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