example we added in a couple of internal doors that didnt come standard, we added a niche to our ensuite shower that we didnt know we could have, but we had to take out a niche that we planned for the Lounge as structurally they could not put it in. This was a bummer, I was really loving my mirrored lounge niche but had to say goodbye to it.. oh well you win some you lose some!

We also went through the site costs and it came as a pleasant surprise to us that they were going to be a couple of grand cheaper than what we had budgeted for! Bonus! The slab and these costs also cover cementing our alfresco and front porch areas too, another bonus! This bonus was in turn spent on internal doors! Doors are so expensive! Why is that? Your looking at about $300 a pop! Crazy!!! *Shrug* Eh, what can you do?

Next thing was the payment. We are thankful as we have been able to put a cash deposit down on the house rather than out of the mortgage so we will actually own a good bit of the house ourselves... well maybe just one room I guess and most likely the smallest one in the house....which would be the toilet!

One other sad part of this week was that I found out that we couldnt have a pool! Boo hoo!

Why? I know your all asking, because you were so looking forward to spending summer at the Dunne Resort weren't you?

Well because when we looked at our plans in the first instance we were thinking of a plunge pool. All good till I found out they have to be so many meters away from an easement and we dont have that much space between the house and the easment to fit the pool. So the next option was to look at running a lap pool down the side of our house. It seemed like a great plan, then the bubble was burst!

Firstly, lap pools are waaay more expensive than plunge pools, like $30K more expensive! Secondly, the way we have to have our house on the land only leaves a space of 2.8 meters down the side we were planning. I wanted to have the pool 2 metres wide and have a meter wide of paving by it, there goes that.

Thirdly, because it would have been so close to the house they would need to put deeper supporting anchors under the house and pool so that they would not cave in, this would cost thousands, we dont have thousands for anchors.. So bye bye pool!

On the bright side of all this, we have decided that the Dunne Resort will still be open for business, but just with a smaller option of an above ground Jacuzzi. Something to this effect:

Please be aware that the view is not part of the package!

We have also locked in our facade which is the Ashmont. Although the picture below is incorrect as ours is the flipped version, making the garage and the entry are on the right side of the house not the left, but it will give you a rough idea anyway.

Our plans are all locked in now too, so no more changes to them.

Also the wrong way, they are flipped too.

This week we have appointments for our colours, tiles and electricals. I am in charge of colours and Derek is in charge of electricals and we both did the tiles.. The appointments take about 3-3 1/2 hours each so it will be another week that will be full on and full steam ahead!

They told us on Wednesday that they will have a start date for us very very soon! YAY!

We are getting ridiculously excited now!

Untill next time,

Sayonara and Arriverderci

Ax

Mounds of Dirt and Minds with Designs

So not a lot to report over the last couple of weeks.

I'll go back to where I left off the other week, which was we were heading out looking at splashback and kitchen designs..

So that weekend went very well! We drove all over Melbourne pretty much on that Saturday!
We started off looking at kitchen places in the South East of Melbourne to get ideas on the splashbacks, cupboard's, doors and benchtops. We spoke with a few kitchen guys, who gave us some really good information on the differences between Laminex and Formica and Caesar Stone and Essa Stone. Helped a lot just to talk to people.

Then we headed into Frank Walker at National Tiles so I could show Derek my ideas for our tile selections. He was pleased with the choices I had made on the colours and size of the tiles and we agreed on a pebble feature as well! TILES CHOSEN - TICK!

Next we headed over to the Hopetoun Interior place again to just go over what we already knew on the colours/styles we liked for everything. But it was nice to really know what we liked and have a firmer grasp of the choices we will make before we get to our appointment.

Hopping back in the car the next place to visit was display homes! So off we headed out to Point Cook in Melbourne's West. We needed petrol, so a quick detour to the servo for fuel and a coke that apparently came with a "free - all I had pay was an extra $1" Snickers bar for afternoon tea. I complained about having it for all of about 10 seconds till all that was left in my hand was the wrapper...ooops!
We wandered through the Porter Davis homes there, at Point Cook, to look at colours and designs etc but nothing really tickled our fancy or stood out to us and we were still happy with the choices we had made! Good news!

Meanwhile back at the block....
Someone was kindly dumping soil on our land and not just a little either!
The mound was massive!!! See pic below...
That week Porter Davis were due to do our site and soil survey, but I received a phone call from our Customer Service Representative, K, to say that the survey could not be completed due to the mound blocking the surveyor!
Bummer.
So I had back and forth phone calls with the people down in Somerfield estate to arrange for a call to be put through to the site supervisor of Lot 86's block to get it removed. It took a few days but finally it was taken away! Although this, then in turn, delayed them with our results for the survey so we have had to put our Tender appointment with them back a week.

We have also arranged our colour selection appointment and our electrical appointment..
We are feeling quite daunted by the electrical appointment. We have to make decisions now as to where we want power points, light fittings etc etc and the list goes on and on.. Very daunting indeed especially when they don't give you prices for anything and we already know that 1 down light = $100 eeek! So that will be a fun and enormously expensive appointment I am sure..

We also visited Carpet Court last weekend and no we didn't see the Court Jester!
The service there was fairly lacking and we waited for about 20 minutes to be served! But, on the upside once we had the attention of the guy, his information was extremely helpful. He told us what the best choice would be out of the "Porter Davis Range" of carpets, adding after it "I probably shouldn't be telling you this but....." So we have bedded down our carpet selection now too! YAY!

Side tracking from house stuff for a minute -

Last weekend we had two special birthdays to attend!
Our beautiful nephew Merrick had his very first birthday and my middle brother Stuart celebrated his 40th!
I have popped in a couple of photos and send out to them a massive
HAPPY BIRTHDAY wish!

Back to house stuff -

This last week, we have been looking into the design of swimming pools.. well I have anyway.. Derek has been looking into the expense of swimming pools.. that one is still yet to be decided.. I will post a picture of a possible design and you tell me what you guys think ;). The pool idea also relies on the broker getting back to us on how much money the bank will give us!

Maybe baby, just a maybe...

Tomorrow we are heading into the House and Garden Show in Jeff's Shed. I am so excited as I have been told its very very good! They have all types of exhibitors there. From curtain people to landscapers, to furniture to wall paper.. they will all be there I will be looking at all of them..
Better offer up a good trade off to my husband in exchange for his patience!

Peace out for now
Ax

Mound of dirt

Possible Backyard Design ;)

Dan and Merrick with his favourite character Iggle Piggle in cake form made by Nana

Blowing out his candle with Mum and Dad

Stuart and Angela

Building our first house

I thought I should give my 2 cents every now and again on the blog, otherwise it might get a little one sided, well you know what they say, "there are generally three sides to every story: her side, your side and the truth!"

I will start off by saying I never imagined how many selections you have to make when building a house! Sure, I expected the normal stuff like the carpet and paint but what I wasn't expecting was the smaller details. Selecting bricks, colour of the grout between the bricks, is the grout to be flush against the bricks or a little groove in the grout? Type of roof tiles, colour of the roof tiles and the list just goes on and on and on.

It is a pretty hectic first month when you sign the contract. From week one to week four you need to have everything ready to go into a contract and all the bank papers have to be arranged so you can draw down on the loan when the builder needs more $$$.
I can easily see how people could get overwhelmed by it all, because if you don't go in to the selection place on the weekends before your appointment you would have to select everything in that one meeting when seeing it for the first time! They do tell you that you should go in and check it out before hand, but I imagine there would be a percentage of people who don't, (like I would have done, had Amy not had us in there every weekend trying to narrow down our selections!) then they would have to select everything when seeing it for the first time. Down the line those folks would most likely try to make changes which would either cause delays or can't be made which would cause a lot of frustration for the builders and the owners.
The one thing that does frustrate me is that the Porter Davis electronics division is not open on the weekends and there are SO many decisions to be made with wiring, plugs, switches, down lights, network points, speakers, etc. The most important decisions are the electrics (in my mind anyway) especially around my cinema room ;).

It's very exciting but at the same time its hard for me to picture it coming together. I thought Porter Davis would have some software that would show us what our colour selection would look like inside and outside the house, but now we have to visualise it ourselves. When you pick a colour and it is painted on a wall it could look totally different . I am not a very visual person so it is very very tough for me to imagine which I think frustrates Amy a little, but she does her best to try and find pictures online with the colours we have chosen even, she's a good wife really! :)

Anyway I hope I can keep this up to date and make at least one post every week.
When the building starts in October we will also upload photos of the different stages.

Over and Out
DD

Update to Blocks and Banks

Ok so..FINALLY we recieved the paper work for the settlement of both the land and Webb street.

I have to say I have never been so confused in all my life! These conveyancing folk really dont make things easy to understand for the regular laymen people like me! Derek was as confused as I was.. so then I asked Dad and even he was confused by it! It just wouldnt add up for us. In the end we managed to work out how they had come to the figures layed out in front of us, albeit, in the most ambiguous form! As it turns out, its all correct..Sweet!

Next part of the action is to call the broker and ask for the money for the house. Joy! Thats Derek's job though, because our broker is a Scotsman and I cant for the life of me work out a word he says over the phone, except for the end of the conversation where he says "keep your chin up", that's about all I can get out of 10 minutes on the phone with him (in person I lip read).

So I leave that to Derek seeing as they are both from that side of the world and the accents are similar..well sort of!

Sidetracking to more interesting events...

We popped into Bunnings (huge hardware warehouse for those that are unfamiliar) last night..Yay! Love Bunnings! No sausage sizzle on, booooo! Although it wasnt really the night for it, absolutely pouring rain and pitch black! On the upside of the downside of no sausages, there was no body there and loads of staff to help! Thumbs up to Bunnings visits mid week in the evening!

However, I digress...

So a trip to Bunnings to check out splash back colours for the kitchen in the Dulux paints range. There was much discussion around this. It seems to be one thing we are having some trouble, lets say, "coming to a conclusion" on!

My idea is to keep the kitchen area to basic colours, whites, creams, beiges etc, so that we wont get too sick of them over time and so we can add in other colour, like furniture and decor. Del agrees, but he would really love to go with something bright and stand out like fire engine red or a bright blue. Its quite a tough decision. I too, do love the bright colour effect, but I feel that we would get sick of it and wont be able to change that easily without replacing the whole splash back. So eventually, (after about an hour in the paint section of Bunnings) we have come to a "semi" agreement of a metallic colour that's basic, but gives off a sparkle just to make it that bit more exciting than a flat matt colour. I think the colour we may go for is called "Pewter Illusion". He will tell you that he has just agreed with me to keep me quiet, but I think he secretly likes my idea.

This weekend is going to be spent looking at kitchen places and splash back designs so we can make a very informed decision. I say "yay" he says "urgh"! Then we have some pals coming over for dinner on Sunday, at which, the girls and I will (most likely) scrutinise colour options and discuss all things housey and the boys will talk about football and supercoach.

Until next post...at which I may just have some pics for you...ooohhh aaaahhh

Ax

Blocks and Banks

Why is it that banks are an entity to them selves? How is it that they can do whatever they feel like and get away with it?

These are questions that we all ask ourselves and I imagine we all come to the same conclusion of:- your damned if you do and your damned if you dont.

We have only the choice but to pick the lesser of all evils, if that does really exist - a lesser evil I mean! (I feel that CBA is the most evil - but - they have trapped us into their web of fees and charges for at least the next 2.5 years) [insert evil Barbara from Bankworld laugh here]

My problem with banks/brokers/conveyancers this week is that I still have not seen any paperwork from our settlement on Monday! I have no idea what is happening with our new loan and how it will be set up (banks/brokers)! They have put money in our account (bank), yet it isnt the amount we thought it would be (banks/brokers) and I have nothing in my hands to tell me why it is what it is (conveyancer)?

How come in this day and age I havent been sent all the paper work via email and post? I imagine its partly because our conveyancer, who is a lovely but old man, does not know how to (self-admittedly) work the internet or email yet! Also, apparently Australia Post is very slow this week, as I was told that the paperwork was in the post Monday arvo... its now Thursday arvo!

I have also emailed our brokers to get information, to which they have not had the decency to grace me with a response either!

So you can all blame the banks/brokers/conveyancers for my frustrated outburst!

My apologies!

On a happier note, I got a call from Porter Davis this morning which was nice. I had almost got to the point of thinking that they had taken our $1k deposit and left the country! But it was not to be!

So we have what's called a "tender appointment" booked in, where I imagine they will cover a number of things - number one being - "let us see your cheque please" then other things like; site and soil test outcomes, at which point they which tell us how much our site costs will be (with dollar signs flashing in their eyes like mini poker machines that have won the jackpot!), and then to confirm the next appointment which is the "Contract appointment" at which we will sign away every pay cheque for the next 100 years and lock in our souls in trade for our "dream home"!

They have also advised me that I will be contacted by someone from Hopetoun Interiors and Frank Walkers buddies at National Tiles to make the appointments to lock in my - sorry - our designs for the house! These guys will also have the mini jackpot eyes, when we walk through their door! "Upgrades Galore" they really should be called!

At least Derek will be there to ground me and my "upgrading" - to an extent anyway.

Somethings just have to upgraded and only the women reading this blog will really get why - but that I will leave for another post at some point in the future.

Anyway I will bid you adieu for today and leave you with some breathtaking scenery and vistas of our lovely piece of dirt!

Ax