More roof pics!

Nearly finished when I took these and its finished now. It looks colder in these pics but it was an odd kind of overcast day I think on average it will look more like the gutter in these pics.

Progress to date.

Hi all! It's been a speedy process for the build so far!

Work started back on the 28th January. The frames arrived and were stood up. After that, the builder walked us through the layout. They did that before securing any of the framework because our slab is polished and they didn't want to bolt it down and then have us change our minds and ruin it. Everything was mostly ok, we discussed having a glass door in our laundry instead of the normal 820 door we were going to have seeing as they hadn't built a door frame into that section yet anyway. The dividing door between the laundry and kitchen hadn't come either so the builder is going to construct that bit himself, which is good because I decided to change it slightly too.

Frame pics:


Lounge room, Telly will go between the windows.

 Kitchen. The two windows are in the Kitchen and the big space to the left is the width of the laundry.

 Looking at the linen cupboard and down the hall to the front door

 The study/4th bed

 The toilet and bathroom behind it.

 The ensuite

 Our big lounge window

 The front of the house

Then our trusses arrived! The builder asked us to order the two external doors we're providing.

After some rain at last and a week of mostly nothing happening last week. The roof began going up today.

The roof is a new colorbond colour called Wallaby if anyone is wondering what it looks like. I know I was before I picked it! I really like the colour now it's up but I'm worried about Shale Grey as the garage roller door colour so I might change it to Dune instead if he hasn't ordered it yet.


The roof should be finished tomorrow and then windows should follow. Can't wait until we're water tight!

We got slabbed! (on the 19th Dec)

Hey there,

I forgot to post that we got slabbed! I don't know how, it was very exciting at the time. I will have to go up some time next week and take proper photos of it all. Here is a wee taster anyway. 

Hi all!
New picture of the plumbing and the slab frame.

Earthworks have begun! It's happening!!

Hi all!
So the earthworks have indeed gotten underway, they're really wanting to deliver this slab by Christmas which is phenomenal. 2 days after the fence went up I walked up to the block to see if there was anything happening and sure enough, there was a dude with a bobcat.

The photos are ones I took on my phone so sorry about the quality but as you can see they had built up the back bit with gravel and were starting to cut into the front.

Then yesterday I went up with the in laws to see that they had finished all that and were getting set up to frame the slab! It's all going so quickly, it's amazing.

We're signing a new lease next week for our rental for 6 months and I'm crossing all my fingers that it will be the last lease we ever sign and we'll be able to move directly into our very own house.

Exterior colours

Just an update on the colours of our exterior. Colorbond went and discontinued a heap of their colours which made me angry. Initially I wanted Loft walls and headland roof and both of those colours are gone. In the end I had to make do with this:
Roof, gutters, facsia etc.: Wallaby (new colour)
Walls: Monument
Garage door: Shale Grey

Should look a lot like this:

Long time no post!

Hi Everyone!
I know it's been a while but most of what was happening was too depressing to write about so I'll pick up now. We did end up choosing the second builder and saying good bye to the first. He wasn't happy but we had to do what was right by us.

We had a struggle with the valuation from the bank but after some careful debate with the valuer I managed to get him to increase his valuation and we got our loan approved!

On Monday we signed the contract with the builder! It was just a standard HIA contract, very straightforward. Although we had to sign a variation as well because we made the ensuite a bit bigger and had to allow for the tiling.

We're off to the bank this afternoon to sign the FHOG paperwork and get that sent away and finalize everything for our loan.

I have to go to the block some time this week and tell the neighbors to stop parking on our land unless they want to be hit by a bobcat because the concreter wants to get the slab down by Christmas, meaning groundworks could start any day now! I don't want them to turn up and have issues trying to get them to move their car and I want to give them our details so that if they have any problems they can just call us and if they see anything happening on the site at night or that just shouldn't be happening they can let us know too. Trying to start the whole thing on the right foot.

Finally we can start getting excited again, it's been such a long road to this point and it can only get better from here. I have total faith in the builder we chose and we're looking forward to the following 6 months.



edit:
Just realized I forgot to mention what happened with council.
It went through like 3 days after that last post. I think all up it was 2 working from when I officially lodged the thing until it was approved and it only took that long because the guy was sick the first day. Such a quick and painless process! I highly recommend trying to do a complying development if you can.