tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36352409942161565912023-11-16T08:29:21.138-08:00Live the dream! New House Build 2014livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-57322293385255020122015-05-14T20:01:00.000-07:002015-05-14T20:01:43.107-07:00Stage 5 & 6: Roof and renderWell things have really been moving along with our house finally taking shape. Over the last few weeks we have had all of the following completed:<br />
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<li>Hebel paneling</li>
<li>Fascia boards and roof gutters</li>
<li>Roof tiles to main section of house</li>
<li>All plumbing and gas fitout</li>
<li>Full house rendering</li>
<li>Semi site clean-up</li>
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livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-86615719175773709202015-04-10T05:06:00.001-07:002015-04-10T05:06:51.634-07:00Stage 4: HebelAfter spending many visits to every brick yard in Sydney it wasn't long before we both realised we did not like any of the bricks on offer. So it was a no brainer when Metricon offered the Hebel package.<br />
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With the frame being completed yesterday (9th April), there was no time off on our site with the Hebel installation team starting on site today.<br />
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For those that don't know much about Hebel, Hebel is aerated concrete and the Hebel Power Panels that are being used on this build are reinforced with steel mesh internally. There are many advantages over standard masonry construction (e.g. clay bricks). Hebel is strong, versatile and delivers a range of benefits including thermal and acoustic insulation, fire protection and faster construction.<br />
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With the shortage of brick laying teams at present, we are glad we are building with Hebel.<br />
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View from the front at the end of the battle-ax driveway (with our natural pond that is developing).</div>
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View from the front showing the corner of the garage and the Hebel panels being installed.</div>
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View from the back of the alfresco and main living areas.</div>
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View from the back showing the dining room and Hebel panels being installed along full length of house all on day one.</div>
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livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-9940483683977234292015-03-26T05:37:00.000-07:002015-03-26T05:37:24.966-07:00Stage 3: FrameThings are moving along just fine with our ground floor frame near completion and the first floor and roof to follow in the coming days. I drove past yesterday while the guys were there so was lucky to get my first look at some of the rooms as so far am very impressed with our choice and can't wait for the rest to develop.<br />
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View from the kitchen out towards the alfresco and state forest in the distance<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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The steel beam that will hold the first floor up and enable us to have our clear span column out to the alfresco.</div>
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The open living kitchen area with the window splash back in the rear wall.</div>
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livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-49365905875243101622015-03-11T04:16:00.001-07:002015-03-11T04:16:55.719-07:00Stage 2: SlabThings have moved along very quickly with the piers being done and the slab going down all in a couple of days.<br />
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All ready to go.<br />
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Our expensive drop edge beam.</div>
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Great bunch of guys in action. Excellent job.</div>
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The finished product.</div>
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We have gone from a vacant site to finished slab in under two weeks.</div>
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livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-3220144209489691532015-03-11T03:59:00.000-07:002015-03-11T04:01:50.800-07:00Stage 1: ExcavationWhat a surprise to find on the way to work while driving past the block and looked up the driveway (like I do two or three times a day) and to my surprise there were Giant Tonka Toys playing in the dirt on our site.<br />
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This shows our 60,000 ltr detention tank that we are required to have and that we are going to hide out of site under a deck. Stayed tuned on this one.</div>
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livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-9247273590325874622015-02-16T18:31:00.002-08:002015-02-16T18:31:27.045-08:00We have movement onsiteIt has been a long wait from when we first brought the land back in Feb 2014 to now bu finally something has started to happen on our site. Last week thanks to the excellent work by a close builder friend.<br />
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We had the 1m high retaining walls built on three of the boundaries that will eventually support the block and give us the level site we have been after.<br />
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01 Feb 2014 </div>
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01 Feb 2015 </div>
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14 Feb 2015 </div>
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They look a bit strange at present as they have been engineered to be 15 degrees off vertical. Metricon were happy for us to do these either before or after construction, so it was a no brainier as to which would be easier, cheaper and quicker to build. The remaining retaining walls on the south boundary will be done after hand-over.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE5__c3ZKwkvJDod1CajrKW96_4bvILVVFBrEheX5YiQyWWmdqipqhXjMbYdHw3_9l8e_lq5jbn-eNtvQsAQnGrvwH4X1MDENUikrmvu8jlmyRNmM56DU6Z3BR0x1RWCmYSRLwmFmTIAw/s1600/20150213_084810.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE5__c3ZKwkvJDod1CajrKW96_4bvILVVFBrEheX5YiQyWWmdqipqhXjMbYdHw3_9l8e_lq5jbn-eNtvQsAQnGrvwH4X1MDENUikrmvu8jlmyRNmM56DU6Z3BR0x1RWCmYSRLwmFmTIAw/s1600/20150213_084810.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a> </div>
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15 degree slope on retaining wall</div>
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The site is now ready for Metricon to move in and do what they do best, the 1 meter cut and fill to level our block (as close as possible).livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-3829418759250863752015-02-16T18:30:00.002-08:002015-02-16T18:30:54.571-08:00Our blockOur block is a 1054m2 parcel of land in West Pennant Hills, Sydney. It is a battle-axe block with a 6m wide and 60m long driveway. The building portion of the block is approximately 33.5m x 20.9m (700m2) with a fall of around 1.8m across the site.<br />
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Panoramic from bottom corner </div>
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Our long driveway </div>
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Our building block starts here </div>
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The site faces north and looks over a State Forest </div>
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We also have one tree on the site that no matter how we placed a house on this block , it had to go. Thankfully the local council were great about this and approved it's removal whcih has already been done.</div>
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<br />livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-3359226488714059692014-10-07T06:07:00.001-07:002015-02-11T19:30:37.093-08:00Metricon to the rescue - GlendaleAfter the problems with Wisdom we went back to the drawing board and have decide to go with Metricon. It was not a hard decision as they have been very welcoming and extremely helpful finding the right design to suit our needs.<br />
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In the two months that we wasted with Wisdom, Metricon had finished building a few new display homes in Sydney and one of these suited us and ticked all the boxes.</div>
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We have chosen the Glendale 38 with Coastal facade and upped the size to now be a 46.</div>
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We have since signed off on the final construction drawings and the contract as well as chosen our exterior colours. We are going for approvals via CDC which will hopefully be in the coming weeks.</div>
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livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-28910849778186059982014-07-25T00:19:00.001-07:002014-07-25T00:19:30.531-07:00False Start<p dir="ltr">After believing we had made the right choice going with Wisdom Homes and paying our next amount to proceed to the drawing stage. Were we wrong?</p>
<p dir="ltr">The communication just stopped and we had one excuse after another when it came to giving a date for when our plans would be due. In the end we were told our job was "too customised" and that to build with a project builder you are best to pick a design and not change it at all. I wish they had told us this before we accepted their design ideas and paid more money.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It was then suggested to us that we would have problems all through this project and that may be we should look at cancelling our project. It did not take long for us to decide the right course of action. We confirmed the cancellation in writing and have moved on even though we have lost two valuable months and now have to go back to the drawing board. </p>
livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-26744899802636810732014-06-02T21:27:00.001-07:002014-06-05T20:35:07.442-07:00And the winner is?<p dir="ltr">After many sleepless nights we have decided to go with Wisdom Homes for our new house. It not only came down to price (they were not the cheapest) but their inclusions were far superior. </p>
<p dir="ltr">One of the biggest deciding factors was the detail they went into for their tender in relation to what on site detention requirements we would need and were not trying to sugar coat the whole subject just to get the job. In the end we will need close to 50,000 litres of storage which will be in the vicinity of $50k. Wisdom were the only company to tell us this while others wrongly estimated $5k to $10k allowances.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We have now paid the next deposit for construction drawings and are glad we can finally move ahead. </p>
livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-55915791890761613122014-05-25T21:10:00.001-07:002014-07-25T00:05:43.290-07:00The circus begins<p dir="ltr">The circus has begun with the presentation of our first tender. Call us crazy but we are getting a total of five tenders all up. The theory behind this is we will get a broad range of prices and can then decide based on a number of factors such as inclusions etc.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The good thing is we do not have our heart set on any one design/builder so will not be swayed from that perspective. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Our first presentation was with Metricon who originally we thought may be the one. Their service from the minute we walked into the sales room has been excellent if not the best out of the five. The only difference with this option is it is the only one requiring DA approval rather than our preferred CDC. The design is the Laguna 40MF. Due to the DA requirements our original design has changed quite dramatically with close to 2m being chopped off the house length which has resulted in smaller bedrooms. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Next we had Provincial Homes. I must say these people are on the ball and have produced their tender in their standard seven days. No surprises and so far but one thing that does stand out is the number of provisional allowances they have rather than fixed prices.</p>
<p dir="ltr">After this on one full day we had Clarendon and Wisdom Homes. Both to the same degree of detail as Metricon and again no real surprises. We ruled Clarendon out straight away as they wanted to use 900 mm drop edge beams and have the back yard set down from the house. While Wisdom insured us that we could do it without the drop edge beams and have the level yard we are after.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The final tender is from Kurmond Homes but unfortunately they have ruled themselves out purely on being too slow and making a few mistakes (flipping the house and sitting in the wrong position. To date we have still not received their tender costings and can't wait any longer.</p>
livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3635240994216156591.post-89536093863260201622014-05-18T20:54:00.002-07:002014-05-18T21:20:27.941-07:00The beginning of a dream or the end of a marriage?After twenty long years of paying a mortgage we finally paid off our house and were debt free. So what better way to celebrate than to upgrade. Mad I know but now is the right time if we are every going to do it.<br>
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We started looking at renovating our current property and add a second level as we love our location but wanted a few extra larger rooms etc. After receiving four quotes we were astounded by the costs to renovate. We then went down the part of moving but staying in the same area. This was not looking good as the real estate market was going through the roof and we would still need to spend quite a large sum of money to update any of the places we looked at.<br>
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This lead us to building from scratch. Something I have always wanted to do since my early days as an architectural draftsperson. My wife took a little bit of convincing but after spending many sleepless nights crunching the number we were going to be far better off financially buying a block of land and building our dream home than renovating or moving.<br>
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Our current house is on a battle-axe block which we love but it is not the perfect block for a knock-down-rebuild. So the task of searching for a new block started.<div><br></div><div>After a few moths we were able to secure a block only 1km from where we currently live and it too is a battle-axe block which we are very happy about. It has a northerly aspect which will give us plenty of sun all year round.</div><div><br></div><div>So this leads me to the title of this post " the beginning of a dream or the end of a marriage?" Which will it be? Hopefully the dream as I am lucky in that my wife and I have the same taste and always are able to find a solution that we both like.</div><div><br></div><div>So now the fun begins! </div>livethedreamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156023009072307709noreply@blogger.com0