The most exciting phone call of the year

Well, so far, anyway! Martin, our site supervisor, called to introduce himself on Friday. He let us know that (all going according to plan, of course) that the house will be pegged out on Wed, then the plumbing and electrical pipes etc. laid down. At some point (before this?), a fence goes up, toilets get delivered, and the slab goes down. (We have no idea when all that other stuff will happen, or in what order- not too conversant with the fine details.) Anyway, Martin sounds competent and experienced (20 years in the industry, most recently with Simonds), and he has a sense of humour. Let's see what happens Wednesday - hopefully it will stop raining by then!

And here are the plans!

This is the bush at the back of our block, behind the laneway. We're hoping this will never be developed!

Kitchen specs refinalised!

Had an urgent call from the builder on Monday to supply our kitchen appliance specs as they were putting in the order with the kitchen cabinet maker and needed to know oven dimensions (to leave a space in the bench). (Funny how 'urgent' only applies to requests from the builder, not from the client!) 
So Tony (my husband) spent Tues am at Clive Peeters... we ended up with an Ilve 90cm Siena (T90CCMP) freestanding oven + X39 canopy rangehood, and a Bosch SMS63M08AU 14 place setting dishwasher. Very good choices on Tony's behalf! I will be very excited to use these, in about 8 months from now! Especially my fish burner and rotisserie! Woo hoo! And the great thing is that Clive Peeters will store them for us in their warehouse until we need them.
On Wed am, the builder called and said we had to finalise our splashback colour "today". (I thought we had chosen this back in September, but apparently no record of it!) 
So, final kitchen colours:

• cabinets - WilsonArt Slate Grey (P91) [at the time when we did our original specs, they didn't supply Laminex unfortunately]
• benchtops - Caeserstone Osprey (3141) - whitish with small grey-tinged and beige 'flecks'
• splashback - "Vapour" - a cool white with a slight hint of grey

At the moment, our paint colour for the walls will be Dulux Lexicon Quarter, which is also a cool white. (Tony is painting it.) Door frames, architraves, skirting etc. will be (I think) Lexicon Half. Ceiling will be 'ceiling white'!
We are organising our own timber floorboards, and at the moment think we will install 130mm wide Blackbutt boards, natural grade (with all of the streaks and knots). (Slightly wider than normal, which is about 85mm.) We are looking to stain these a matt grey colour.
Carpet (through the builder, via Carpet Court Melton) is Oyster Bay solution dyed nylon, 46 - Natural Canvas. (A cool toned beige-y off white-ish with a tinge of... you guessed it... grey!)
We also marked on the plan where we wanted some extra stud walls (also called noggins?) behind the plaster, in the bathrooms, toilet and laundry, to make affixing things to the wall (like towel rails and the dryer) easier. (Again, we had done this back in September when we signed our contract, but guess that got lost!)
I was told Monday that our site supervisor would have our file yesterday, and make contact with me once he's had a look through it. All of the orders for materials went out on Tuesday, apparently. So does this mean we are making some progress?! We can only hope!

Dramas and delays thus far!

Hopefully from here on in, the process to building our little oasis in Eynesbury will happen smoothly. We're really looking forward to living there! We have met our lovely neighbours, and (via a mutual friend) another family who's land is settling in Sept. Every time we drive out (yes, to admire our empty block!), we congratulate each other on our decision to move to Eynesbury. It's so peaceful and beautiful, we can't wait to live there! Look forward to posting more positive updates, but here's the (kind of disappointing) story so far...

24/08/09 Soil report received

21/09/09 Initial drawings presented by Acquire Designs (via Greybox)

29/09/09 Building contract signed with Greybox

Developer approval received mid-late November

02/12/09 "Final" working drawings presented by Acquire/Greybox, incl. kitchen, bathroom and wardrobe elevations

14/12/09 Building permit issued

21/12/09 Western Water notified Greybox that the sewer point was beneath the garage and had to be relocated

18/01/10 Greybox notified us in writing that the sewer point had to be relocated

04/02/10 Sewer point relocated (subcontracted by Greybox)

05/02/10 Greybox notifies us by phone that the surveying pegs are missing. We go to the block, find two. Greybox asks us to organise the re-establishment survey, which I do.

11/02/10 Block resurveyed by Peter Bennett (great guy, very quick!) Greybox notified in writing 12/02/10.

17/02/10 Western Water issues PIC number (after my phone call to chase them)

01/03/10 Greybox finally responds to our repeated phone calls and emails re: next steps. Says:

...waiting on Joe to confirm everything and get your plans ready to send out, at that point it is then passed onto me and I will then send them out to the suppliers and trades. Your file will be passed onto the supervisor on Wednesday... when I do find out I will pass on their details to you.

Unless the Lord builds the house...

Yes, it's a labour in vain! Still waiting for final contract to sign, still waiting for land loan approval, still waiting for construction pre-approval... who would have thought it would be this hard! Next time (if there is a next time), a volume builder like Metricon!

Our plan or Henley Plan?

After outlaying $2700 to have a building designer do a soil test and draw up our plans and engineering drawings, we are currently having our plan quoted. It's coming out between 8,200 and 10,000+ a square, or between $250K and $380K! In order to get it down to our budget, which is about the $240K mark, we'd have to (almost) completely change the look of the house- eg., normal roof tiles, standard bricks, lower the ceiling height to 2.4 from 2.7, standard door heights, aluminium sliding doors, cheaper basins/taps/baths, sliding windows instead of awning, normal concrete instead of aggregate, narrow the front entry way from 2m to 1.8m down the center of the house... is it worth it? (Notice I'm not giving up my Caeserstone benchtops in kitchen and bathrooms, or my double vanity!)

Looking at some of the Henley displays. Trying to find something that can work in our budget with all of the extras and inclusions we want. Most of them are working out to be around $260-ish with everything we want, so it's a difficult task! Plus, in the back of my mind, still have fears re: comments many independent builders have made about all the 'short cuts' the volume builders such as Henley, Metricon, Porter Davis et al. take. I don't want short cuts! Well, at least not ones that I can see!