Framing

Due to me being so behind with the blog, I can't really remember much of the detail up to framing stage - I have trouble remembering anything anyway so the only thing I do recall was noticing how quickly the frame went up after slab pour and getting two invoices in the mail requesting the first two stages payments!!

I'll just post the photo's of the framing stage including a view of the house from the lovely park directly opposite. 

Site Start

I've been a little slack with updating the blog but thought I should give an update to let you know where we are at currently, so bear with me as I attempt to remember the past 5 months!!

We had our official site start on Monday 21st March 2016 and the concrete pour happened on 16th April.

I very quickly want to share that there are some coincidences around our home and in particular our address that holds special significance to me. I can't give specifics without announcing our whole address but will share what I can.

I was very close to my grandparents growing up until a few years ago when they passed away. When we purchased this block of land I quickly realised that the street name matched that of my grandmother's childhood circus she grew up in (I, being the believer that I am thought this was a sign that this block was meant to be).

As we drew up the paperwork and we were about to sign the contracts, rather than see the Lot No, we were given our new street number - which is obviously a normal thing to find out at some point. It was then that we found out our new street number was my grandfathers' special number - the number of the house he grew up in, the number of his football jumper and generally the number he used for everything - it was his lucky number.

I am sharing this because as I have written that the concrete pour happened on the 16th April, this date was also my daughter's 2nd birthday. Whether its just me finding the significance in all of these things combined or it really is just a freaky coincidence, I really feel like this was meant to be our family home.

Anyway, back to what the blog is really about - house build updates. Some photo's of the concrete - I must admit I find these early photo's particularly boring, I mean it really is just a patch of dirt with some concrete on top but for those wanting to follow along here they are;

Our independent inspector did find a few things that needed to be rectified and I must admit our SS has been really good about getting things fixed up asap without any complaints. I wont go into details about the report here but if anyone does want to get more of an idea let me know and I can tell you more. 

Dispensation Hell

Continuing on from where I last left off, we were scheduled to have our Tender appointment on 20th October 2015, as this clashed with a prior scheduled day surgery for my partner we had to change the date. Our BC at the time didn't make this easy and and as this meant moving our Tender and Contract appointment into November it would therefore affect our site start in December. We were threatened kindly reminded that this site start was the basis of a credit voucher to be used towards any extras we added at our WOS appointments. A few phone calls and emails later to her supervisor and our appointments were changed to a more suitable time (a week later) as well as the promise that our voucher would still be honoured.

Tender was held on 26th October 2015 and proved to be fairly expensive; site costs that were initially quoted around the $16k at sales had since become around $25k plus an additional $6k ish for dwarf walls, glazing to windows and one dispensation.

We arrived at Contract signing on 19th November 2015 after taking an hour and a half in traffic and then struggling to find the new office in Docklands where we were introduced to another BC who advised that our original BC had been MIA and they weren't aware but assuming she wasn't returning to the Company. At this point she had left work about two weeks prior and no-one could contact her (that definitely explained the non returned phone calls and emails etc).
On top of this our costs had increased again, contract signing was not going well. Our site costs were now around $28k plus the additional $6k for privacy requirements. Then an additional $5.5k for upgraded double glazing to most of our windows. It was at this time that we were advised that we had to apply for 3 dispensations in total, one for the garage roof height, one for garage wall height and a third for our main bedroom terrace overlooking a back neighbour.

Which brings us to here, today, almost 8 months post sales (and 3.5 months post contract) with the news we've been waiting for.......dispensations have been approved and permits should be issued by the end of the week.!!!

It hasn't been an easy time, we've had 3 neighbours unhappy at us building a double storey, the most hostile one had written to the Council which caused them to decline one dispensation (garage roof height) initially however, after the builder confirmed they could excavate further it appears that everything else is fine. I want to wait until we have the permits in hand rather than an email advising they're being issued however I cant help but happy dance, for a while I didn't think that building our home was actually going to eventuate.

I'm hoping that we can get a start date fairly soon and I will then be able to update a bit more regularly with how the build is going and passing on some (hopefully) helpful information to anyone reading/following our progress.