Preliminaries continue......

There was MUCH tooing and froing from that point until we paid the next instalment on 22nd April.

27/28/29th April there was a lot of plan adjustments but didn't hold things up I'm told.

30th April Builder came back to me regarding the electrical changes and said this would potentially hold things up.  Frustration was growing.

10th May I checked in with the builder as I'd heard nothing and was told we should have some answers....by the 16th.  More frustration.  At this stage, the estimated start month was July.  I checked in again on 16th May....told it would be 20th May......they arrived late on the 20th May.

23rd May I'm told that the standard range hood is no longer available.  We have decided (as with many things) to provide our own and they can fit.  More research to do=more time!....and extra frustration when I learn that where we were going to have our cooktop in the Island bench would add cost because of the type of range hood required.  I can't tell you my frustration.  As a result we had to change the position of our cooktop and sink. No big deal but just another change....and therefore another delay.  That situation (after so much research) didn't get forwarded to the estimators until 27th May.

24th May got an email telling us that we were a fair way short of a 6* rating.  Back to the drawing board with windows.  More frustration.  By the 25th May I actually asked the builder if we were better to quit this plan and go for one of theirs...but we had gone too far and it would cost us more.

27th May we forwarded our new window sizes etc - some have to be double glazed and some had to be removed and some had to be made smaller.

In amongst all this, on 26th May, I met with a colour consultant.  I was fairly set on my colour schemes but when we went to National Tiles, I found their standard range so very limited.  I made my choices but didn't feel right about them.  By 30th May I knew I needed to re-asses our colour scheme in the kitchen.  We had decided to have an Essastone Island bench but laminex on the rest.  After much deliberation, I decided to go with all Essastone which would cost us some $2k more but at that stage we had a bit of room to move.  I reassessed everything and came back with a colour scheme I was very happy with.  This was probably the one time I cost us time but I had to be happy.  I spend a lot of time in the kitchen!  

Middle of the night Ambulance callouts at this time weren't helping my cause either let me tell you!

In the beginning........

2016

Our journey began when we sold our home and moved out in January this year.

We live in Mt Beauty, Vic, which is a good hour from the nearest suppliers (Albury/Wodonga) - that plus the fact that I am an Ambulance Driver on call hasn't helped this whole process!

We had our eye on a block in Beechworth and finally settled on 5th February.  Even that road had been an interesting one.  It was on the market while we were still trying to sell our home and then, when we sold and went back to the block, all the signs were gone.  We did some research because this estate has a bit of history (Elmtree Estate, Beechworth).  With the help of the owner of our now Builder - Hadar Homes, we were able to secure a block.  It wasn't the one we were originally interested in, but when we found it was also for sale - we were so happy.  It's a corner block and it's the highest in the Estate.  Little did we know......

When we signed for the block, our Solicitor mentioned the Significant Landscape Overlay (SLO) but it didn't appear to be an issue other than us having to put a significant tree somewhere on the block.

Well, it was late January when we first approached Hadar and went in for a chat.  We've built 2 homes as owner builders previously so I figured this would be fairly simple.  Our first stumbling block was bringing our own plan.  If only I had known, I would have gone with one of their plans.  A big lesson learned for the future.  The next was that the builder recommended we keep both the street sides of our block (corner block so 2 sides) as facades rather than utilising one of them as the back side of the house.  I so wish we had declined and just put the back of the house on the long side and put up a fence as our neighbours who are also on a corner have done.

Having 2 facades (and the other long side of the house facing north) means we have 3 sides of the house that aren't the utilities or back side of the house.  The forth side is only small and is also the views side.  This has ended up costing us financially.

While this was going on, we had soil tests and contours done.  We found that we had 2400 fall over the block.  This also was going to cost us in retaining walls etc.  That was around the middle of Feb.

By 20th Feb we were still adjusting room sizes etc.  We are on a super tight budget and that is causing a few headaches already.

I think we got our first actual plan around the 3rd week of Feb.  By 15th March I had picked all the external colours.  Things were progressing fairly well although the 'getting into the cue' when a change is made has done my head in.  By the end of March we were still waiting on estimation. Hadar had a few challenges themselves and we were part of the wash from that tidal wave!

We got our very first price today and here is a picture of our floor plan.....