Are you sure?

It's so hard being certain of a choice, particularly one you can never change, like bricks.
But given that the bricks are to be ordered on Tues, this is where we're at:



Ironstone roof, and gutters; Escura smoothface red bricks with white mortar; Surfmist facia, windows and garage door; downpipes painted to blend into bricks.

So yes, all that voting you all did was a waste of time. We picked the one no one voted for, including us! :)

The best de-fence...

Our 2 jobs for this weekend were to:
1. Confirm our brick choice.
2. Remove the front fence mentioned in the last post, ready for Thursday when the bob cat arrives to prepare a clean slate.

The result of job number 2:

My finger is blocking out the sun glare :)



We've had a bit of a weed growth explosion over the last couple of months!

Maybe sooner than we thought

Our builder is planning to run our plans through a private certifier* to speed up the whole council thing, so we might be starting pretty soon...

* We're not in Nth Sydney, but that site explains what a private certifier is.

Update via email from my wife:
builder has asked that we take down the fence this weekend - he will start clearing next week. Has Home warranty now - will give me an invoice tomorrow morning when I drop off the other stuff and he will get the plans into the certifier person on Mon - should take 10 working days, scary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That front fence is a dodgy little wire thing that kept a horse in for the previous owners. We just have to undo the tie wire etc.

Signed....

We ended up signing the contract last night after a long discussion on what was going to happen etc. So now the builder is organising the certificate of insurance, while we get a deposit cheque together and then, hopefully next week, everything's submitted to council.

Time to get serious picking exterior colours!

Contractions have started

We meet with the builder again this afternoon to pick up the contract and I plan to go through the plan a room at a time to discuss all the fine details. I want to make sure his plan matches our imagination so there's no discrepancy later on.
The contract is just a standard MBA one, but I'll still be going through it carefully...

FINALLY!!

The bank told us over and over, when we called them (they've never once called us), that they were still waiting for the valuers and would just let us know. It's fortunate for us that the valuers hadn't been given a few details they needed and had called us very early on, so we knew who they were and could call them. The valuers gave the bank the valuation on the 6th, which was a bank holiday and the bank just never knew they had it. They were just going to wait for ever it seems.
Anyway, then there was a bunch of confusion about the amount we needed to borrow (simple addition and subtract sums are a little difficult for them) but finally, we've been assured that all is set to proceed.
All quite scary given the current economic climate...

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

The bank say the valuer still hasn't given them the info they need, so we continue to wait...

Went to look at some flooring options yesterday and were quite impressed by the Karndean range of wood look vinyl. It really does look like real wood and is softer and warmer under foot than tiles and doesn't expand/contract like a floating floor. It's also very thin (3mm) which eliminates some issues with differing levels of flooring around the house.
It comes in 'planks' that are glued down in a similar fashion to laying timber boards and costs roughly the same as a tiled floor for the commercial grade one.

3 concerns with it

• the commercial grade one has a .5mm thick wear layer, which is fine for normal wear, but not for cuts/scratches.
• the vinyl will leech chemical vapour (so too will the wall paint, and kitchen cupboards) for quite some time after installation which compounds the new house health risks.
• there is the potential for fading in the highly sun exposed living area that we intend to install them in.

I like the idea of tiles in general, but they are very hard and cold, will crack if the slab changes size in wet/dry times or if someone drops something on them. The grout also tends to discolour and look yuck over time.

Apparently, this alternative is better again, and has a lot less toxins, but I have no idea of the price yet.

After all that, I'm not sure if our tiled floor was specified and therefore has an influence on our BASIX certificate. Will need to check that I suppose. Though from memory it didn't matter if we had no floor coverings to all but the wet areas.

Maybe that's a good idea - carpet all the carpet areas, but leave the whole living until we're in and can see what the lighting etc is like and choose something that will not be too dark in that area, but still dark enough to absorb the north winter sun warmth.

How much you reckon?

The bank now has a copy of the quote and the plans so they can satisfy themselves that the end product will be worth enough for them to sell and get their money back.
We've had no end of headaches with the incompetent people at our local credit union. I'm sure the only person who understands how a loan should work is the manager, and we're "not allowed" to talk to him.
At this stage I'm wishing there wasn't a $2K early termination fee... but I think regardless, we will refinance elsewhere when it comes time to selling our old house.

No shed for me :(

We met with the builder this morning at a very foggy 8:00 AM to discuss the finer details and try and finalise the quote.
We're probably going to go for oxide coloured only rather than stamped concrete, up the bath and tap allowances, and add a few electrical items. By the time the sums are done on that lot, that keeps the price about the same as it was. which is $2300 less than the bank said we could have, so that's good, except...

We still need to come up with a 9KL water tank, an oven/range/cooktop, the slab and shed and the network/sound gear.
Looks like the shed has to wait.

Drum roll....

In another one of those stages, which I'm sure there will be many, we've been waiting pretty anxiously for the revised quote from our chosen builder (hence the lack of posts); and the wait isn't entirely over yet because we don't have the details in our hands, but... he has confirmed that the revised price is about what we thought we'd worked it out to be and not heaps more, which would have obviously put a big dent in the whole project's progress.

So GOOD news, we don't have to radically change anything and once the fine details are set on the whole deal, we'll be off and racing!

Those concrete bricks really don't look right when they're small....
Not too bad in this pic.

But pretty average in this one.

I think more importantly, as an idea killer, they're also not actually a standard house brick size, even though they describe them that way. This means the window reveals and slab dimensions etc would all need to be altered to suit.
Too late.

Colour Conundrum

We were thinking that option 3 was for us, so, we've been looking for a more red brick to suit than the one we had been looking at to use in option 2. We thought Selkirk had the answer for us in their Regal Red brick, so we found their local agent and went for a look at the display this arvo.
Unfortunately the brick in real life, looks nothing like the internet picture (well it was red), so that was a no go...
We did however find another option (yes, yet another one!) that we were kind of interested in. Actually I found 2, but let's not go there :)
It's a concrete block, much like the large sand stone look blocks that you see about, but it is brick size. They come in a few shades of 'sand stone' and some other colours too.

Which I guess would result in something like this

I actually found one that looked a lot like this:

That I think I really quite like, but...
Ahh, well... too many choices. I guess we could always do a different colour scheme on each of the 4 sides of the house :D

BTW, my PC has started doubling up on the heading over ---> there on the voting list. Don't know why that is, but I didn't stuff it up in case yours is too. :)