Building Update

Just a quick one with some photos and my pre-plaster inspection report. 

Things are progressing well, I have been very happy with Jason Smith my SS, he even went to Bali for a week, but had another guy taking care of me - and all was organized and smooth. 

Chatting with a few of the tradies, I have had more than one tell me he is the best Carlisle SS  - always organized - they're never waiting on stuff. 

The Brickies should be done this week, staircase in and the painters will be in over the Christmas break apparently. 

Looking like an end of Feb move in :)

Any way here is the latest inspection report - (all was taken care of promptly), and some progress photos from the last month. 

Pre Plaster Inspection Report

Brickies getting started

Rear of house

The brickies at work, you can also see our really ugly front doors, we  couldn't get the ones we wanted, so we got the base level doors and will replace them after handover

Brickie Progress

Plaster has been hung

From the living room to the kitchen

The alfresco

The girls bathroom

Framing Inspection Completed

Things are still progressing nicely.

I had my frame inspection completed with New home Inspections, it went well with some defects noted:

My Inspection Report

I have spoken with my Carlisle Site Supervisor, he has said that all defects other than the slab have been corrected. The slab correction is scheduled however. I will be having New Home Inspections do a pre-plaster inspection, they will review all remedial work at that time.

Anyway enjoy some more photos.

Framing Complete

Framing Complete

One week later the roof is on and the roughing in has begun

Front of the house with my new sexy roof

From the back

My little tradie

Stopped by Sunday for a little look:

Surprised to find a tradie still working on a Sunday

Front of House

Framing Progress

Some more photos, looking at the 25th for completion of framing

Front Door and Office on the right

Home office

Home office and side of house

side of house looking at living room and rumpus (formal dining) on the right

Back of house - alfresco into living and kitchen area

Framing Start

Framing started today.

I called my site-supervisor on Wednesday, I have not gotten a call back yet... Will try him on Monday

Slab is done!!!!

Went by today and the crew was just completing my slab... is it just me or do houses always look smaller than you think when it is only slab in.

from the rear - looking at the alfresco

rear of house - rumpus across to alfresco

front right - looking at study - garage to the left

Garage across to study

back yard

from front - garage

Also stopped by Cassiana Grove and saw our Sales rep Deb - got to say thank you to her for her hard work!

Final Plans

 Here are the final plans we received and signed off on

Our block

Downstairs final plan

Upstairs final plan

Downstairs Electrical Plan

Upstairs Electrical Plan

Site Cut

Site Cut has taken place - this is now officially happening very excited. Went down today with my 8 year old   and was excited to see real progress. Slab is due to poured on the 9th.

So the photos will be coming thick and fast now hopefully!

Long time between drinks

Well, I'm back to my blog! Sorry for the absence but there hasn't been a lot to report.
We have been working on finalizing financing and settling on the land. That has all been completed now, it took a little while than expected, primarily because of my travel schedule for work which has seen me spending more time in Asia than in Australia recently.
A big recommendation for:

Anna at Rams in Glen Waverly
Angela at Ideal Conveyancing 
and Claire at Carlisle

- their communication during this process has been first rate and I am very please with the service from all parties. Anna at Rams and Angela at Ideal both worked very hard and went above and beyond to get this over the line and I am appreciative.

So I have settled on the land, all paperwork is done and in, the final engineering plans and building permit are being finalized. We are looking at a site start date of mid to late September.

I am excited to get to this stage - pics an updates will be far more regular now. 

We have signed :)

Well, I am now officially ~$500,000 broker... signed my contract today with Carlisle and over-all I am pretty happy.

We received our contract paperwork on Friday, I got home from a month in Vietnam on Saturday. I went through it carefully and aside from a couple of errors that were because of some mis-communication from my bride in the colour selection it was on the money.

We signed off and we will be getting a post contract variation for the items I changed today. (some electrical).

We got the facade looking the way we wanted without any cost, we are getting an under-mount sink despite initially being told it wasn't possible. They had to move the dishwasher a little and we lose the corner cupboard in the kitchen but I am thrilled to get the under-mount and an insinkerator.

Once I get the final paperwork I'll post up the final plans and final variation costs.

Facades :(

After receiving my colour selection plans, I saw that the facade of my new home looks noting like the Sovereign facade shown on the Carlisle Website......

The study windows are 2 small skinny ones instead of one large window and the balcony has bars across the front instead of a rendered wall.

These two features, along with the roof over the balcony are the reasons we chose this facade.

I have gone back to my sales person (Deb) and asked them to find a solution. I'll keep you updated

Updated house plans

Finally all the documentation for the loan is in and done, (a challenge from Vietnam)! Hopefully have approval early next week, (if we don't all this is for naught!)

Got a copy of the final layout (click on the link below) The major changes from the original Odessa layout is this:

• Added internal access from the garage
• Moved Laundry door to edge of stairs / hallway
• Opened up the wall from family room to rumpus - the plan here is for it to be a formal dining or a pool room - (go pool room)
• Straightened the wall on bedrooms 2 & 3 between the activity room - we will be constructing a desk / bookshelf along that wall for our daughters
• double doors to study and lounge (lounge to be home theater)
• door to en-suite.

Updated house plans

ahhh, the challenges of buying "Essential"

After the dust has settled from yesterday's colour selection, I had a couple of items that I thought might be of interest to the readers.

I wanted to go pink in the two girls bedrooms, it was an additional $450 per room to change colour for those rooms.

The Essential series has a limited range of front doors - basically they wont do timber doors. We are going to get the basic standard doors and then change them after handover, a bit frustrating - but we move on.

Anyway - I feel like we have completed one of the major hurdles by completing the Spectra appointment. Next up is finalizing us being broke for the next 30 years  financing and the contract appointment June 26th.

Wins and Losses

Colour selection run and done - so that is positive - also had some setbacks today. 

We cannot flip the house the way we want due to building envelope which I didn't know existed until today - Carlisle said they should have checked and known this earlier - this is disappointing as we won't see as much of the northern sun now, however we are going to press forward. 

Also found that we cannot do an under mount sink due to our cabinet depth :(  

The wall movement upstairs (straighten the wall along bedrooms 2& 3) can be done just a couple of roof trusses to be upgraded $250. We wanted to do this as we are going to have a desk / bookshelf built in along that wall.

To open the he wall between the family and the rumpus requires 900mm of wall either side to remain giving us an opening of 2340mm and a steel beam running over in a bulkhead to support the weight of upstairs as this is a main load bearing/support wal . This has a cost of $1,750 to do  - we are going to go ahead with both options.

Here are some of the photos the good wife sent me during the Spectra Appointment today

Flooring Choices

Bathroom tiling

Kitchen

Close up of counter top (cracked pepper)

bathroom vanities

Exterior

En-suite Shower head 

Gotta hand it to the wifey!

The wife takes on the colour selection appointment at Spectra as I type this. Last night she was up till 3AM putting together a "Dreamboard" to take with her to help things go smoothly and to show the Spectra rep what we are trying to achieve. She was taken her laptop with the following presentation.

Hopefully things are going well... hopefully

Dreamboard (pretty big file)

New Plans and Quote from Spectra

Updated House Plans

Updated Electrical Plan (this is my mock up that the wife will take with her to the appt)

New Sales Quotation

Tomorrow is the big day for the wifey - she is doing the colour selection at Spectra solo, I have tried to prep her as best I can, i hope all goes well......

I also received an updated quote and plans today. Not 100% right, but getting there....

I am a bit worried that I am pushing up the cost before the spectra appointment, but oh well, I plan to be in this house a long time.

Blank Carlisle HIA contract

Still moving forward trying to line out our financing in time to get the first home buyers boost - running into a couple of speed bumps but I'm confident we will get all sorted

Anyway I requested and received a blank contract from my sales rep so I can review while I'm away - I'm pretty sure it is standard so thought some other prospective Carlisle clients may be interested in having a look through and getting an electronic copy.

See the link below :)
Blank Carlisle HIA contract

Blank Colour Selection Form

Not much to report new, we are working on getting our financing sorted out (using Rams), I am trying get ensure my wife is as prepared as possible for the colour selection appointment on the 12th that she has to do without me there. (Wonder if I end up with pink walls everywhere?)
Something that a potential client of Carlisle might find helpful is their colour selection form, it will vary depending on your design, but I think there would be a lot of commonality.
Click on this link to see our blank one:
Carlisle Blank Colour Selection Form

Next step for us is financing approval - hopefully next week, and colour selection the week after. 

Downstairs Electrical Plan

I have been fooling around with the electrical plan - any thoughts or suggestions?

25/5 - Start of the blog

Having read blogs by some other home owners, and seeing how many ideas I stole was inspired by, I have decided to start my own blog about the building of our first home. This first post will be quite long and probably boring, so I apologize in advance.

A little about the family - My wife and I have been married since 99, lived in the USA until 2010. I am Australian by birth and chased my better half back to the states where she is from. We moved to Australia in 2010 with our 2 daughters, who were 6 and 10 days old at the time. (That is another story)

My gorgeous girls and me. (I am there only to make them look good) 

We have been renting in Mitcham since 2010 and the plan was to continue to rent until we were able to sell the home that we own in Texas, and use that equity to buy here. That was the plan......

We have great tenants in the home in Texas - we are positively geared on the property so have decided to leave well enough alone over there.

After seeing that the first home owners boost was ending, we thought we would explore building here, seeing as we would qualify. We went from having that discussion on a Wednesday to deciding on an area (Cranbourne West - Ambrosia Estate) a builder (Carlisle Homes) and a design (The Odessa 34 in the Carlisle Essential series), and plonking our $1000 deposit down on the Sunday after meeting with Deb at the sales office down there. I have been accused in the past of being a little impulsive.

We narrowed our decision on builders down to Burbank, East West and Carlisle, based on design and reviews. After visiting the display center's we decided on Carlisle.

We went with the Odessa, (sovereign facade), although there are no display homes yet of this model. Our criteria was:

• 3/4 bedrooms 
• Study
• Powder room
• Open floor plan

The Odessa offered all of this, plus a rumpus room - while remaining kinda in our budget.

Carlisle homes were offering some incentives on house and land in Ambrosia - I think they had had some blocks longer than they wanted. 

We got a move in pack of washer / dryer / fridge / TV +$5000 off, I was then able to negotiate a further $5000 when we signed our deposit, basically I asked for it, Deb called Hans, Hans gave the OK. Yay us!

(This was in addition to the Essentials upgrade pack)

Although when I received the Sales Quote the next week, it wasn't in there, I was quite insistent that it got included in the Sales quote. 

We have made some changes to the plan, I'll post up the new ones when I get them.

Basically we are: 

• opening up the rumpus to the family room
• putting in a sliding door from rumpus to the alfresco
• Adding another window in the rumpus. 
• Internal entry from garage to laundry
• Double doors to the study and lounge
• 500 mm off the study and added to the lounge

The plan is at this stage is for the rumpus to hold a pool table - (I swear this was my wife's idea - I love that woman), the lounge to become a home theater. 

At this point we are waiting on new plans and sales quote. 

The challenge for us moving forward is that I am on a drilling rig in Vietnam for about the next 4 weeks, so I am trying to coordinate everything via email and an occasional call. Da wifey is going to be going to the colour selection appointment solo..... we made a quick trip to Spectra  before I left, so at least we were able to agree on a few items.

So that is where we are at, I look forward to a stress free and wonderful building experience! (One can dream right).

Throughout this I would love your feedback and will do my best to answer any questions you may have if you're thinking about doing something similar to us.

Sean