Final Construction Plans Signed

The wheels are in motion and the final construction plans have been received. The only thing I am not happy about is the location of the smoke detector in the entry way, unfortunately it doesn’t look like there is a way around this, but I’ll have a look at the display home to see where it was located. It might be small but it’s an entrance hall and we are having feature drop downs in the ceiling and will hopefully have a nice light there one day too.

I should hopefully have a construction date soon !!

CDC Approval & Final Contract Variations & Bank Approval :)

CDC & Finance Approval

It has been a while since my last update, and a lot has happened, milestones have been reached and the road paved to finally start the journey.

I received the good news two weeks ago that CDC approval had been granted. The certifier sent the plans directly to me, which included final house plans, foundation plans, and a set of documents put together by Provincial.

Made for an interesting read, especially the foundation plans. I couldn’t exactly tell what the depths  were going to be, but it looked like there are going to be a lot of piers to be drilled. Hopefully they aren’t all very deep !!! Otherwise my piering allowance may fall short and well concrete isn’t exactly cheap !!

Looks pretty hefty I think.

The CDC process was pretty painless, some things to consider or look out for when you are going through it is.

·         Will I need a landscape plan ? Cost circa $300 - $400

·         Bal Assessment ? $660

·         Sewer peg Out ? $800 - $900

And then depending on the above, added costs that may come up due to findings, it seems that bal and sewer requirements can be quite expensive. Thankfully I wasn’t impacted by any of them, and I felt that Provincial did right by me and battled a few wins when it came to my water board approval.

Final Contract Variations

After you have the CDC approval you will get your final contract variations, which if you have planned well shouldn’t be too much. Mine included hardwood flooring, and some upgrades made at internal colour selections. My advice would be to include as much as you can during tender time in order to make the bank approval process a lot quicker. For example if you know you will do flooring though the builder then add it in, don’t wait till internal colours. I had to wait a week for the bank to do a new valuation based on the increased tender price (mainly due to flooring).

The only other item we had that was unexpected was increased cost for BASIX requirements, about $1k all up.

One word of advice is to make sure you read the final tender and contract variations carefully, and make sure you understand all the charges. To be fair Provincial does tell you to read everything very carefully and to make sure you are happy before signing. They can’t be held responsible if you miss something.

I had to clarify a few things with them, and my consultant (who has been fantastic by the way) clarified everything for me. My main concern was a few charges which were explained, and the wording around the water tank changed, which had me questioning if I would be getting an ugly plastic one. Confirmation was received it was a metal colorbond one which made me happy, I am being a bit fussy with this one because it is visible from the road and will pretty much be a little in your face.

Overall whilst I had a few sleepless nights over some things I think the process was pretty smooth and trouble free. At this stage I have no complaints J. The wife and I were even dreaming about building our next house with them in the future..... but then reality kicked in lol.

The process has been pretty painless. Having said that I have done a lot of research into a lot of the steps that builders go through, which made it easier to understand things. My advice for those who are going through it is to do your own research so that you understand things that come up.

Next step is to find out when they will start. I am hoping I am kept up to date via txt messages or e mails so I can pop down and take photos from afar to keep this blog going J

Internal Colour Selections

Internal Selections

We actually did our electrical and colour selections on the same day, but wanted to let the choices we made percolate for a while before blogging about them. We have officially signed the forms and posted them back this week. So unless Neuman can bring the forms back we are locked in for our internal colour selections.

You get 3 hours at this stage to go through internal selections but we only needed an hour and a half. It helps when your budget has a limit and you are worried about site costs popping up.

Our colour consultant was pretty helpful, and made the experience quite pleasant for us. We are trying to keep things simple so we didn’t fuss too much over wall covers. We did fuss over the kitchen colours quite a bit as the ceaserstone and cabinet colours in the kitchen and bathroom will be the same, unless of course you want to pay extra to have them painted different colors. We just didn’t have the budget for it, and we were happy to go with neutral colors.

No complaints at internals, prices for upgrades seemed to be pretty reasonable. But we were pretty cautious.

Internal colors are as follows

·         Front door                                          - Clear Stained Corinthian Merbau

·         Splashback                                        - Dulux Chocolate Glimmer in starphire glass

·         40mm Ceaserstone                           - Osprey

·         Ceiling                                               - White

·         Doors                                                 - White

·         Trim                                                   - White

·         Walls                                                 - Taubmans Smooth Pebble

·         Polyurethane Cabinets                      - Taubmans Struan Grey. Very very light greyish/yellowish/white

Flooring

One of the biggest items we debated on was flooring, flooring is quite subjective and we did visit a few stores to get quotes on different types of flooring. In the end I found that quality tiles, carpet, and wood all cost around the same price. It seems to be one of those areas in “you get what you pay for”. I don’t trust bamboo flooring nor did I like the look of pre-finished floorboards, it had that spray paint sheen to it which I hated.

We decided to stick with Provincials supplier for flooring for the following reasons.

·         The price difference between Provincial and the cheapest quote was about $2,500 but once you factor in that the flooring quote has contingencies built in for levelling of the slab etc, it didn’t seem like it was worth it.

·         In addition we would have had to pay Provincial a $760 fee for tacked on skirting.

·         Doing flooring after handover would have meant that the flooring would have been done around the kitchen island drop downs instead of under it. We really hated the look of flooring around kitchen islands. Most builders seem to do this and they put skirting around the island. Really detracts from the looks of the floors and the island.

·         We visited the flooring installer, and he seemed to be extremely professional. He gave us comfort in the end product.

Flooring ended up coming in at a hefty $17k for solid select grade 80mm black butt with a modified oil based finish on battens to all the living areas excluding the lounge and bedrooms. It was a large amount, but hopefully it pays off.

That's a picture of blackbutt from another supplier, but it should look similar.

The standard level of inclusions is actually already pretty good, having said that we did make a few upgrades.

Kitchen

·         Bevelled Edge (includes bathrooms) to the cabinetry which negated the need for handles. The larger handles run $20 each which would have started to add up, and with the kitchen of a single storey home a big focal point, we liked the smooth clean look it gave. Some of the standard handles were nice too, but on large drawers we preferred a largish handle.

·     40mm ceaserstone drop downs to the kitchen island, probably could have gone without this one, but it does look really nice in the kitchen, and we had included it in the tender

·     Custom colour splashback. We chose Dulux chocolate Glimmer in starphire glass.

·     Increase the fridge height by 10cm to 1870mm, with the standard size being 1770mm most fridges would barely fit in when you factor in for hardwood flooring (maybe 2cm of clearance). Whilst I was hesitant to spend this amount of money on making a cupboard smaller, I figured it would be best to future proof for any fridge that we would need in the future.

Our kitchen should look very similar to the display, except visualise it with the Osprey Ceaserstone and Metallic Brown Backsplash, along with more whiteish/grey polyurethan cupboards. So completely different to the photo ;)

Osprey Ceaserstone looks like this

 

 And a photo I found of a kitchen that has actually used the dulux chocolate glimmer splashback.

Bathroom

·         Bevelled Edge for cabinets in the bathrooms, this was included in the one price.

·         Single glass panel to the ensuite shower (included at tender stage)

·         Added a door to the ensuite bathroom as well (included at tender stage)

External Selections

                As mentioned previously in this blog we had chosen with the biggest change at this stage was the inclusion of a woodgrain finish on the garage door. Whilst we didn’t change the color from surfmist we were given the option of finish which I found pretty impressive.

·         Bowral Murray Grey Bricks

·         Boral gunmetal Contour Roof tiles

·         Surmist Facia, eaves, windows, garage doors

·         Natural Stained 2.43mx1.2m Corinthian 8 panel Merbau front door.

·         Added a trilock Omni … going all out on the front door so may as well finish it off.

Miscellaneous Internal Selections – All standard/part of the upgrade package

·         Stainless Steel range hood (fisher & Paykel) as per the display, ducted to outside air J. We had the option of glass or stainless, and thought glass would just get too dirty/greasy

·         Stainless steel fisher&paykel dishwasher

·         900mm elba by fisher & paykel freestanding cooker

·         Double round sink as per the display…. Although we did see a black sink at masters and dreamt how good it would look…. Maybe later

·         Semi frameless shower in the main bathroom in bright chrome finish

·         Chrome flickmixer taps everwhere

·         Round bathroom sinks as per display

·         Corinthian Motive 3D internal doors (paid extra for 2.34m doors, the normal doors are flat profile)

·         Gainsborough bright chrome Liana levers throughout, with privacy locks on bathrooms and main bedroom as standard

That’s pretty much it for internals. The wish list for the future will include.

·         Changing a few internal/ laundry doors to the hume Lin1 style doors maybe in a stained finish

·         Few mirros in the niches

·         Adding carpet, dead bolts

·         And maybe that black Franke sink we saw… who knows if it’s even possible.

I have used pictures in this post that are not mine, if anyone has any concerns or issues, please leave a comment and I will delete them.

What’s next…… CDC approval and then finance

Electrical Plans

Prestige Electrical are the crew that take care of things for Provincial homes.

You'll head over to their offices and sit down with the lovely lady to go through your needs. They will send you a draft plan in advance, and give you a chance to have a think about what you want.

We went through it room by room, and tried to visualise how it would be used. The standard number of light and powerpoints weren't enough for us so we had to add quite a few.

However our budget didn't really allow for too much money to be spent in this area, so there will be some things we will have to do when we are further down the line.

We spent $1,770 with additional electrical, a little over our budget of $1,500 but some things would have been too hard to do later. We will have to change some lights to downlights and add a few more lights into the eaves sometime down the line. We saved money by placing some powerpoints so that later on we could add one to the opposite wall. Going with single powerpoints instead of doubles for the additionals. We figrued we will need an electrician to install a few lights so we could always swap some for doubles down the line.

Overall pretty happy with Prestige and the process they have in place. We really didn't have the budget to do anything crazy, or even price anything crazy so didn't bother.

Flushed .....

So the sewerage dramas ended on a slightly positive note.

The sewer peg out was a big hit of $800, but I guess was inevitable. I had called about 10-12 places including the original firm that laid the pipes and received varying responses with a few telling me that the works as constructed plans would be sufficient, and others telling me it was needed. I probably could have had the peg out done myself and saved a few hundred dollars, but I didn't want to delay the process and subsequently find out that what I had paid for wasn't valid.

Subsequently when I looked at the works as constructed plans I realised it did indeed show the depths. The sewer is 2.7m deep (which is exactly what the peg-out said), which meant we were slightly within the zone of influence.

On the positive side Provincial delivered me some good news and told me the additional engineering fees were not required and the waterboard stamped the plans. This was some good news as the $1,350 in engineering fees would have taken a largish chunk out of the internal colors budget.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome, but hopefully a spanner hasn't been thrown into the works down the line. The tender allows for a sewer connection of 2m deep, with the depth being 2.7m I am hoping there is no additional charge, especially considering the manhole cover is on the corner of the lot, which would mean a pipe does go all the way down.

I can't wait for the uncertainty of site costs to be over and done with. Now I understand the benefits of having completely fixed site costs as provided by some other builders.

Time will tell .......

BASIX & Admin

BASIX ….

So the admin phase begins, and so far it has been pretty painless. I have found the staff at head office to be professional and courteous. I have had a few hiccups I wasn’t expecting which could or could not have potentially been avoided, but don’t seem to be as a result of anything that Provincial could have avoided.

CDC required a site specific bal/bushfire assessment to be done, which when you know that the lot has been rated BAL 0 by a prior developer obtained survey seems a little wasteful. I sourced this one myself and saved a little bit of money but it still left a $660 hole in my pocket. It seems like it’s part of the bureaucracy that surrounds going through CDC. The sad part is that this comes out of the upgrades budget :(

The BASIX results came back with some minor upgrades which I hope will save me money in the future… circa $600 was needed for some upgraded wall insulation and improved window frames.

Sewerage Dramas

There may be another hit to come from the water board for a survey to determine where the waste pipe runs. I think this is something that can hopefully be avoided. I have already got a existing sewerage diagram as provided by the developer, and the site has a manhole cover in the rear corner, which when compared to the rear of the house gives me I reckon to be about 4 meters of distance. As long as it’s not too deep I reckon the house should be well outside of the “Zone of influence”, based on my research if the sewer is 1.5m – 3m deep and you are within 600mm you will need to encase the pipe in concrete. Within 4 meters you may need some foundation protection. Based on my site plan I think I am more than 4 meters away, and I highly doubt the sewer main being as deep as 3 meters.

Hopefully this one turns into a win and I don’t need to fork out $800 for a sewer survey and we can actually put that money towards the internals appointment.

Stay tuned…. I’ll be updating on this issue, and soon colors and electrical which will happen in July.

This should be what the external colors will look like.

Hopefully it comes out really nice.