Ideas for our new home

Since I have so much time on my hands, the hubby and I have been shopping for new furniture, lighting, fans, and the like for our new home. I thought I would share some ideas.

Sofa for the living area

Pendant lights for the kitchen (Option 1)

Pendant lights for the kitchen (Option 2)

Pendant lights for the kitchen (Option 3)

Pendant lights for the kitchen (Option 4)

Pendant lights for the kitchen (Option 5)

Pendant lights for the kitchen (Option 6)

Pendant light for the dining area

Timber look porcelain tiles for the alfresco area

We are getting close now.....

Today I received an email from our CSA advising us that the linen plan has been lodged with the LPI (Land and Property Information Division) to be examined pending registration. They expect LPI to provide registration very soon.

While I am unfamiliar with the process for land registration, it gives me reason to believe we are only weeks away from registration and settlement on our block of land.

Then we can get started on the fun stuff.

I will keep you posted.

Fast forward almost a year

I have been trying to go back and do this blog from the beginning of our journey to be able to show the time frame in which it took from deposit of our house to the actual construction. However, I thought I would fast forward almost a year and give you an update as at today.

Today is Tuesday the 8th April 2014 and our land is still not registered.  Sad and a little shocking to say this but there it is.

The latest update received from Eden Brae regarding registration (we purchased a H & L package through Eden Brae, I don't think I previously mentioned this) is that it would happen at the end of March 2014. Mind you, this has been about the 8th month we have been given since our initial deposit.  

1. January 2013 registration with construction commencing March 2013
2. March 2013
3. May 2013 
4. July 2013
5. October 2013
6. December 2013
7. January 2014
8. March 2014

This is where I tell you that Capital Corporation are the developers and it is my opinion that they have poorly managed this project. There have been countless delays and set backs, all of which have not been communicated to us. We have constantly had to call either Capital Corp or EBH to try and obtain any information from them. There was a thread started on Homeone by another purchaser of land in the same estate and from there we all managed to vent our frustrations. A positive that came out of this long wait is knowing that there were other people going through the same thing, and we all managed to give each other strength to get through it.

Today I read on Facebook (we moved from Homeone and created a group for our estate) that the subdivision certificate was signed off on Friday but the certificate is with typing and will be sent to the Land Titles Office upon receipt (by EBH maybe??). Nobody knows anything, and our  amended construction site start date provided by EBH a few months back has been set for 30th April 2014. I don't think we will be meeting this as the land may or may not even be registered by the end of the month.

I see a light at the end of the tunnel now though. We have finalised all of our administrative requirements apart from proof of finance as CBA won't do anything until the land registers. We are waiting on our final drawings to be sent to us by our CSA so we can thoroughly review them and sign them off ready for construction and then it is just a waiting game for this final hurdle.

Our estate is going to be great. By forming the Facebook group, it has brought us all together, we have had a few meet ups at the land and I think we are going to have a great little community with so many lovely people once it is finished.

There is a stage 2 that has just commenced. I hope that they have a better run that what stage 1 did.

Kitchen & laundry splashback

At this stage, we didn't have a kitchen and laundry splashback, and the family member no longer worked for the company we were going to go with after handover, so a decision had to be made.

J & I thought it would be easier for us to get it done during the build rather than wait until after handover, considering the lead time on manufacture and installation.

So J headed over to HOG to speak with the girls at KC and possibly select a colour. We had changed our minds about red and were now thinking of a taupe colour.

J was told we could still add a splashback to our original quotation but they would have to charge a $150 administration fee. We accepted the charge and went ahead with the quotation.

This is the colour J chose. I think he did a good job. The colour is called Weathered (Not entirely accurate as I scanned the glass sample but it is close).

It's time to get our finances in order

We had contacted Mortgage Choice early last year to arrange finance, and had our initial appointment with Irene Cujko in July 2013. Irene ran through figures with us and gave us advice regarding land and construction loans, and advised us to come back later in the year when it was closer to land registration.  

Mortgage Choice contacted us numerous times throughout the rest of the year to re-schedule, but as the land wasn't close to registration, we had to continually push the appointments back. Finally, in January we decided it was time to get the loans started as we had to be close to registration now.

We met with Serge who arranged for our land loan to be processed first, followed by the construction loan a little later down the track.  In the days following our appointment, we provided Serge with all the documentation required to get the loan application to the bank. 

On the 7th February I received a call from our "Mortgage Angel" telling me that we had received conditional on the land loan (pending valuation) and pre-approval on the construction loan.  CBA had booked in the land valuation for the following Tuesday, 11th February 2014.

NBN

We found out today that we should not have been charged for NBN pre-wiring, thanks to all the folks on Homeone.

We had pre-wiring for NBN included in our quotation with HSI under their guidance. But as it turns out, this is paid by the government and should have been included free of charge in our contract, which it wasn't.

So I emailed our CSA whom advised us to take it up with HSI to arrange a credit. HSI issued a credit of $675 and EBH added it into our contract by way of PCV.

Just a note to anyone building a home, no matter who the builder is, to double check everything, do as much research as you can, question anything that doesn't appear right, and I highly recommend Homeone. I found this site invaluable, receiving so much advice from other people having been through the same experience.

Discontinued carpet and colour changes

One day, out of the blue, I came to the realisation that the tiles in the MIL's bathroom were very similar in pattern and colour to the tiles we chose for our bathroom and ensuite. I wasn't a fan of her bathroom, so I mentioned this to J, who surprisingly agreed with me. We weren't sure though, if we would be able to re-select so many months later, even though our house wouldn't be built for months to come.

So we decided to take a drive over to Di Lorenzo and suss out the situation.  We were advised that we would be able to make one change only, which was a relief.  We still wanted a large tile for the bathroom walls which limited us in colour and texture.  In the end, we both agreed on a gloss white tile. However, we didn't lock in our new selection on the day, we thought we would sit on it for a few days. This turned out to be an excellent decision. 

While we were there, we just happened to pop over to the carpet section, and to our surprise found out that our carpet was no longer on display and was believed to be discontinued.  Tilly advised that I send her an email and she will follow up and confirm.

Well, instead of looking at this as a negative, we took it as a sign that we had originally made the wrong choices and this was going to allow us to correct them.

The following day I received an email from Tilly advising that our carpet had definitely been discontinued and we would need to come back in and re-select.

This is where our decision to hold off re-selecting our bathroom tiles worked in our best interest.

The other thing that I had been concerned about was our choice of floor tiles. We had selected a ceramic tile, but after talking this out with people at work and having seen the flooring at the display homes, J and I both wished that we had upgraded our tiles to porcelain.  

Around the same time, I started questioning our kitchen colours! Back in December we finally found a colour for our Polyurethane Gloss Finish and locked it in with Alex at Kitchen Culture. At our original tiling appointment we opted to remove all tile splashbacks, deciding to have glass splashbacks installed in the kitchen and laundry after handover (a family member worked for  a reputable splashback company at the time).

This is what we had in mind for our kitchen.

This is the colour we chose for the kitchen. It actually looks a lot more like the colour above, but the scan didn't work out too well.

I obviously had too much time on my hands and began questioning all of our earlier decisions. In my opinion, a kitchen like the one above would date too quickly. I wanted something a little more timeless. After googling endless kitchens in various colours, I decided that I wanted a white kitchen. I would still have the red splashback, but white would be a far better choice.

So with all of this in mind at our tiling re-selection, we ended up changing, not only the bathroom wall tiles and carpet, but everything. We chose a brown porcelain floor tile for the entire tiled floor area, chose a white tile for the bathroom & ensuite walls, a new silver and aluminium feature tile and we upgraded our carpets to the Triexta Carpet.  We were extremely happy with our selection but not looking forward to receiving the quotation! 

Some pics.

Triexta Natural Haven Earth Brown Carpet

Porcelain Tile with Carpet

Porcelain Tile under different light (a little more accurate colour)

New Feature Tile (to run horizontally)

After doing a little research on bathrooms, we decided to include a niche over our bath. This way we avoid all the clutter around the bath.

A word of advice when it comes to the shower or bath niche. Make sure you measure the tallest bottle or item you plan to put in the niche and make your measurements based on this. We opted for 300mm high, tile to tile (not frame to frame).