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!

Final Tender Acceptance

After a few correspondence with our tender presenter, we finally accepted our tender today.  We made some minor changes to the original tender that was given to us.

We took out the Metricon complete package that includes:

• Site cost allowance 
• BASIX
• Floor covering for the entire house
• Concrete slab to outdoor room  
• Paved driveway and entry
• Roof sarking
• Security alarm

The list above is in fact very enticing to us.  For a price, the complete package would allow us to move in to our brand new home immediately upon building completion.  However we need to be completely happy with everything that we are getting as part of the package.

We went to Di Lorenzo to inspect the category 1 carpet and tiles that we will be getting, should we go with this package.  The tiles collection at Di Lorenzo was amazing, however being category 1, our selection is quite limited.  The lady that guide us when we get to the store, said that we are allowed to select anything from the store but there will be an additional charge, if we are to select anything that is over our allowance limit and depending on our selection there may also be an extra labour charge as well as under lay charge.

In a perfect world where we have lots of money to spend, this may be fine with us as their collection of the tiles were very good.  So we considered a number of scenario if we were to go with the complete package.

In the end, we decided to have solid timber for our ground floor and carpet for the stairs, initially, and the first floor.  As Di Lorenzo doesn't have that many selection with the timber, we decided to take the Metricon complete package out.

As a result, we will then need to pay separately for the site cost.  BASIX is not applicable to us as we are in the recycled water area, so in the tender this was actually a credit to us.  It was quite considerably a huge amount too!  How I will miss seeing this credit item in the tender :).

For the final changes of the tender we, here is what we decided to keep:

• Site cost
• Concrete slab to outdoor room
• Roof sarking
• Security alarm
• Paved driveway
• Increased aluminium stacker door height to match the height of timber bi-fold door

We were advised that we could have the security alarm from an external provider.  However as the nature of the product is electrical and anything that run inside the structure of the house, I'd rather to have this done by the builder.  I believe installing this at a later stage could end up costing us a lot more.  For example air conditioner, which I will post another entry on the subject.

So there it is, one more step to having our dream home.

Tender Presentation - Part 1

We had our tender presentation this morning and as we expected the grand total (not including color upgrades) was a bit more.  Not that we were surprised by that at all.  We already expected it when we submitted our variations list, including changes due to the covenant and design guideline.

We were hoping to take some of the variations out and see if we can do some of the improvements ourselves.

The tender presentation went really well.  This is our first time doing a project home and our presenter was really good, professional and thorough when explaining things that we didn't understand.  For one, there was a lot of building terms in the document but our presenter explained it really well.  We were impressed and learned a lot about building from the session.

There were one consideration that we had to make with the design plan of the house.  As part of the Reflection promotion package that we mentioned in my previous post, we receive a Bi-Fold solid timber door up to 2400mm, which is a three Bi-Fold solid timber door.  We initially thought that this door was to replace the aluminium stacker door leading to the outdoor room from the dining.  To our surprise this is another door that we need to consider it's placement.  In the plan, it is placed on the side of the Rumpus room, which in a way ruins our plan to have an enclosed Rumpus room.

This might be something that we have to live with.  The other issue that we have was the height gap between the two doors are actually quite noticeable looking from the outside.  Hopefully our presenter can find a solution for that one.

On another note, in relation to upgrades.  We have added a few more wishlist to the house variations:

• Upgrade the entire kitchen to look exactly like the one in the display house at The Ponds;
• Driveway as part of the landscape;
• Security alarm; and
• Roof sarking

We can't have the storage room under the stairs anymore as the articulation to the wall affected that area.  So we'll need to come up with another storage solution but looking at the proposed floor plan, I think we should be fine.

I don't think this is the final list.  Hopefully by color selection appointment time, we have better control over ourselves.