Quote #1

So today the wife, daughter and I went down to the display village in Clyde North and had a great chat with our sales consultant. Our site costs are what she says are worst case estimates at this stage until they can do a soil survey.

We have put on the Claremont facade for now as its the most expensive one, but we are not sure if we will actually chose this one.

We will head back tomorrow and pay our initial deposit so that a soil survey can be done and in the mean time have a bit more of a think about what we want to update in our sales quote.

 

 

 

Our House - The Kallara 33

So we have found our house!

Well after many weekends driving around looking at all the display homes and spending hours upon hours looking at the Porter Davis floor plans for single stories we have finally found a house that ticks all the boxes. Well, we actually sort of found it a few weeks ago, but the lovely sales consultant in Clyde North called us up and offered us an $8000 discount for July / August site start promotion. We were initially ready to take our time and look some more as we are waiting for titles anyway but this was enough to encourage us start the process and get some quotes.

So we have chosen the Porter Davis Kallara 33. (insert crowd cheer here).

http://porterdavis.com.au/content/Houses/Kallara/Floorplans/PDP Kallara 33.pdf

We really love the layout of the house especially with Bed 3 and 4 to the rear of the house with a games room next to them and if we place a door in the hallway between Bed 3 and the Bath room we could easily close it off if when we are entertaining guests to keep the noise down, while Bed 2 is planned as a guest room for now. The games room layout is the main reason we chose the Kallara over similar layout designs purely for the DD/future kids.

The lounge on this house is one of the largest of all Porter Davis designs, and with some simple variations to the walls we will make it even larger to support a dedicated theater room, we will also move the theater door way of to the side of the dinning room so that we can project onto the shorter wall. We will see if we can increase the length wall of the Study by 1 meter towards the alfresco to support the increased lounge room size and if possible add a storage cabinet in the remaining space so that the room doesn't become to long and thin. In other words make the lounge bigger and keep the study the same size as it appears in the displays.

With the Kallara displays they have the optional Soaker Tub option, we really like the way the space has been used with the shower relocated. I think it would look quiet strange with out it actually so this was something we had to have, we will also try and upgrade it even further and turn it into a Spa Bath, fingers crossed!

The only other structurally items we can think of at the moment are to extend the garage, and extend the default 0mm eaves to 450 or 600mm eaves.

Tomorrow we are off to see our sales consultant to get a our first sales quote.

We have found our house?

Oh so many display homes

So we have been looking around at various display houses since well, actually just before we settled on our block of land. We had from the start intended to build with Porter Davis as one of our friends had also been through a similar build and reading through the homeone forums they seemed to have the better response than most. I understand that no build will be perfect and that nearly everyone will have issues with their build but it is how these issues are managed that makes some builders stand out more than others and this was an area that Porter Davis seemed to do well in after many many hours researching and reading through homeone. We visited a number of Porter Davis homes and also visited Henley and Metricon to get ideas on styles, layouts and if we found a house we loved with any of them we could have been easily swayed.

Porter Davis Amalfi 33?

 

 

So initially we were interested in the Amalfi 33. The large family, separate dinning and the WIP/Laundry behind the Kitchen was an interesting layout. The best thing we liked about the Amalfi was the huge ensuite with the also huge SPA. We looked at these plans for some time, in fact I'd sit there for most of the night trying to picture where furniture would be placed, how the study would be layed out, wondering if I could turn the living into a theater? We also asked other questions like why is BED4 in the middle of the house? Other things seemed to not quiet right. Toilet located between between BED2 and BED3, and then then looking at the display house the bathroom was so dark because it has no outside windows, then again.. hang on its not a bathroom..

The more and more we pictured our daily life in this house the more it just didn't seem to work. I think the biggest turn off was BED4 being smack bang in the middle of the house, and also how long it seemed as you had to walk before you found any part of the house from the entrance. If anyone has been the the Amalfi display you will know what I mean. It feels like you enter the house and then have to go down a long corridor before you find any rooms.. Oh wait no BED4 is on the way.. sigh... The final turn off was with BED2/BED3 not having really any separate space from the main living area or where guests would go to do their business in the toilet/bathroom.

After speaking to our consultants (friends who we must have bored to death) they agreed with our points. So as of this moment the Amalfi 33 was no longer.

Porter Davis Queenstown 33?

 

Okay, so back to the drawing board, the Queenstown 33. Looks a bit better, separate rumpus room quiet large as well 4.2x4.9 meters a good medium size theater room, can you tell we love our movies yet? BED 2, 3 and 4 are to the rear / side of the house. BED 2 separated from BED 3 and 4 that would be a good guest room, nice central alfresco, dinning and formal lounge. It looks great on paper.. doesn't really work to well with the "northern aspect" we are after. But we thought this design will match our lifestyle a lot more. They even have an ensuite spa option in lieu of the WIR in ensuite. Separate study nook. Great!  But.... when we went to find a Queenstown 33, the display and the standard floor plan were completely different, I believe it was the Chisholm Option (see below), which basically moved the alfresco into where the rumpus room was and moved the rumpus to where the dinning area was and then moved the dinning in between the two? And as much as we wanted to think it would be okay, we just couldn't trust or imagine it, we had to see it built, but none of the Queenstown displays actually matched the standard floor plan. What a shame really..


Queenstown 33 Chisholm Option

After this we went looking for a similar design...

Land Contract Signed

Land Contract Signed

So today we signed our land contract! Yay!

The Block

We have found our block of land!

After much debating on the block size, easements, street location, proximity to display village or to distance our self from them, corner locations, avoiding T intersections, and avoiding lots that are adjacent to non progressed stages of development, as we wanted to be able to move in and not have to worry about the dust storm and noise from development work directly next to our house. We have found what we think is a block that is the best of all worlds.

North facing block! YAY, no thoroughfare traffic, not at the end of  T intersection.

The block is 16.5M wide x 32M deep (528 SQM), which is great I can get a bigger garage! The property does have a 3 meter easement running along the back fence, hopefully this doesn't cause us to many issues. With the larger garage and local amenities we don't see the need to build anything substantial like sheds or pools so we'll use the easement as our veggie garden or something creative that we won't lose sleep over should they need to rip it up.

The only thing that is wrong is that the cross over is on the east side of the property, we want ours on the west so the garage takes the brunt of the west sun in the afternoon.

So we have spoken to the developer who has promised that they will relocate the cross over as they haven not yet pored the concrete and all we have to do is pay our deposit and sign a crossover relocation form when we sign our contract. The also advised that there will be no cost in relocating the crossover. Great!

So we paid our holding depositing on the land and waited for the sales consultant to prepare our land contracts.

So we are pretty excited on our new land prospects, after paying our holding deposit we went driving around the local area and checking out all the local shops as you do.

Land Ahoy!

28-Jan-2011

We have found land!

After much driving arround various estates in South Eastern Melbourne we have finally found an estate that meets our initial criterial and also provides some additional unexpected benfits with the local ammenities.


The new chosen location works well for us, it has access to train station albeit via a fair walk (20minuts), bus or 5 minutes via car, the wife's confidence is not strong with driving so she preferes to use public transport where available so we didn't want to end up in an estate that was miles from a train station.

It takes about 20 minutes to get to my current work. Shop locations are good as well with only a 5 minute drive to most of your typical shops, Coles, Kmart, Woolworths, misc food shops and about 10 minutes to large home maker centre, this will be important when we first move in and need to shop!

It's probably not an area you would buy your investment property but great for new family's with lots of local activity centres, parks and sporting facilities for when the our DD grows older.

Now that we have found the estate we have to chose a block of land! One that preferably meets our criteria for north aspect living areas.

Revisiting the Dream

Mid Jan 2012

A year after our initial attempt at home ownership my wife and I were keen on looking into new options for a home. Our baby girl was growing fast and needs an area to play with all her toys, we were also finding out that our storage space was quickly disappearing with all the presents, toys, clothes, and other baby products that you collect.

We started to visit some of the displays again and started looking for land in estates that will provide a few requirements for ourselves.

Being newbies into first home owner builder, we were initially looking into purchasing house and land package, and while this was great for fixing site costs, it made block location difficult for the house design we desired. We quickly developed a set of requirements for our block of land and started looking out houses that matched this design.

Requirements:

• Location Location Location: This was by far the most important decision, we couldn't afford to build in the new estates that are closer to the city and my wife doesn't want to drive so she prefers access to public transport.

• Facilities: Shopping Centres, and key shops. e.g. Bunnings LOL and activities for our daughter when she grows a bit older.

• Next was Siting: We wanted a north facing block. A block that would give us north sun over our main living areas with bedrooms situated over the east side of the house and garage protecting the house from the west sun. This was important not only from a heating and cooling cost reduction but also a lifestyle. We have lived in houses that had rooms etc in the south end of the house and they were always very depressing due to the lack of Sun so we wanted to avoid this in our design.

• House and Block Size: We were after a block that would provide not a large back yard and at the same time not something that is completely useless. We like the idea of a small garden for veggies and some space for the kids to play with our pet rabbit. We noticed a common style of designs with new house is to have the alfresco cut into the backyard with the rest of the house wrapping around it and effectively leaving a very small space of say 2 - 3 meters behind the house.

• House Layout:

• Master + 3 Bedroom 
• Ensuite
• Bathroom (not a shower room)
• Theatre room (huge movie fan and have always wanted to build one of these for ever)
• Bedrooms/Games room to the rear of the house to keep noise/kids mess away from the entertaining areas.
•  Family & Kitchen Area The wife wanted a house that had these rooms very light and bright and "open"

 So off we went looking at new estates and displays to get an idea of what would work for us.