Tile Selection

We had our tile selection appointment at Di Lorenzo in the morning.  So off we went there to spend more money away.

Long story cut short, and as most of us would have done, we ended up upgrading the standard tile selection to something "more".  Thigee and Ben have warned us on what to expect at our appointment and it is pretty much happened exactly what Thigee had said.

Although we feel that we are getting to the point where we are about to blow our budget for the construction, we also didn't feel that we wanted to re-tile the house again in the future.  So taking all that into our consideration this is what we came up with:

Kitchen splashback

Ensuite - Bathroom - Powder room floor tiles
Size 3x6

Feature wall tiles - Mosaic - Dark Mocha

Putting it all together
There is a white wall tiles here but it's so white it is almost invisible

Tiles for balcony

After spending nearly two hours at Di Lorenzo and some more money of course, we made our way to our soon to be house to check out what has been happening.

It was quite muddy with all the rain that has been happening during the week, but I say where there's a will, there is a way!  The site like always it's locked from the front however the side fence is always left open from some reason (makes us wonder why do they even put a lock on the front fence anyway?  Beats the purpose doesn't it?), so my wife got some left over or unused block for us as a stepping stone.

When we were inside, this is what we see and finally I got some time to go upstairs too...

Wifey wanted to post in front of the house before going in

Never got this properly until this day

Sliding door to outdoor room

Sitting room

Wall opening to study room

Entry to the main bedroom

Soon to be ensuite

Hall way in the main bedroom

Leisure room

After we were satisfied with what we see, we met with our next door neighbor just as we were about to leave.  We had a good chat with them about their block of land and apparently they can only visit their land once a month as they are working in Western Australia at the moment.  They are also getting some custom design house for the build due to the shape and some restrictions on their block.  Apparently they have a lot of set backs and additional requirement due to the fact they have a corner block.

Not long after, we were joined by Phil and Bel from the Reedman home!  It was quite a busy and beautiful day really.  It is not surprising that everyone is out and about to visit to their soon to be home.  Phil and Bel are also building a custom design house.

We are really looking forward to move in to our new house now.

PS:  The time of this writing is actually two weeks late.  I started writing the post at the 18 June but never got around to complete nor publish it until today.  I feel so very slack but hopefully I can pick up once my bank drama is over!  Next post I will tell all about it...

Tips and Tricks: Air Conditioner

In one of my previous post, I mentioned that I will give some reasoning behind our decision to go with Metricon in installing our ducted air conditioner.

For those who have the experience of building a house already, then this post may not be related and you may have already the experience.  However if this is the first time that you are building a house, I can only say then I hope my experience can give you some insights to your building process.

You may have heard from a lot of people and in my case, that the builder charges a margin on any price that they quote to you.  Metricon state clearly in their contract that we signed, there will be about 25% margin on any job or fittings that we ask them to do or to supply.

In theory, I understand the reason why they do this and they do need to make profit out of the job as well.  I don't have any problem with this economic concept and accept the contract as it is.

How does this relate to getting the ducted air conditioning unit from Metricon.

We were recommended by our sales consultant to go with Metricon to install our ducted air conditioning unit.  So that's what we did, we include the air conditioning as an item in our tender documentation with the price of $12,950.  For that price, we are getting the top of the range air cond product, Daikin, so there is nothing wrong with the product.

I called a number of company like Frost Air; Actron Air; Blue Star Air Conditioning and some few others but these guys provided some of the cheapest quote all round.  However out of the three only Frost Air and Actron Air can work of the plan whilst Blue Star Air Conditioning still need to inspect your place before they can provide you with a formal quote.

In my request, I've asked them to provide me with two quotes.  One quote with only providing the air cond unit plus the installation and another quote with the whole lot like installing the ducting, the air cond unit and installation of the unit.

The cheapest quote that I got was from Frost Air and we are getting Fujitsu as the unit.  The price with only providing the unit was $11,500 and with the whole works it was $14,000, which was actually more than what Metricon had charge.

Buying only the unit mean only providing the unit.  It also still mean that your place need to come pre-ducted in order for them to fit in the unit.  Getting Metricon to do the pre-ducted work would cost us $4,000.  Which means if you add that to the price of the unit, it will end up costing a lot more.

I guess you can pretty much sums up that we ended up going with Metricon to install the air cond unit for us.

This however maybe different if you are building a single storey house.  In single storey house:

• you don't need to worry about the ducting going through between the first floor and the ground floor; 
• if there is enough space/void in between the walls; or
• the height of the cavity between the first to the second level.
• price would also be relatively cheaper than two storey house.

You need to take all that into account when making your decision to go external for your air cond.  Unless of course you are going old school and install the wall mounted split air conditioner system, then all of the above doesn't really relate much.

So there you go, another argument to go single storey or double storey and which one is cheaper to have a ducted air conditioning system..

Final Construction Drawing

I think I will avoid saying "Finally" this time round as in my last few posts, I've been using the word like there's no tomorrow!

I've had some delays and what feels like a never ending frustration.  At one stage, I honestly thought that this was never going to happen for us.  So an email came in to my inbox this morning with the subject of "Final Construction Documents" from Metricon!

I was so happy with the email for some reason and start to think maybe this is the end of "my" tunnel.  So I quickly review every drawings, plans and our color selection document once again and said to myself, yep all looks good.

(Maybe it's because I want to start construction so badly that I wasn't being attentive to detail... but anyway I checked the documents again after I sent it and it still looked good!)

Fortunately my wife was nearby my office and I asked her to stop by and sign the acceptance paper.  We immediately sent it to Metricon just before the close of business today.

I'm beginning to feel that I am getting more attention from Metricon now as our CSO responded to my email at 6.00pm saying that she had sent all our paperwork to the construction department for orders to be placed and for the construction work to start real soon!

I thought to myself, Wow! That was quick...  Maybe someone did listen and answered our prayer after all...  Thank you.

The message also said that we will be assigned a site manager and he/she will get in touch with us real soon to discuss about the construction.

So after 11 months and 15 days or 350 days since we put down our initial deposit with Metricon, it is time to begin some real action!

I will share the drawing diagrams in the coming week as I didn't had the time to scan them today.  So stay tune for the update.

Over and out.

My first landscape job!

Ok so I'm not very good at gardening or anything to do with backyard, front yard, plants or anything that relates to gardening.  As a matter of fact, I've tried to look after an indoor type but even that I failed miserably. But hey, everyone need to start somewhere right?

So this is my first time to actually do a gardening job.  I have done some garden maintenance in the past but it's only limited to lawn mowing and watering the plants.

Anyway on with the topic.

As part of our contract agreement with Metricon, we need to clear our land of any obstacles that might hinder the construction process.  That includes trees, debris, long grass, rubish, etc.  I think in one of my entires, I've mentioned about a tree that is impeding the construction of the driveway that connects our driveway to the street.

In the council submission that Metricon provided, it was proposed that the tree was to be repositioned by ourselves.  So I did just that last Sunday 10 April, with the help from a friend of course.  Here are some picture evidence of my effort:

I am feeling quite proud of myself that I just moved a tree and did my first landscape job and was still standing when I left it.  However upon visiting our land again yesterday, I discovered that the tree that I moved last Sunday had fallen to the ground.  Apparently I accidently cut off the roots of the tree during my attempt to dug it out.  So with the strong wind conditions for the past week or so, the tree that I just moved will not stand a chance against the harsh environment.  I was told that the tree will die as a result of that.

I've also noticed that there is a block across from us that the council tree has been completely removed from where it used to be!  They must've fall under the same situation that we are in.  I didn't bother trying to plant the tree again as the wind conditions hasn't changed much and also I didn't bring my tools anyway.  Might do more work on it later during the break.

I thought to myself that it was too good to be true that I can gardening on my own.  However I will keep trying and learning.  This is fun!  Also I wanted the house and it's surrounding to look nice when we move in.  I learned that a good landscape has also it's benefits.  Not only it will add some tranquility to your lifestyle but can also add more value to your home.  Check out this site if you like to find out more.

Contract Presentation and Acceptance

On this day we had our contract presentation.  Like the tender, this too went well.

We finally get to see more working drawing of our house plan including the elevations, external and internal.  Although it is not final but we are just glad to get to see them!

We also get to see the latest version of the building price.  This is much lower than the number we initially saw during the tender presentation by far!!

We accepted and signed the contract pretty much on the same day it was presented to us.  We've gone through the contract at least twice and our presenter was really good  in explaining the stuff that we didn't get the first time.  What I found interesting was there was a line in our contract that says how much they are making out of us.  I don't believe that there many contract or quotes that actually have that line.  Not sure about other builders but hopefully they do the same!  At least this way, we can decide if we are willing to pay the mark up price of the builder.

We also had the external color appointment on the same day.  Apparently, we needed this to submit to the design panel and council approval.  One thing we forgot to do is to get a landscape plan done for submission, well to be perfectly honest, I wasn't aware that I need it.

Although there is no community levy charged on us but there is a standard guideline with our building and landscape design.  I guess with having a standard in the area can bring the property value higher.

On to the next bit.... External Color Selection!