Project Regent

Well today was an exciting day.  We received the call saying that handover has been booked in for Friday December 11.  This is right on (our) schedule, so in 11 days we’ll have the keys to our new home!

I spent a bit of time on the phone today booking in fences, blind and shutter installation and a cat door for Hamish.  We’ve also found a landscaper we like and we’re meeting him on the weekend to finalise the plans and book everything in.  Before we move in we’ll have the driveway and fences done.  We should also have a good start on the landscaping before Christmas.  Tomorrow I’ll be onto the water tank people to get that sorted.

Removalists were booked last week for the 19th.  Now we just have to tackle the packing here!!!

We’ve also got some photos we took the other day to put up so stay tuned for them!

We just received some exciting news from PD.  They’ve been able to bring our start date forward by 2 weeks to the 14th August.  Thats super exciting!!!

There is a very small chance of bringing it forward again, but no guarantee.

We were out looking at the progress of our land today. Nothing to report there. Still looks like its ready and still on track to title in a few weeks!

While we were there we say another Regent 23 that is being built a few streets away. They’re on the same size block as us so it was good to see how it will sit on the land and how much space we’ll have outside. We just wish our house was at lockup stage too, but we’ll just have to be patient.

Also while driving around that building area we saw a couple of houses being built with our bricks too. They look good!

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!