Project Regent

I read on a forum that someone wanted to find out their street number before their land title had been released, so they called the council.  So what did I just do?  I rang Wyndham City Council.  According to their system our street number is FIFTEEN!!!!  Its a nice number, but it means that my calculations, based on no theory what so ever,  in an earlier post were completely wrong!

I thought I’d put up the plans and elevations of the house for you all to look at. (click image for a bigger version)

Well thats another major milestone completed.  This afternoon we spent just over 3 hours at Porter Davis going through, altering and signing the construction contract.  Now I need to goto the bank and get yet another large cheque!

The process was actually quite pain free, just a lot of reading and digesting of information.  The good news is that with all our upgrades, alterations and additions we’re still under budget (just).  There were some good things and bad things we discovered.

Good things:

• Render for the portico columns at the front are $250 less then budgeted
• We’re under budget generally
• Passed our 5 star energy rating with flying colours
• Thats it really!

Bad things:

• Slab for the alfresco came in at $1681 when we were told it’d be around $600
• The dumper shower head for the ensuite was quoted as $407 via email, came in at $593 (they originally quoted the wrong one).  This is actually $93 over what I was prepared to pay, but oh well, its a great shower head
• Still not happy about paying $350 for translucent glazing in the front door when its only $210 extra on the Corinthian Doors website
• The window for bedroom 4 was randomly moved to the wrong wall.  We left it as standard but someone decided it was to be moved.  Its going back.
• There was a charge of $1026 for 2 random brick columns to the portico.  “Um excuse me, but arn’t the pillars included with the Ormond Facade?”. Yes they are!  That cost has been removed.

So we should still be on target for a pre-christmas moving date.  We need to chase up a date for land titling - once that has happened we can have our start date allocated and off we go.  So long as we can start building no later then the middle of August we’re on track.

Oh!  one other thing we had to get altered.  The draftsman decided to sit out house on the land so that the minimum space possible was between the garage wall and fence, with a larger gap between the other side of the house that that fence.  Now all our outdoor living space is on the garage side of the house and the other side is just wasted space.  We got them push the house across the block a bit giving us an extra half meter of outdoor living.  Sometimes you have wonder what people are thinking!

Thought I’d do a quick update as we’re getting closer to the final tick of approval from the bank.  On Monday we’re signing the construction contact with PD which will then goto the bank so they can do their valuation and give us formal approval!  That will aparently still take them 2 weeks but at least now we have some kind of timeframe.

Also, I went past the block today.  The fence is still up so we can’t actually step foot on our land, but it looks pretty much ready for building.  All the blocks in our release have now been flattened off.  They’ve also painted the markings on the road, put those little reflective things on the road and have started to build the little fence on the nature strip that divides Wylie Way from Sneydes Road.

I also popped into the land sales office to see how the sales of release 19b were going.  19b went on sale last weekend.  Strangely enough there are still about half the blocks available. When we put the deposit on our land it was a week after 19a went on sale and there were only about 4 blocks left.  I wonder if it is because the people who build in stage 19b will miss the deadline for getting the $26K from K Rudd (unless they extend it).

Well, that’s it.

We’ve had our last colour appointment - eeeek - one final step coming up - contract signing - double eeeek.

So this morning, we ventured off to Port Melbourne to visit National Tiles for our colour selections. And 40 minutes later, we walked out proudly holding our tile samples.

Similar to our internal colours, we have picked a small selection of colours to use in the house which get used throughout.

Up first - we have our large floor tiles. They’re a light grey (which work really nicely with our dark carpet), and are the oversized size which, according to our consultant at National Tiles, makes the space look larger. These are the floor tiles used throughout.

In the wet areas, we have two colours of tiles - a cream (which looks white when not surrounded by other near-white colours) and a chocolate brown. And our subtle addition of colour is a funky red glass tile.

Let’s take a look:

Cream (Wall)

Chocolate (Wall)

Grey (Floor)

Red (Feature)

Side-by-side

In the ensuite, we have the grey floor, and one wall of the shower is cream, and the other wall is chocolate. On the cream wall, we have a feature on the back of our niche in small red glass tiles. These tiles are glass, with a painted red back, and look stunning in the light as the depth of the glass creates the most fascinating highlights and shadows. And then, on the splashback to the vanity, we have the cream tiles.

In the main bathroom, we have the grey floor again, with the bath frame and one wall in chocolate, and the other wall cream - so we have chocolate surrounding the bath with a cream splashback (which continues to the cream wall in the shower), and then chocolate on the other shower wall. And once again, a cream splashback.

In the laundry, we simply have the grey floor and the cream splashback - subtle and simple.

Our kitchen and entry passage simply have the grey floor.

Our grout colour is an ivory off-white colour, which is going to be used throughout.

To top it off, on sharp edges (corners of the niche and edge of the bath) we have a matte steel rim, matching our shower frames.

The cream and chocolate tiles are identical in size - long rectangle shaped tiles - and in all instances will be horizontally positioned creating nice long perspective lines.

So… the question is… is it built yet?